Be honest now. How many Bollywood movies have you walked out of, post the golden era of Jab We Met (circa 2007) and proclaimed, “Lady X/Y/Z reminded me of Geet”?
It ain’t your fault. The Hindi movie industry, ever prey to rehashing old stereotypes, has been delighting in sticking to formulas it thinks will work – until they no longer do.
The ‘Geet’ stereotype is a painful reminder of a formula gone stale a long, long time ago.
I was reminded of just how stale it has become when I watched Kapoor and Sons very recently, rejoicing in the complex family drama that it turned out to be.
Siddharth Malhotra’s nuanced anguish at not being able to finish a penny’s worth of writing, Fawad Khan’s overt ‘perfectness’ that must be a cover for something (we’ll steer clear of spoilers) and Rajat Kapoor’s role of distant-husband-meets-confused-father were painstakingly etched. But then, what of Alia Bhatt’s Tia? Shrill, talkative and childlike to a fault, Tia – quite frankly – got on my nerves.
Throughout the first half, Alia saunters about in all glory, playing the happy muse to Siddharth’s brooding self – till he finally ‘discovers’ himself.
What follows? Tia pretty much bids adieu to any screen time; her work is done.
The parallels with Geet of Jab We Met are strikingly similar. Playing what was Imtiaz Ali’s most iconic female character till date, Kareena Kapoor in the first half of the movie is all heart. She talks nineteen to the dozen and with her carpe diem attitude, transforms (lets not sugarcoat it) Shahid Kapoor into ‘something like her’. In the second half though, she’s subsided into a pining, sobbing, makeup-less version of her former self (pining for a man who wants nothing to do with her) – till Shahid comes and resuscitates her.
While Geet’s joie de vivre was a breath of fresh air in Bollywood, it gave rise to a rather stock female character that gradually began to replace ‘bubbliness’ with ‘ditsiness’.
The question is: what else does the character bring to the table other than the general activity of talking till she drops, and in the process, helping the hero evolve? Jab Tak Hai Jaan had Anushka Sharma constantly chatting up her ‘soldier’ buddy (a rather sullen SRK), dancing atop hillocks in abandon – and finally inspiring him to win back his love, Katrina Kaif.
And what of Ghajini? A rather sprightly Asin’s main job in the film is to perform as many good deeds as she can (we’re not kidding) – until she is bumped on the head and killed. This leaves bereaved lover Aamir Khan to turn into a balding, tattooed Mr Vengeance.
Kareena herself didn’t dither too far from the infantilising female character she herself popularised. There was Bajrangi Bhaijaan’s Rasika (I had to Google that character name) who did little else beyond flashing strange smiles and breaking into ‘chicken’ dances in Kurukshetra’s streets.
So what’s wrong with the overabundance of bubbly, precocious, childlike female characters? Nothing. Except, that’s all they’re about. There are no greying areas to navigate for these women, no sudden metamorphosis into adulthood – and honestly, a lot of times, the ‘bubbliness’ is just compensation for the lack of any other noticeable character trait.
And what is with them always playing muse to the male lead who is inevitably their complete opposites? These men go on to change worlds: Shahid Kapoor turns his business around, Siddharth finally pens a successful novel (sorry!), Salman Khan becomes your run-of-the-mill border-bonding hero (after Virat Kohli) and Aamir Khan discovers vengeance.
And the women? They become wispy reminders of happy, perky, erstwhile muses – who then choose to depart the narrative because they have nothing else to offer.
We’re okay with the bubbly, Bollywood. With the childlikeness too. But for heaven’s sake, stop infantilising them. And certainly give them something else to do other than a ‘project’ that is the male lead.
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