Cigarettes Under My Burkha, a Clichéd Symbol of Empowerment?

Cigarettes in the film aren’t so much about the women rebelling, as it is of them sharing an experience.

The final 30 seconds or so of Alankrita Shrivastava’s Lipstick Under My Burkha is like a long cathartic sigh, like taking a breath after it has been stifled for a while. It's, quite literally, like smoking a cigarette after a long, strenuous day.

The four protagonists – 55-year-old matriarch of Hawaii Manzil, buaji (Ratna Pathak Shah), the feisty beautician, Leela (Aahana Kumra), the housewife who secretly has a job, Shireen (Konkona Sen Sharma), and the student living a schizophrenic life at home and outside, Rehana (Plabita Borthakur), are sitting on the floor of Rehana's tailoring shop. By this time in the movie, the women have been aggressively told their place, ousted and defeated by patriarchy.

A cigarette passes between them like an open secret – the key to happiness is in their own hearts.

While the film has moments we have never seen before in Hindi cinema, the use of the cigarette as a supposed symbol for the women’s liberation has been described by many as clichéd. In all the Facebook chatter, we found these takes:

But here’s why I think these comments, while valid audience readings, do disservice to the film. (Warning: *spoilers ahead*)

To begin with, the cigarette isn't so much about them rebelling, as it is of them sharing an experience. Pushed into a corner by patriarchy, these women find a safe space in this tiny room. And it is here, behind closed doors, that they can talk openly about their dreams, share erotica and draw strength from each other.

There’s subversion, (albeit covert), but it goes much beyond just smoking a cigarette. The shared smoke is less a symbol of liberation and more about knowing that they were not alone, and finding reassurance in it.

To my mind the real rebellion is in Leela and Shireen going to buaji's aid after her family throws her out. To openly lend support to the 55-year-old woman who dared to have sexual desires, amid the disapproving eyes of their own families and aggressive markers of patriarchy in their own lives, takes courage.

Besides, nobody analyses the intent of smoking a cigarette with this much scrutiny when it’s a man. While waiting for Rehana outside her window to secretly drive her to a late night party, Leela casually lights a cigarette.

If I think about it, the scene reminds me of several others – be it Siddharth smoking in Rang De Basanti and becoming the brooding heart-throb of the early 2000s, or Shah Rukh Khan appearing out of a cloud of smoke in Don.

Smoking on screen has been problematised for men, but only as a health concern. Nobody says “Oh this man thinks he’s progressive just because he smokes.”

Lipstick Under My Burkha falls especially victim to this scrutiny owing to its “lady-oriented” nature. After all, it’s just a bunch of misguided women taking feminism too far.

No Judgements About Being a Buri Ladki

Women smoke, it’s a fact. And smoking is injurious to both women as well as men – also a fact. If anything, the film doesn’t demonise the women who do smoke. Leela is feisty, likes sex and is generally smarter than her male compatriots. She also happens to smoke, but that isn’t what makes her liberated, or worse, the buri ladki.

It’s her fearlessness that makes her cool. Perhaps she picked up the habit of smoking with the same idea of rebellion, but that is not what defines her attitude in the film.

Rehana’s habit of smoking is perhaps more relateable. When she coughs after her first drag, she looks embarrassed. But is quick to say “Of course smoke karti hu, aaj bas gala kharab hai (Of course I smoke, I just have a bad throat today),” when a senior asks if she doesn’t smoke. It’s not a judgement on whether or not smoking is cool, it’s simply a reflection of a common college experience, male or female.

The film breaks away from the tradition of many of its predecessors in Bollywood.

In Cocktail, for example, the classic adarsh ladki-buri ladki trope comes into play. Deepika Padukone’s character Veronica, who enjoys her cigarettes and drinks, is shown to be wild, reckless and therefore not ‘marriage material’.

Even Madhur Bhandarkar’s ‘exposé’ on the fashion and film industry – called Fashion and Heroine (no surprises there), show the women taking to chain-smoking when they’re at their obnoxious worst.

One really has to rack their brains to recall a commercial Bollywood film where the female protagonist smokes without moral judgement, and as casually as the men do. Perhaps, Kangana Ranaut perched on her window, overlooking Mumbai’s traffic in Life in a Metro comes close, but she’s also the “other woman” having an affair with a married man.

One of the most powerful images of a woman smoking on screen is perhaps Anushka Sharma, in the final scene of NH10. Throughout the film, Meera (Anushka) is shown to be a smoker who is trying to give up the habit. In the final few moments, Meera lights a cigarette from the carton her husband had gifted her for her birthday, before striking a fatal blow to his murderers.

The long drag she takes before going in for the kill is sinister and bordering on sadistic. It’s not like the cigarette makes her more masculine. She is powerful, the way she is, as a woman who has had enough.

Smoking has always been a popular symbol for emancipation. A taboo activity for women for a long time, the idea of smoking undoubtedly has deep ties with rebellion. But let’s not attach so much significance to a fag when Lipstick Under My Burkha attempts to transcend much beyond. Incidentally, Shireen barely even smokes the cigarette in question.

The film ends on an open-ended note. We are not sure if this ‘liberation’ and ‘progress’ the cigarette supposedly accords, even takes place. Few, perhaps, came away from the film thinking that the women had successfully broken away from their parochial surroundings.

Will Shireen go back to her abusive marriage? Does Leela marry her fiancee or Arshad, or perhaps she goes to Delhi alone? Does Rehana stop her education? And what happens to buaji’s ‘Lipisshtick waale sapne’? These are all questions the film leaves unanswered.

Where this audacious film doesn’t offer solutions, it asks questions, unsettles you, breaks your heart, but also gives you courage to have your own ‘lipisshtick waale sapne’. Fixating on the symbolism of one cigarette, when so much more is happening, is unfair to the incredible things the film manages to achieve.

(We all love to express ourselves, but how often do we do it in our mother tongue? Here's your chance! This Independence Day, khul ke bol with BOL – Love your Bhasha. Sing, write, perform, spew poetry – whatever you like – in your mother tongue. Send us your BOL at [e-mail] or WhatsApp it to 9910181818.)