Bollywood’s New Woman: Liberalization, Liberation, and Contested Bodies 9781978814448, 9781978814455, 9781978814462, 9781978814479, 9781978814486

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Bollywood’s New ­Woman Q

Bollywood’s New W ­ oman Q Liberalization, Liberation, and Contested Bodies

Edited by M e g h a A n w e r a n d A n u pa m a A ro r a

rutgers u niversity press new bru nswick, camden, and newark, new jersey, and london

 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Anwer, Megha, editor. | Arora, Anupama, editor. Title: Bollywood’s new woman : liberalization, liberation, and contested bodies / edited by Megha Anwer and Anupama Arora. Description: New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020040316 | ISBN 9781978814448 (paperback) | ISBN 9781978814455 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781978814462 (epub) | ISBN 9781978814479 (mobi) | ISBN 9781978814486 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Women—India—Social conditions—21st century. | Motion picture industry—India—Mumbai—History—21st century. | Women in motion pictures—History—21st century. Classification: LCC HQ1742 .B65 2021 | DDC 305.420954/0905—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020040316 A British Cataloging-­in-­Publication rec­ord for this book is available from the British Library. This collection copyright © 2021 by Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey Individual chapters copyright © 2021 in the names of their authors All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—­Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. www​.­rutgersuniversitypress​.­org Manufactured in the United States of Amer­i­ca

Contents



Introduction ​ ​ ​1 Megha Anwer and Anupama Arora PA R T I

­Family and Nation

1 Mompreneur in the Multiplex: Entrepreneurial Technologies of the “New ­Woman” Subject in the Age of Neoliberal Globalization ​ ​  27 Koel Banerjee and Jigna Desai



2 Lethal Acts: Bollywood’s New ­Woman and the Nirbhaya Effect ​ ​ ​40 Sangita Gopal



3 Beyond the ­Couple Form: The Space of the New ­Woman in Yash Raj Films ​ ​ ​54 Baidurya Chakrabarti

4 Mera Saaya: Shadows of the W ­ oman in Bollywood’s Cultural Imagination ​ ​ ​66 Aparajita De PA R T I I

Body M ­ atters

5 New Womanhood and #LipstickRebellion: Feminist Consciousness in Lipstick u ­ nder My Burkha ​ ​ ​79 Gohar Siddiqui



6 Queering Bollywood: Sexuality of the Disabled Body— A ­ Case Study ​ ​ ​92 Debadatta Chakraborty v

vi C o n t e n t s



7 Plus-­Size Femininity: The Multiple Figurations of Bhumi Pednekar ​ ​ ​107 Ajay Gehlawat



8 The Many Bodies of Vidya Balan: The Dirty Picture, Kahaani, and Tumhari Sulu ​ ​ ​118 Puja Sen PA R T I I I

Geographies of the New ­Woman

9 Out of India: Educating the New W ­ oman in Queen, En­glish Vinglish, and Badrinath ki Dulhania ​ ​ ​133 Anjali Ram



10 Learning to Love The(ir) World: Using Feminist Spaces and Cosmopolitan Impulses against the Heteropatriarchy in Queen and En­glish Vinglish ​ ​ ​146 Prathim-­Maya Dora-­Laskey



11 Single in the City: The Female Flaneur in Queen ​ ​ ​157 Namrata Rele Sathe



12 Glocal W ­ omen: Gender, Genre, and Per­for­mance in Abhishek Chaubey’s Ishqiya and Dedh Ishqiya ​ ​ ​168 Madhavi Biswas PA R T I V

New Media and the New W ­ oman

13 All Broken Up and Dancing: Looking at Katrina Kaif in Eight GIFs ​ ​ ​181 Kuhu Tanvir



14 Reshaping “Bollywood”: Dissident New Media Femininities and Hindi Cinema ​ ​ ​191 Tanushree Ghosh Acknowl­edgments ​ ​ ​205 Notes on Contributors ​ ​ ​207 Index ​ ​ ​211

Bollywood’s New ­Woman Q

Introduction Megha Anwer and Anupama Arora

Bollywood’s New W ­ oman examines the cinematic repre­sen­ta­tions of the “new Indian w ­ oman” in post-1990s Bollywood films. On the one hand, this figure is a variant of, and has transhistorical connections to, the phenomenon of the Anglo-­ American new ­woman. On the other hand, in the Indian context, the new ­woman is a distinct articulation resulting from the specificities of the nation’s tryst with neoliberal reform (introduced in 1991), consolidation of the m ­ iddle class, and the ascendancy of aggressive Hindutva or Hindu Right politics. In this scenario, as Rupal Oza has argued, the new ­woman becomes a site on which ­t hese dramatic sociocultural and economic upheavals are mea­sured and contested.1 The new Indian ­woman has been discursivized, at once, as a marker of modernity, but also as the last vestige of India’s commitment to traditional values. She is also si­mul­ta­ neously the icon of a “new India,” as well as the addressee of new patriarchal structures that, in keeping with liberalization’s imperatives, have tenaciously reinvented themselves. Crucially, the emergence and popularization of the new ­woman trope is intimately tied to Bollywood’s countless iterations of this figure. In fact, Sushmita Chatterjee has argued that she is as much a creation of the film industry’s postliberalization overhaul—or what Ashish Rajadhyaksha has called the “Bollywoodization of Hindi cinema”—as she is its prized subject of repre­sen­ta­tion and investigation.2 ­W hether it is films from the 1990s or ones from the first de­cade of the twenty-­first ­century, what is obvious in each case is Bollywood’s fascination, and endless experimentation, with the many avatars of the new ­woman.3 The essays in this edited volume explore the vari­ous dimensions of this elusive, eternally transmuting figure. We do not seek to pin down the new ­woman’s morphology or to declare with absolute certainty what her constitutive ele­ments are, or o ­ ught to be. What ­w ill emerge through this anthology is neither a unitary account of the new ­woman’s identity nor, for instance, an exhaustive cata­log of her comportment, her be­hav­ior, or the relationships within which she is embedded. On the contrary, our hope is that with ­t hese essays we might begin to problematize the cohering impulse in the proclamations of “newness” that accompany the 1

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new w ­ oman. By taking stock of the new w ­ oman’s historical antecedents—­the “older” w ­ omen who earmarked Bollywood’s cinematic trajectories—we begin to notice that the new ­woman is eerily akin to, and has very many unsettling linkages with, cinematic repre­sen­ta­tions of w ­ omen that dominated preliberalization mainstream Hindi cinema. The idea of newness is itself, then, a historically and cinematically diffused one. At the same time, this volume acknowledges that the con­temporary sociocultural and economic pro­cesses that contribute to the making of the new ­woman bring into being an unpre­ce­dented articulation of femininity. This is b ­ ecause even when older binarized frameworks of tradition/modernity, morality/promiscuity, nationalism/cosmopolitanism, rural/urban, mobility/domesticity—­that ­were played out on the bodies of ­women in mainstream Hindi cinema—­are re-­invoked in con­temporary Bollywood films, their enlistment, post liberalization, takes on radically dif­fer­ent textures. The essays in this volume help us come to terms with ways in which ­t hese older schematizations of womanhood are reconfigured, the new intensifications and compulsions they produce, and the fates they conjure for yet another iteration of Indian womanhood.

The New ­Woman’s Victorian, Colonial, and Global Lineages Periods of momentous historical, economic, and cultural transformation produce their own discursive logic and imperative of “newness,” which is as steadfastly challenged as it is celebrated for its transgressive potentiality. The terrain of gender especially is hyperattuned to sociocultural alterations, and it is ­here, most of all, that the anx­i­eties about preserving traditional paradigms clash with the enthusiasm for imagining new models of masculinity and femininity or, better yet, for ­doing away with their polarized structuration altogether. Bollywood’s new ­woman, birthed in the context of upheavals caused by India’s economic liberalization in 1991 and the increasing ascendancy of the Indian m ­ iddle class, the rise of Hindutva nationalism and corresponding developments in Hindi cinema, herself has two distinct and impor­tant antecedents. As with Bollywood’s new w ­ oman, e­ very past iteration of this semimythic, semihistorical figure has yielded frantic discursive interventions. The appellation “new ­woman” gained currency in the fin de siècle debates raging through the 1890s, ­after it appeared in Sarah ­Grand’s essay “The New Aspect of the ­Woman Question” (1894). In Victorian ­England, it quickly went on to become a catchphrase that was greeted as verbal signage of ­women’s emancipation from domestic constraints of matrimony, motherhood, and financial dependence. At the same time, though, it was also censured by conservatives and traditionalists as a symptom of cursed, degenerating womanhood in modern times.4 At one end of the spectrum, the image of the new w ­ oman got established as someone who was college educated, rode a bicycle, insisted on rational dress, and smoked in public.5 At the other extreme, the new ­woman was characterized by “fierce vanity,” “undigested knowledge,” and “fatal want of all sense of the ridicu­lous.”6

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­ ere was even debate about w Th ­ hether the new w ­ oman was a real phenomenon or a fictional construct. The truth, like always, lies perhaps somewhere in between. As Lena Wanggren reminds us, the new ­woman was at once a “discursive figure and a set of social practices,” si­mul­ta­neously a “literary and a sociohistorical figure,” and thus her “epistemological status” is one of semifictionality.7 Mrs. Morgan-­ Dockrell, for instance, argues in her essay “Is the New ­Woman a Myth?” (1896) that this new cultural figure was “a figment of the journalistic imagination” as well as “an altogether new type of ­woman evolved out of the ages.”8 The Victorian new w ­ oman’s colonial counterpart was a similarly contested site of meaning-­making. ­Toward the end of the nineteenth ­century in India, a new modality of womanhood came into being, which was bound within a contrapuntal movement. As Partha Chatterjee has argued in his brilliant and often-­cited essay “Colonialism, Nationalism, and the Colonized W ­ omen: The Contest in India” (1989), the Indian national movement succumbed to the demands of reforming what colonial texts had characterized as its barbaric, degenerate, conservative, scriptural culture.9 This meant accepting the West’s superiority in ­matters of material life and working to imitate t­ hese in the national culture’s public domain. At the same time, the Indian national movement contrived an overcompensatory response to this external pressure to modernize. In the nationalist logic, if the material culture had to transform outwardly, giving way to Western dictates, then the spiritual, inner, domestic core had to steadfastly preserve its fortification, working overtime as antidote to the external transformations wrought by colonialism and modernization. It is in this context that the Bengali bhadramahila, the respectable new w ­ oman emerges as the recipient of a special privilege—to safeguard India’s spiritual national identity. Thus, while the men capitulated to modernity’s winds of change, the new w ­ oman had to ensure that she compensated for their loss of tradition by embodying the nation’s spiritual core, preserving the inner sanctum of domesticity, no m ­ atter what the external pressures. Furthermore, she herself could participate in the reformatory zeal of the age by accessing higher education, remarrying ­after widowhood, and advocating against suttee and child marriage. And yet, her access to the liberal impulses of the day did not entitle her to forgo feminine virtues b ­ ecause upon her shoulders lay the ultimate responsibility of establishing India’s superiority over the West; she was deemed the bastion of the realm in which India would ultimately prevail and overthrow the dominance of the West. To this extent, she was the direct antithesis of the Western w ­ oman—­even though she was educated, cultured, respectable, she was no memsahib, who acquired Western skills only to compete with men in the public sphere. At the same time, her newly found freedoms, compounded with the sonorous responsibility that lay on her shoulders, cast her as superior both to ­women of the preceding generation, who ­were denied education and freedom and subjugated by conservative social traditions and to the lower-­class, “common” ­woman who was coarse, vulgar, loud, quarrelsome, lacking in moral sense, sexually promiscuous, and at the mercy of physically oppressive men. Thus, the new ­woman’s ostensible national-­cultural empowerment and educational liberation ­were ­really a coded denouement of a new

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patriarchy, which, by reconciling “­women’s emancipation with the goal of sovereign nationhood,” produced a w ­ hole new discursive legitimation of ­women’s continued subordination. The culturally wrought positioning of the bhadramahila offers an in­ter­est­ing set of counterpoints against which to ascertain the semiotic assemblage that the new w ­ oman represents in con­temporary India, and it allows us to ask corresponding questions about Bollywood’s new w ­ oman: What pressures does she encounter from the twin forces of globalization and domestic, Hindu majoritarian nationalism? What version of the nation does the new ­woman have to ratify or preserve? What privileges is she granted in exchange for her l­abors, and what limits are set upon her self-­liberatory zeal? How does the new w ­ oman envisage her relationship with ­women from previous generations? Is she too, like her nineteenth-­century Bengali counterpart, decidedly bourgeois and upper-­caste, or can working-­class ­women or Dalit w ­ omen aspire to this appellation? Fi­nally, is she merely a function of a new age patriarchy, or are t­ here distillations of her identity that operate outside heteropatriarchy’s appropriative logic? The idea that Hindu w ­ omen’s bodies are b ­ earers of India’s national cultural essence has been deployed ad nauseam by the Hindi film industry, and certainly the trope predates liberalization. What we explore ­here is how the twinning of the proj­ect of liberalization and the expansion of right-­w ing Hindutva politics produce generic shifts in Bollywood’s rendition and construction of Indian womanhood. Before we turn to the context of con­temporary India, it is worth mentioning that the new w ­ oman has intimate ties with another global prototype from the 1920s and 1930s. A group of scholars have identified this figure as the “Modern Girl around the World,” who made a flashy and fash­ion­able appearance in disparate parts of the globe at around the same time, in cities from Beijing to Bombay, Tokyo to Berlin, Johannesburg to New York. Scholars of the “Modern Girl Around the World” proj­ect have identified her as being marked by the use of specific commodities and explicit eroticism.10 The modern girl, much like the Victorian new w ­ oman, was as much a real-­world phenomenon as a hollow image of clever advertising campaigns in the new commodity cultures emerging in dif­fer­ent parts of the world. She was represented as defiantly disregarding of her roles as dutiful d ­ aughter, wife, and ­mother. Most crucially, she continually incorporated local identities, cultures, and forms of self-­a rticulation with cosmopolitan influences, thus producing a “multidirectional citation” in the making of her being. The modern girl around the World posits a fascinating counterpoint against which to assess new India’s new ­woman.

New India’s New ­Woman: Liberalization, Liberation, and Contested Bodies In 1991, a­ fter four de­cades of Nehruvian socialism, India opened its borders to foreign investment. The state’s withdrawal from socialized spaces of consumption—­

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education, health care, and transport—­coincided with the elimination of bureaucratic red tape restricting imports of foreign commodities. All of a sudden, the Indian market was flooded with the irresistible charisma of consumer goods, designer labels, and a hundred tele­v i­sion channels. The nation’s economic transformation was undoubtedly radical, but more dramatic and unpre­ce­dented still was the resultant impact on the social and cultural milieu of India. Leela Fernandes and Rupal Oza have described in g­ reat depth the sociocultural repercussions of liberalization in India.11 What has occurred in the last three de­cades is an economic, but no less a discursive, reconstruction of the nation as “new India” and “Shining India”—an abrupt transformational imagistic make­over of the hitherto ascetically pious and austere, frugally and virtuously “­simple” Gandhian nation, which woke up abruptly from its safe-­speed slumbers to a sizzling new frisson of speed, shine, and excitement, at the center of which lay the power of commodity culture and a fetishistic preference for foreign technology, international travel, and global brands. The model citizens of this accelerated economic “revolution” are no longer rural farmers on Doordarshan’s Krishi Darshan or the u ­ nionized working class of a Nehruvian social narrative as seen in the older idea of Naya Daur (new era). In fact, more and more the state enacts a “growing amnesia” ­toward its disenfranchised populations, which get disowned as irrelevant spaces of poverty and insufficiency.12 In their place, a confident, aggressively self-­celebrative (and predominantly Hindu) m ­ iddle class has gained ascendancy, consolidating its economic claims and moral authority as the rightful heirs of the burgeoning new India of liberalization. In this narrative, citizenship of global India thus comes to rely for successful self-­actualization on con­spic­u­ous “acts of consumption, acquisition of goods [and] CEO lifestyles.”13 The reverse side of the coin is that if glitzy malls are one hypervisible outcome of the influx of global capital, then one accompanying symptom of the economic transformation is an acute and intensified experience of loss—­loss of control, sovereignty, autonomy, and national culture. Oza contends that the evacuation of familiar cultural markers engenders a compensatory desire to fortify traditional identities. Nowhere is this urge manifested more urgently or anxiously than around questions of gender and sexuality. Anne McClintock notes in Imperial Leather that “nations depend on power­f ul constructions of gender.”14 Especially during periods of major sociocultural upheaval, gendered bodies develop into embattled moral terrain; even as economic borders topple, cultural fortifications harden and become more and more entrenched. In India, the apprehensions prompted by liberalization coalesced around the “new liberal Indian w ­ oman”—­a figure that came into being in response to liberalization. On the one hand, this “­woman of substance” as India’s highest-­selling w ­ omen’s magazine Femina termed her, was constructed as “self-­assured, in­de­pen­ dent, rich, and fash­ion­able . . . ​[a] mimetic trope of the nation in globalization.”15 This new Indian ­woman’s westernized sartorial getup, her willingness to participate in corporate cultures of self-­care (through commodity consumption), and the professional ave­nues newly opened up to her together signify the nation’s eclipsing of

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traditional encumbrances in f­ avor of its rapid entry into cir­cuits of global capital. Professional, urban, aggressive, and sexually agentialized, she stands in sharp contrast to the Indian ­woman of tradition, the idealized, docile, and domesticated bharatiya nari (Indian w ­ oman). The new ­woman belongs at once to the new nation and to the global league of cosmopolitan female consumers and actors. At the same time, new age fears over indiscriminately open economic and national borders get displaced onto the new ­woman’s body, being transcribed as moral anxiety about her released sexual proclivities, her openness, her potential for unallowable indiscretions, and the general paranoia regarding the specter of “moral degeneracy.” The new Indian ­woman is therefore closely scrutinized for any signs of overmodernization; she is policed for a deracinated subjectivity that forgets its primary location in the home and safely benign familial connections to husband and ­children. She is treated, si­mul­ta­neously, as the icon of a “new India” and as the addressee of renewed zeal from patriarchal structures, strictures, and admonitions that, in keeping with liberalization’s imperatives, have reinvented and tenaciously reinstalled themselves. True, it is through her that new India mea­sures and celebrates its participation in global networks. But in so ­doing it places on the liberalized nation’s liberated new w ­ oman the extraordinary and impossible proviso that she prove herself equal to bearing the moral burden and onerous responsibility of preserving national-­cultural identity, rising to the time’s call to act as the last bulwark of Bharat’s age-­old “decencies” and hoary traditional values against the raging tide of alien influences. The new ­woman’s being and body thus come to define the limits and bound­aries of both cosmopolitanism and Indianness. Understandably, what makes the liberalized avatar of the Indian w ­ oman most threatening and objectionable is her role as consumer. The moral panic directed at her consumerism reads the “­woman of substance” as a “­woman of substances”—­ not substantive or uniquely wedded to true values, but easily seduced and distracted by shiny, buyable objects and t­ hings, avaricious, superficial, and not much better than her dissolute and promiscuous “Western” counterpart. “Western values” thus becomes shorthand for the new corrupter of national (and specifically female) virtue on the horizon, waiting to strike. In popu­lar discourse, the westernized female is a being surrounded by cosmetics; Western clothes; trendy appliances, gizmos, and gadgets; and cars as “fast” as herself—­goods to which she has all too easy access, and which had now come to constitute and totalize her subjectivity. Her “love of the beautiful,” the public moral debate maintains, has fed the new w ­ oman’s vanity—to a point where she now cares for l­ittle besides her own physical appearance. Worst of all, blinded by newfound buying power and intoxicated by the heady enticements of commodity culture, she forgets her conjugal and maternal responsibilities, preferring to spend money on herself rather than her f­ amily.

Bollywood’s New ­Woman: Conflating the Heroine and the Vamp? However tempting it may be to imagine the meteoric and unpre­ce­dented rise of the new w ­ oman in postliberalization India, in actuality, we would be remiss to leave

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unacknowledged her many cinematic antecedents. While the bharatiya nari and “­Mother India” have been the dominant conceptualizations of womanhood in preliberalization Hindi cinema, t­ here has been a corresponding delineation of cinematic femininities that have been much less invested in championing the cause of the heteropatriarchal ­family or the nation-­state. Time and time again, ­t hese alternative modalities of womanhood in Hindi cinema have embodied sartorial, sexual, professional, and matrimonial transgressions, and thus posed both tenuous and radical reassessments of traditional womanhood. In one way or another, actors like Sharmila Tagore, Rekha, Zeenat Aman, and Parveen Babi may be thought of as cinematic precursors to the new w ­ oman. In the characters they brought to life on screen, as well as in their off-­screen lives, they embodied new aesthetic and moral sensibilities, functioning as harbingers of a nonnormative gender performativity. Often, the cinematic disruptions they maneuvered ­were no greater than the audacious willingness to wear revealing or explic­ itly Western clothes—­Sharmila Tagore’s bikini in An Eve­ning in Paris (1967) or Zeenat Aman’s hippie attire in Hare Rama Hare Krishna (1971) are iconic instances of sartorial pre­sen­ta­tions that pushed against norms of traditionalism. At the same time, clothes are often loaded signifiers of something bigger—­and, thus, the transformation of Rekha’s character in Khoon Bhari Maang (1988) from the pliant, unsullied traditional ­widow into a model who dons the most kitschy Western gear is very much commensurate with her internal make­over into the “avenging w ­ oman.” 16 The external semiotics of her attire are revelatory of a dichotomous framing in which the westernized, professional ­woman is the more agentic counterpart of the traditional bahu; her plastic surgery (necessitated ­because her second husband throws her into a river, to be mauled to death by crocodiles) combined with the reneging of the “­humble” sari yield a transmuted feminine interiority—­one that can no longer be duped into exploitative matrimonial relationships. Similarly, as Ajay Gehlawat and o ­ thers have argued, Zeenat Aman’s arrival marked a distinct shift in Bombay cinema—­her cosmopolitan pedigree, the confident nonchalance with which she smoked cigarettes on-­screen, her gyrations to the countercultural rhythms of the 1970s “inaugurated a new form of sexual politics and femininity.”17 What is critical to Aman’s contributions to Hindi cinema, however, is not simply that she naturalized the Western look in Bollywood, but that, in the roles she played, she was able to combine operating as an object of scopophilic consumption with a genuine exercise of female agency; her sexualized presence on-­screen did not detract from the possibility of her perspective, as a ­woman, being privileged and attended to. Even so, the traditionally instated moral schema of Bombay cinema had relied for long on a dichotomous portrayal of female characters. Mainstream Hindi films repetitiously peddled a value-­laden polarity that whittled ­women’s choices for “who they could be” to just two. She e­ ither inhabits an unimpeachably immaculate, vestal, ultraidealized persona, and in that case she is the movie’s “heroine,” or she burns up the screen as the hypersexual moll and scheming vamp.18 ­There ­really is not a serious third choice, a few body-­dysmorphic types playing female comics

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and buffoonish “sideys” notwithstanding (the latter exist in the film as laughter-­ generating “antiwomen”—in other words, as what a real ­woman cannot be). Scholars have argued that t­ hese binarized dualities are set in stone. According to Padma P. Govindan and Bisakha Dutta, the virtuous-­virginal “female lead” and her “bad” (untamed/undomesticated) counterpart had to be firmly distinguished, and made identifiable at first glance.19 A sharply differentiated encoding of body language, physical appearance, and be­hav­iors of the two types makes ­things clear. If on one hand the heroine’s chastity and feigned ingenue unawareness of her sexualized body20 ensure her earning of the final “prize”—­matrimony—­then the siren is defined unmistakably by her high-­wired nightlife, her seductive gestures (which may threaten the hero with ensnarement), and her brazenly public displays of erotic intent, the latter often taking the form of exotic set pieces and titillating dance numbers on the cabaret floor. This kind of antiheroine gender role entails its own narrative judgment: the vamp, though glamorous and sexually coveted, is condemned to remain bereft of a man of her own, “desired by all, yet loved by none.”21 What is in­ter­est­ing is the recent decomposition of t­ hese absolute behavioral and pre­sen­ta­tional distinctions that had for so long, and so comfortingly, sorted out the moral economy of female personhood in popu­lar Hindi cinema. This rests on a larger paradigm shift. In the period of economic liberalization, the Hindi film industry has under­gone a dramatic overhaul. Aspects of the new milieu include the corporatization and centralization of film production in Mumbai, investment of astronomical sums of finance capital, a worldwide distribution network, and an accompanying premium on glitzy “showbiz” and g­ rand “production values”—­what Sangita Gopal calls New Bollywood. Visually lush, replete, smooth, tight, and fast-­ paced, the films no longer look like unfinished products from an economy of poverty and chronic underdevelopment.22 Si­mul­ta­neously and crucially, “Bollywoodization” manifests as the dramatically changed outlook and reworked thematic priorities of popu­lar cinema, the iconography of Bollywood films implicitly manufacturing consent for post-1990s neoliberal values.23 A key feature of “global Bollywood”24 is a notable absence of the archvillain. Rustom Bharucha points out that the megabud­get f­ amily melodramas such as Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! (HAHK, 1994), centered on interminable wedding extravaganzas (which was the filmic form inaugurated by liberalization), tend to be far less invested in the concrete strug­gle between right and wrong social ethics, or in the situational drama of class antagonisms, than had been the case in the past.25 Rather, t­ hese tensions, so critical to Hindi films from a preliberalization era, now get displaced onto a simplified and abstract clash between “tradition and modernity.” As a result, this cinematic universe has no real antiheroes, no true “bad guys,” only slightly maladjusted characters who must find new ways of reconciling their “modern” desires with the continuingly desirable and necessary imperatives of “tradition.” ­These new atmospherics have far-­reaching implications for ­women characters. Thus, for instance, elimination of the categorical villainy (a staple of postliberalization cinema) has gone hand in hand with the “gradual disappearance” of the

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vamp whose glamorous and overt eroticism, now duly aestheticized and sweetened up, gets incorporated with the attributes of the film’s heroine.26 Consequently, the components of what was once an externalized dichotomy—an irreconcilable moral split in qualities that could not coexist within a single character—­are now internalized and fused within the identity of the film’s “female lead” (a morally neutral term that gradually replaces “heroine” in Bollywood buzz), with the result that she is now expected to be si­mul­ta­neously “chaste and sexy.”27 This, in a sense, becomes the pos­si­ble point of entry for the emergence of the new w ­ oman. On the face of it, such an “opportunistic convergence between the vamp and the heroine” opens up a range of “liberated” permissive possibilities for on-­screen ­women.28 But in actuality it has meant that their bodies have become even more intensely (albeit subtly) embattled sites of contestation, guarding, supervision, and self-­supervision. Such a slippery and labile economy of repre­sen­ta­tion, the subtle, potentially liberative collapsing of the bound­a ries between the heroine and the vamp, that has perhaps produced the postliberalization new w ­ oman in Hindi cinema, invites careful examination. At the same time, the conflation of the heroine and the vamp is only one form of hybridization that Bollywood’s New ­Woman embodies. In that sense, then, the new w ­ oman figure not only emerges in the liminal space where the previous dichotomies of the heroine and the vamp collapse but also is a figure who evolves out of, and is a revamping of, other recurring tropes and types of popu­lar Hindi cinema. She is constructed, often, as a superwoman, i­magined as a hybrid figure who amalgamates in herself the sacrifice and resilience of a ­mother; the dutifulness of a wife; the assertiveness, aggression, and righ­teous anger of the avenging w ­ oman; and the sensuality and sexual allure of a courtesan. In many ways, the female actors Sridevi and Madhuri Dixit could both be seen as early articulations of the post-1990s new ­woman or at least as transitional figures whose presence on the silver screen seemed to mark the emergence of distinct transgressive, unruly, and nonnormative femininities. Both made their debut in Hindi cinema around the same time and quickly r­ ose to command as much (and sometimes more) superstar clout as their male costars and ­were the driving force in their films; Sridevi made a mark with films in the late 1980s (Nagina, 1986; Mr. India, 1987; Chandni, 1989; Chaalbaaz, 1989), while Madhuri delivered her biggest hits in the early 1990s (Tezaab, 1988; Dil, 1990; Saajan, 1991; Beta, 1992; Khalnayak, 1993; HAHK). As actresses, they combined chaste and sexy, sweet and seductive, assertive and vulnerable, especially through their sensational and raunchy cabaret dances that firmly dissolved the lines between heroine and vamp (Madhuri’s “Ek Do Teen,” “Dhak Dhak Karne Laga,” and “Choli Ke Peechey Kya Hai”; Sridevi’s “I Love You,” “Hawa Hawaii,” and “Mein Teri Dushman”).29 Both “dance[d] on the cusp of India’s economic liberalization,” and t­ hese dancing divas’ per­for­mances and reception speak to shifting sexual and gender economies in the Hindi film industry.30 In the range of roles that they played sometimes within the same film and across their oeuvre from the late 1980s, Sridevi and Madhuri embodied the developing

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figure of the new ­woman variously. Sridevi, for instance, was able to play the role of a professional in her films (a journalist in Mr. India and a secretary in Chandni), and also be able to fully express desire, such as in the erotic rain sari sequence in Mr. India. Similarly, Madhuri, a w ­ oman for all seasons, played the fantasy w ­ oman or feisty girlfriend turned sacrificing wife (HAHK; Beta), the courtesan (Devdas, 2002), the c­ areer w ­ oman or the avenging w ­ oman or the gutsy policewoman-­turned-­ hapless girlfriend who has to undergo a Sita-­like trial to prove her purity (Anjaam, 1994; Khalnayak). Dixit arrived in response to the times as she portrayed the young liberal new Indian w ­ oman who expressed desires (consumer, sexual) but happily gave them up or channeled them into wifehood or motherhood (in a film such as HAHK). With her, even as it was not, “the modernization of the Indian ­woman could be valorized as a painless, non-­conflictual, even harmonious pro­cess.”31 Even as her bawdy dances unsettled and rattled the censorship board, in the particularity of her embodiment of the new w ­ oman, she made traditional Indianness look modern and sexy (for instance, in a sexy refashioning of the sari), glamorized domesticity, and helped valorize the affluent and consumerist Hindu joint ­family. It is not insignificant that the biggest and most impor­tant censorship debate that rocked postliberalization Bollywood and India was over Madhuri’s song “Choli Ke Peechey Kya Hai” (What’s ­under your blouse); the scandal highlighted how the liberalizing of the economy led to upper-­caste Hindu patriarchal nationalist anxiety, over the liberalization of sexual codes and norms, played out over ­women’s bodies. Both Sridevi and Madhuri also resurfaced a­ fter a hiatus in slightly hatke (or offbeat) films, in roles that can be seen to be reflect what Tejaswini Ganti has called the “gentrification” of the Hindi film industry post-1990s as it gained cultural legitimacy, respectability, and the recognition of industry status by the postcolonial Indian nation-­state.32 Their comeback films reflect how their unruliness has been tamed, their unsettling erotic dance moves domesticated, to appeal to middle-­class neoliberal Indian values and technologies of the self. Madhuri’s films ­after her comeback, such as Aaja Nachle (2007) and Dedh Ishqiya (2014), emphasize her dancing chops, but the dancing is sanitized and does not, for instance, reflect her (sexy, or vulgar, to some) signature bosom-­heaving or “breast pulse” moves of “Choli Ke Peechey” or “Dhak Dhak,” also indicating the “embourgeoisement of Bollywood dance” that was already underway as reflected in her roles in HAHK and Dil to Pagal Hai (1997).33 Another small-­budget Marathi-­language film such as Bucket List (2018) further saw her transformed into a timid middle-­aged ­house­w ife. Before her untimely death in 2018, at the age of fifty-­four, Sridevi emerged from a fifteen-­year break in films like En­glish Vinglish and Mom, where she appeared as a ­mother, a ­house­w ife, and an “entrepreneur.” Koel Banerjee and Jigna Desai’s essay in this collection addresses the ways in which En­glish Vinglish recalibrates Sridevi’s preliberalization star image for consumption in a neoliberal era. They argue that “Sridevi’s capacity to harness old and new becomes domesticated within neoliberal feminism as the conjoining of tradition and modern, but also local and global, modern and married.”

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In a broader sense, then, the new w ­ oman stands, poised precariously, on the cusp of tradition and modernity; navigates feudal havelis and transcontinental holidays, arranged marriages and newfound c­ areers; and fulfills her responsibilities ­toward old parents even as she dabbles in nonmonogamous romantic-­sexual escapades—­all of this, sometimes with astute insight into the contradictions of her existence, and at other times with the oblivious panache guaranteed only to the most privileged. The new age heroine moves across the theater screens freely, sassily, and with impressive panache, emblematizing the strides, assurance, and pleasures of neoliberalism; but inwardly, she also marks the moral limits of its penetration and allowability. What is crucial to recognize ­here is that her transnational being, her glocal aspirations cannot be straitjacketed into meaning one t­ hing and one t­ hing alone. As Sushmita Chatterjee has so perceptively suggested, the new w ­ oman cannot be read simply in terms of pro­gress or regress. ­There is, in fact, no one type of new ­woman; the appellation itself signifies not a type but a relational spectrum. What we find is that the heroine/vamp dichotomy seems to have been replaced by the new ­woman and the “Too-­New ­Woman” gradient. Repeatedly, within a single filmic universe, ­t here are multiple iterations of the new w ­ oman, and the one unambiguously reinstated as the film’s moral center is the one who comes closest to traditional forms of femininity. Films such as Dil to Pagal Hai, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998), and Cocktail (2012), for instance, all feature love triangles involving two New ­Women; in each case, the ­woman who wins the hero’s heart is the one who delicately balances tradition and modernity. Even so, it is an impor­tant development that ­t hese films, perhaps in spite of themselves, generate curiosity and compassion even for t­ hose ­women who ostensibly lie outside patriarchal appropriation. Interestingly enough, ­t here are ways in which con­temporary Hindi films often go out of their way to redeem even the new ­women who represent extreme forms of newness. Thus Pooja (or “Poo”) in Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham (2001) may not be as prescriptively Hindustani as her older ­sister Anjali, and her sartorial choices may leave much to be desired, yet her incorporation into domesticity, matrimony, and religious rituals is made pos­si­ble in the flash of a scene change. Similarly, in Tanu Weds Manu Returns (2015), while Tanu and Datto represent, in some ways, opposing moralities vis-­à-­vis the responsibilities of marriage, the film manages to uniquely maneuver audience fascination with, and empathy for, both w ­ omen. In fact, an impor­tant shift that occurs is precisely that the new w ­ oman, unlike the vamp, is never entirely or absolutely outside the pale of redeemability. Her incorporation into the normativity of romance, marriage, and motherhood is established as a ­matter of due course, something that is pos­si­ble—­not yet, but soon, perhaps. In a sense, then, the films that feature the new w ­ oman often leave open room for a radical possibility—­t hat the new ­woman’s self-­f ulfillment rests not just in her taming (as yet incomplete) and in the disavowal of her newness, but rather in the gradual shifts in society that might open up new opportunities and forms of romantic, sexual, emotional, and professional self-­actualization that are as yet

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inconceivable in the cinematic universe of the film. In a sense, the incorporation of Natasha (played by Kalki Koechlin) into the final song of Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (ZNMD), as the credits roll, even though she has been expunged from the main plot of the film, is indicative of the shifts in Bollywood’s imaginary vis-­à-­v is the afterlife of ­women deemed “not good enough” for the men in the film. As Megha Anwer has argued, in the ZNMD’s hippy-­corporate moral universe, Natasha is condemned as a chudail (witch), a mindless female consumer, for being too demanding on her fiancé’s time when he is road-­tripping with his male friends, and thus rejected as a suitable companion for Kabir (one of the three male protagonists of the film played by Abhay Deol).34 And yet, by the time the credits roll, she is allowed reentry among the film’s primary characters, joining them to celebrate the wedding of another c­ ouple; she seems to have found a much more suitable match for herself and is happily betrothed to another man, participating exuberantly in the camaraderie of the last scenes. A variant of this impulse to extend symbolic redemption even to “errant” w ­ omen can be traced in the fact that the profile of the con­temporary female actor has itself diversified. So, Sunny Leone, an erstwhile porn actress, for instance, has been able to carve out a place for herself in the film industry, not just as an “item girl” in hit songs like “Baby Doll” but also in lead roles, albeit in films like One Night Stand (2016) and Ragini MMS (2014), which predominantly utilize her in hypersexualized formats. And yet, her very presence in Bollywood alerts us to the ways in which despite the sexual prudery of the industry, it can come to accommodate w ­ omen from backgrounds that would have been deemed too salacious to belong in mainstream cinema ­u ntil just a few years ago. In a strange way, Leone’s on-­screen hypersexualization, instead of simply being an indirect invocation of her former profession in the adult film industry, is the mark of her arrival, her ac­cep­tance within the industry whose principal rendition of ­women entails the fetishization of their bodies. Furthermore, and perhaps ironically, her cinematic eroticization and popularity established through item songs is precisely what aligns her with other con­temporary heroines who have made inroads into Bollywood through far more conventionally acceptable and bourgeois-­respectable routes. By and large ­women in the film industry ­either hail from Bollywood families (Kareena Kapoor, Sonam Kapoor, Alia Bhatt) or come to it via ­careers in modeling (Aishwarya Rai, Sushmita Sen, Priyanka Chopra). Even so, many of ­t hese ­women have had to reinvest and reassert their sexual appeal quotient by taking recourse to the “item number.” In its original form, the “item number” referred to song and dance sequences outside the larger diegesis of the film and initially associated with “B-­g rade” actresses in skimpy clothes, dancing provocatively and gyrating suggestively in settings such as a nightclub, discotheque, or bar (settings previously associated with the vamp). T ­ oday, however, leading female actors such as Aishwarya Rai, Kareena Kapoor, and Katrina Kaif have performed item numbers—­a genre that was seen as being too lowly for the “heroine-­material” actresses to get their hands dirty with. This is most certainly a far cry from the days of classic Hindi cinema where the

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film industry made a distinction between the actresses who played the roles of heroine and vamp, and actresses such as Helen and Nadira, who ­were usually cast as vamps, could never hope to be cast as the female lead.35 The journey of the new ­woman and the trajectory of the item number thus seem to be closely tied together. At the very least the new w ­ oman’s “itemization,” as it w ­ ere, evidences the elasticity of the new ­woman category. At the same time, it suggests the inescapability from a par­tic­u ­lar form of sexualization for the new ­woman. If in the case of Leone, the item number earmarks the route of her entry into the industry, in the case of a Rai or Kapoor, it suggests an experimentation with a newness that must inevitably flirt with or learn to incorporate an overt sexuality previously ascribed only to the “bad ­women of Bollywood.” Traditionally in Bollywood, not only could actresses who played vamps never aspire to the role of a heroine, but the playback singers who lent their voices to ­these dichotomized female roles w ­ ere also distinct.36 Thus, the “nightingale” Lata Mangeshkar’s girly, sweet, innocent, “Indian” sound/timbre was used as the voice for heroines in classic Hindi films, while her ­sister Asha Bhonsle, whose voice was considered more sexy and sultry, was designated to be the playback singer for vamps or more sexualized w ­ omen (in songs such as “Piya Tu Ab To Aaja,” “Kar Le Pyaar,” and “Aao Na Gale Lagalo Na”). Fascinatingly, as the strict lines demarcating female types and roles have dissolved in the figure of the new w ­ oman, the new ­woman seems to have found a new sound. Playback singers like Sunidhi Chauhan and Shreya Ghoshal, with their more robust, deeper, sexier voices, have attributed a ­whole new vocal range to the new w ­ oman in post-1990s films.37 Conceiving of Bollywood’s new w ­ oman as a broad category instead of as a static, monolithic type, as a comprehensive phenomenon that extends beyond on-­screen roles, their sartorial choices, or the degree of their modernity, allows us to take into account the wide-­ranging variations in the phenomenon in terms of the distinct per­for­mance politics and self-­fashioning that dif­fer­ent female actors embody. It is pos­si­ble, thus, for instance, for both Katrina Kaif’s and Kangana Ranaut’s cinematic oeuvres and par­tic­u­lar styles of femininity belong to this classification. Kaif’s accented Hindi (a language she learned only ­after she joined the film industry), her off-­screen bonhomie with the male stars of the industry, and her repetitive film roles in which she is more often than not reduced to a “pretty prop” or deployed as “unabashed eye-­candy” as she plays second fiddle to the male protagonist’s character/plot arc (Singh Is Kinng, 2008; ZNMD, 2011), stand in sharp contrast to Ranaut’s more combative presence in the industry.38 Ranaut self-­avowedly distances herself from the big Khans and chooses films in which her character has the meatiest bits (Queen, 2014; Revolver Rani, 2014; Simran, 2017; Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi, 2019); her comportment in interviews and public appearances is of someone who is unafraid of speaking out against sexism and nepotism. Kaif’s and Ranaut’s par­tic­u­lar brands of newness and femininity might appear jarring in contradistinction with one another, and yet the concerted orchestration with which t­ hese actors manufacture and manage their on-­screen and off-­screen personae alerts us to the arrival of a distinct kind of female celebrity whose presence both in

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the industry and in films marks her out as a new cinematic entity, to be contended with both in real life and in cinematic texts. Essays in this collection by Ajay Gehlawat and Puja Sen are instructive as they also direct attention to the star texts of Bhumi Pedneker and Vidya Balan, respectively. Like Sen, who focuses on the radical possibilities offered by the presence of Balan’s unconventional body on-­screen, Gehlawat also brings attention to how Pedneker, through the roles that she has chosen, provides a distinct “material” figuration of the mold-­breaking new woman/new heroine (such as in her debut role in the 2015 Dum Laga Ke Haisha that confronts the hegemonic beauty and body standards and fitness-­occupied cultures and regimes of neoliberal India). The spectrumization of the new w ­ oman also enables us to think of the w ­ omen’s repre­sen­ta­tion in Bollywood diachronically, over a course of the last three de­cades. The new ­woman of the films made in the last five years is, in some critical ways, incommensurate with the new ­woman of the 1990s. The anx­i­eties around premarital sex, early marriage/second marriage, divorce, and foreign travel that we see in films such as Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998), Salaam Namaste (2005), Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna (2006), and Love Aaj Kal (2009)—­a ll of which characterized the early incarnations of the new ­woman—­have given way to a far greater comfort with what Jyotika Virdi calls postliberalization’s “iconography of abundance.” The twenty-­first-­century new ­woman’s reconciliation of individual desires with social ones revolves less around questions of chastity and sexual morality, and more around navigating/participating in cultures of consumption, battling m ­ ental health issues and establishing the priority of her nonamorous relationships with friends and ­family (films such as Piku, 2015; Dear Zindagi, 2016; Veere Di Wedding, 2018). In a sense, the twenty-­fi rst c­ entury’s new w ­ oman embodies what Paromita Chakravarti calls “fantasies of transformation” that correspond to India’s emergence as a global superpower, and Hindi cinema’s corporate consolidation into Bollywood.39 This is why Anjali Ram, in her examination of En­glish Vinglish, reads the new ­woman as being ­shaped in relation to the discourses of enterprise, aspiration, cosmopolitanism, and neoliberalism. She must rise above her vernacular positionality to participate in global networks that value self-­reliance, entrepreneurialism, and marketable skills. For relatively small-­budget films, both En­glish Vinglish and Queen did exceedingly well at the box office, and went on to prompt extensive scholarly engagement, b ­ ecause ­these films represent the new cinematic genres that came into being to track the mobility practices of the new ­woman and the geographies she traverses. Anjali Ram, Namrata Rele Sathe, and Prathim-­Maya Dora-­Laskey’s essays in this volume interrogate t­hese two films for their travel tropes and for the ­women’s experimentation with pedestrian mobility and urban flânerie as a means to transmogrify into transnationalized female subjects and wanted citizens of a new India. In the pro­cess, if on the one hand they undergo linguistic and sartorial make­overs, on the other, their freshly acquired cosmopolitanism empowers them to practice intersectional inclusivity and develop ostensibly radical cross-­cultural feminist solidarities outside patriarchal permissions. And

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yet, by locating ­these ­women’s transformation and education in the Global North, and having them return to India at the end of the film, t­ hese films elide the question of what the new ­woman’s quest for selfhood can look like at home, on domestic turf. In contrast to the optimistic renditions of the new w ­ oman as empowered and self-­actualized that is presented in films such as Queen and En­glish Vinglish, Sangita Gopal’s essay examines what she calls women-­centered “take action” films (NH 10, 2015; Titli, 2014) that provide a grim picture of what choices w ­ omen might actually have within the context of neoliberal globalization. Gopal argues that the context of the Nirbhaya rape case (a reference to the New Delhi 2012 rape incident) shapes ­t hese films. The emergence of the new ­woman as violent femme and the femme fatale, and the exploration of gender, in t­ hese take-­action films are thus a response to the increased vio­lence against w ­ omen and the frameworks for feminist activism that followed in the wake of t­ hese social forces. Gopal concludes, “Though constantly threatened and betrayed by a precarious social world ordered by toxic masculinity, t­ hese ­women are neither victims nor heroes but testify rather to stagings of agency that foreclose the po­liti­cal ­f uture of feminism.” Indeed, it would be remiss to not mention the resurgence of patriarchy that works hand in glove with Hindu muscular militant nationalism, within the context of economic liberalization, within which one sees the emergence of a new man in Bollywood who, like the new w ­ oman, is configured and delineated along a spectrum.40 Unquestionably, the new ­woman is a neoliberal corollary to the new man. On the one hand, the resurgence of Hindutva finds expression in the many post1990s films that deal with national borders, war, and terrorism, or are bursting with patriotic fervor and nationalist sentiment (Border, 1997; Soldier, 1998; Mission Kashmir, 2000; Sarfarosh, 1999; Gadar, 2001; Lakshya, 2004; Rang de Basanti, 2006—to name only a few). Clearly, then, porous economic-­cultural borders and transnational trends prompted by globalization are not incommensurate with an intensification of provincialization or an increased preoccupation with preserving ascendant nation-­states, and the comingling of t­ hese two contradictory impulses produces a par­tic­u­lar form of masculinity that is as globally mobile as it is ideologically entrenched in parochial concerns. So, the new man of ­these films defends borders while w ­ omen are co-­opted within the gendered discourse of jingoistic nationalism as ­t hose who need protection, or as ­mothers or wives or girlfriends who support the men in their endeavors, inspire desh bhakti, and act as facilitators of the men’s goals. Romila (played by Preity Zinta), a journalist-­activist in Lakshya, is a perfect instantiation of such a new w ­ oman whose main purpose in the film is to inspire the upper-­class, purposeless Karan (played by Hrithik Roshan) to find his raison d’être and go on to become a heroic officer of the Indian army. ­There is, however, another, less strident, version of the new man whose emergence marks, at least ostensibly, a clean break from an old patriarchy. Films such as Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (1995), Mohabattein (2000), and Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham (2011) offer the coming into being of a younger, new age benevolent patriarch who pre­sents an embarrassed, servile sort of challenge to the feudal authority of the old patriarch. In each instance, the conflict between the old and

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the new patriarch determines the fate of the new w ­ oman, who is, expectedly enough, given ­little say in the stakes or the outcome of what, for all practical purposes, is an intergenerational male conflict. In Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, the young male lover illustrates the enlightened new man—­a man who keeps the karva chauth fast along with his beloved (Simran), who fuses “cocky humor with sensitivity,” 41 and who reiterates the importance of (Hindu) Indian culture and tradition. Simran is presented as a new w ­ oman who rebels against her authoritarian ­father, exerts her own choice, and speaks her desires, but is someone who remains steadfastly (sexually) chaste, accommodates her parents’ wishes, and follows her male lover’s lead in decisions he takes about their ­f uture. The new man is thus the agentive one in the film as he refuses to elope and seeks the approval of the ­father. In a collusion of old and new patriarchies, the ­woman is handed over from the ­father to the husband at the end of the film, with the new w ­ oman co-­opted within the new benevolent patriarchy. Interestingly enough, in many of ­t hese films, the new man is played by Shah Rukh Khan (SRK), and the older patriarch by Amitabh Bachchan—­the once “angry young man” of the 1970s now turned into the epitome of the curmudgeon and traditionalist demanding the continuation of gender, class, and caste hierarchies. If in Dixit and Sridevi one begins to see the outlines of the post-1990s new ­woman, SRK, who ruled the roost in the 1990s, earning the title of “King Khan,” perhaps best inaugurates the new man, embodying the “consumable hero” of liberalizing India and representing the “commodity-­driven liberalization of urban Indian masculinity.” 42 As filmmaker Paromita Vohra writes in a fascinating essay, SRK offered an entire generation a “new imagination of being Indian” and “helped middle-­class India navigate liberalisation—­its possibilities, its cultural and emotional puzzles, its anx­i­eties and desires.” 43 Like the new ­woman who emerged in the liminal space where the lines between heroine and vamp blurred, SRK (especially in his early films) muddied the lines between hero, antihero, and villain. SRK played a range of morph­ing personae—­t he yuppie, the global desi, the manscaped metrosexual, the brazen conformist, the entrepreneurial and aspirational subject, the NRI-­with-­desi values (i.e. an Indian who lives abroad but whose values remain Indian)—­serving up a rich and volatile iconography for neoliberal India/Indian man and New Bollywood. A new variant of the new man, a logical successor to the global liberalized hero inaugurated by SRK, can be found in films like Dil Chahta Hai (2001) and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011), who represents the corporate elite, the cosmopolitan traveler traversing international geographies with the utmost ease, and the consummate consumer of goods and experiences on offer for the upwardly mobile (played by actors such as Hrithik Roshan, Saif Ali Khan, and Farhan Akhtar). Since t­ hese films are invested in exploring the joys of bro sociality, in them the new w ­ oman is sidelined and exists e­ ither as a facilitator of or a threat to the nonamorous homosocial relationships between the men. Baidurya Chakrabarti’s essay suggests a new kind of neoliberal male subject in cinema who is coupled with the new ­woman. He examines the “postnuptial c­ ouple

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form” in postmillennial films produced ­under the Yash Raj Films (YRF) banner where the coupling of the new (working) ­woman and the aspirational precariat male becomes a way to resolve the contradictions of a neoliberal economy. In films such as Dum Laga Ke Haisha, Band Baaja Baaraat, and Shuddh Desi Romance, the conjugation of the new w ­ oman with the neoliberal male subject of the precariat is the “price she is made to pay for her newfound public life.” The essay thus argues that this coupling shows that the mobility or agency of the new w ­ oman remains restricted. In addition, Chakrabarti’s essay also opens up ave­nues to examine how dif­fer­ent production and distribution ­houses (such as YRF, Phantom Films, Dharma Productions, and Excel Entertainment), as well as Bollywood’s strategic alliance with multinational media production h ­ ouses such as Viacom 18 and Fox Star Studios, have produced distinct iterations of the new ­woman. Like the new man, the new ­woman’s embroilment in neoliberal cultures of consumption is one of her predominant characteristics, and this is tied as intrinsically to the actresses themselves as it is to the characters they portray. The models and beauty queens turned film heroines have become iconic of global India, and their endorsements of global brands—­fashion and cosmetic—­make them models for aspirational consumption in neoliberal India. Perhaps no one more than Sonam Kapoor embodies the new ­woman both in her self-­styled fashionista image as a savvy consumer of international haute couture (constructed importantly through social media) and in her film roles that celebrate con­spic­u­ous consumption of the wealthy (Aisha, 2010; Veere Di Wedding, 2018). The eponymous heroine of Aisha depicts the new ­woman–­as–­consumer run amok par excellence; and ­t here is literally no other Bollywood heroine in a single-­starrer, postliberalization film who is as thoroughly constructed in terms of a consumer as is Aisha, nor as heavy-­ handedly identified with/through an array of foreign brands. The film, however, tames Aisha’s monstrous consumerism and brings her back into the fold of a “proper” sense of domestic priority, another iteration of the fact that the new ­woman can indeed be redeemed. What is significant is that no ­matter how expansive the new ­woman spectrum, it continues to be an exclusionary one. Barring a few films like Fiza (2000) and Lipstick ­under My Burkha (2017), the Muslim new ­woman is con­spic­u­ous in her absence, and the pall of silence is even more excruciating when it comes to representing the lives of Dalit ­women in postliberalized India. The new ­woman is glaringly and blithely ensconced within an upper-­class, upper-­caste milieu, a fact epitomized in Bollywood’s first experimentation with a chick flick in Veere Di Wedding (2018).44 While Dalit subjectivity has remained predominantly unrepresented in Hindi cinema, the Muslim ­woman has in the past been whittled down to the figure of the courtesan or the tawaif—­a poetic-­erotic remnant of the upper-­ caste, feudal, Lucknowi Muslim culture that fast dis­appeared ­after Partition. The marginalization of Dalit and Muslim ­women from the fabric of both “New India” and new womanhood is not attributable to a straightforward continuation of past elisions; it is neither innocuous nor incidental, but in keeping with the resurgence of Brahmanical Hindutva politics that at best evacuates religious and caste minorities

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from national narratives of “Shining India,” and at worst proactively persecutes ­t hese populations so as to consolidate its fantasy of a Hindu Rashtra.45 Through her analy­sis of Kahaani (2012) and The Lunchbox (2013), Aparajita De’s essay in this collection demonstrates ­t hese films’ limitations as they seem to interrogate bourgeois heteronormativity and pre­sent alternative/new forms of empowered femininity, but end up tacitly supporting the mainstreaming of a dominant Hindu (new) womanhood. Inasmuch as Bollywood’s new ­woman is symptomatic of India’s rise to the status of a world superpower, as well as a site on which the contradictions of this meteoric ascendancy are worked out, the poor, the rural, Muslims, and Dalits remain on the outskirts of inclusion in categories of newness. They remain unassimilable, even within a kind problematic femininity that the new w ­ oman represents, which, though discomforting, simply by virtue of being identifiably (even if unacknowledged) Hindu, remains navigable, appropriable, and worthy of repre­sen­ta­t ional intervention. This is why, as Gohar Siddiqui’s essay in this collection demonstrates, a film such as Lipstick ­under My Burkha (LUMB, 2016) is a rare critical intervention in Hindi cinema not only ­because it gives us access to the guerrilla techniques and tools that the small-­town new w ­ oman deploys to orchestrate spaces of freedom for herself but also ­because the film pre­sents us with a burka-­clad ­woman as new ­woman. The Muslim ­woman is not turned into an object of pity needing rescue but, as an agentialized subject who uses the very marker of her oppression—­ her purdah—­into a vehicle of mobility. Like Siddiqui, Madhavi Biswas’s and Debadatta Chakraborty’s essays also examine hatke/New Bollywood films that revolve around ­women who tend to be sidelined in mainstream discourses of new womanhood.46 Rural or small-­town w ­ omen are central to Ishqiya (2010) and Dedh Ishqiya (2014), which Biswas examines to argue how t­ hese films are examples of “hatke’s impulse to intersect the global with the local and create new ways of articulating female sexual desire though a heady blend of wildly dif­fer­ent genres.” Exploration of desire is also central to Chakraborty’s discussion of Margarita with a Straw (2014). While the film is groundbreaking in its sensitive portrayal of the sexuality of a queer disabled young w ­ oman, the milieu of this new w ­ oman remains very much upper-­middle-­class neoliberal India, and the protagonist, in the vein of Queen and En­glish Vinglish, explores her sexuality in the Global North. Over the last de­cade or so, we can identify a group of Bollywood directors whose oeuvre displays an interest in representing this figure of the new ­woman, for instance, Gauri Shinde (En­glish Vinglish, 2012; Dear Zindagi, 2016), Zoya Akhtar (ZNMD; Luck by Chance, 2009; Dil Dhadakne Do, 2015), Alankrita Shrivastava (Turning 30, 2011; LUMB), Shashanka Ghosh (Veere di Wedding, 2018), and Maneesh Sharma (Band Baaja Baaraat, 2010; Shhudh Desi Romance, 2013). Portraying the new ­woman figure as a sympathetic/intriguing/contentious one, a range of films engage the multiple contradictions that define her existence as she remains the terrain on which the dynamic sociocultural-­economic changes of late twentieth-­ century and twenty-­first-­century India are staged and managed.

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A comparative framing of how con­temporary Bollywood directors portray the new w ­ oman could yield a fascinating account of the sheer range in this cinematic figure’s conceptualization. What is also apparent is that both male and female directors have explored the narrative and character possibilities of the new ­woman with equal sympathy and complexity; or perhaps, another way of thinking about dif­fer­ent directors’ approaches to the new w ­ oman is that the director’s gender is no guarantee of an investment in fleshing out the contours of this figure. For instance, Farah Khan, one of the most successful ­women directors in Bollywood, in her 2007 box office hit Om Shanti Om puts her weight ­behind paying tribute to the classic Hindi film of the 1970s and its idealized, hyperfeminine heroine (Shantipriya). In this nostalgic, self-­referential, reincarnation-­t hemed film, the con­temporary ­woman (Sandy) is reduced to a bubblegum-­blowing clumsy ditz, with a muted interiority. It is Shantipriya’s heartbreak, her trauma and strug­gles that drive the film. Her post-1990s reincarnation as Sandy is reduced to a plot device, whose only function is to help the male lead avenge Shantipriya’s murder. In contrast, the cinematic oeuvre of someone like Zoya Akhtar is peppered with new ­women of all hues—­t he struggling starlet in Luck by Chance, the bohemian scuba diver in ZNMD, the unhappily married, entrepreneurial businesswoman and the Muslim w ­ oman who is a dancer on cruise ships in Dil Dhadakne Do (2017), and the domestic worker in Lust Stories (2018). Most recently, her Delhi-­based web series Made in Heaven (2018) is almost entirely centered around a gamut of complexly portrayed new w ­ omen—­her ethically dubious and exceedingly aspirational central protagonist, Tara, is depicted with as much compassion and precision as the other host of w ­ omen who throng the series. Shibani, the single m ­ other who is solely responsible for her d ­ aughter’s financial and emotional well-­being; Jazz/Jaspreet, the young w ­ oman from West Delhi, living in a tiny flat with her junkie ­brother and parents who are financially dependent on her, who navigates the world of Delhi’s ultraelite, falters, but perseveres with an unwavering tenacity; Faiza, a divorcée, entangled in an extramarital affair with her friend’s husband; and the array of brides we encounter each week—­each of ­these ­women is treated sans judgment, as their interior lives are cast within a web of so­cio­log­i­cally and eco­nom­ ically tumultuous circumstances. What deserves further examination is the turn in Akhtar’s own thematic preoccupations; with her two latest ventures, Akhtar has demonstrated a commitment to exploring the lives of working-­class ­women. Similarly, her willingness to accommodate minor Muslim ­women characters, without reducing them to the cliché of oppressed ­women in need of saving, could make for a fascinating ­f uture study. While this collection focuses primarily on Bollywood, it invites conversations in areas such as examinations of repre­sen­ta­tions of the new w ­ oman or gender and new femininities in regional/vernacular cinemas in India, Indian documentary cinema, TV, digital short films, and web series (on YouTube channels such as The Viral Fever (TVF), or produced by global g­ iants such as Netflix and Amazon Prime), as well as in other new media forms.

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Kuhu Tanvir’s and Tanushree Ghosh’s essays in this volume point us in this direction. While Tanvir examines the destabilization of the star persona of a female actor such as Katrina Kaif through GIFication and the impact of the GIF’s endless loop format on how Kaif’s body is both presented and consumed, Ghosh examines emergent New Media in India to argue that it offers “forms of femininity and gender dynamics that are novel and subversive and that offer sites to dissent against Hindi cinema’s hegemonic gender ideologies.” Ghosh concludes her essay by looking at the nuanced portrayal of the transgender heroine Kukoo in Netflix’s crime drama Sacred Games (2018–), which could be productively put in conversation with discussions around heterosexuality, the body, intimacy, and self-­fashioning central to Bollywood’s new w ­ oman. Other Indian web series such as Ghoul (2018) and Four More Shots Please (2019–) provide fertile ground for exploration. For instance, while it lacks the complexity of a show like Made in Heaven, one could explore the neoliberal postfeminism of the Amazon Prime video series Four More Shots Please, which has been dubbed an Indian Sex and the City, along with a film such as Veere di Wedding. An analy­sis of post-1990s regional/vernacular Indian films or documentary cinema in tandem with Bollywood’s new w ­ oman too would yield in­ter­est­ing insights on the discourses and debates surrounding w ­ omen and gender in postliberalization India. Some examples of Indian documentary cinema, especially by ­women filmmakers, include Sonali Gulati’s Nalini by Day, Nancy by Night (2005) and I Am (2011); Paromita Vohra’s Unlimited Girls (2002) and Where’s Sandra (2005); and Bisakha Dutta’s Taza Khabbar (2008). Malayalam-­language films (such as 22 Female Kottayam, 2012; Mayanadhi [Mystic river], 2017) or the Bengali films of Rituparno Ghosh could easily be put in dialogue with Bollywood films mentioned in this collection. Equally significantly, examination of a Marathi film such as Sairat (Wild in love, 2016) or a Tamil-­language film such as Kaala (Dark-­skinned one, 2018) would reveal how the constitutive ele­ments of Bollywood’s new ­woman morph when caste is centered as a significant analytic. Similarly, t­ here is also no denying that Bollywood’s new w ­ oman emerges from an intermedial field of the 1980s, from the “gendered media work” of w ­ omen such as Sai Paranjpye (examined by Sangita Gopal in a recent essay) and TV shows of the same period.47 Purnima Mankekar and Rajeswari Sunder Rajan have looked at the emergence of the new ­woman in ­middle to late 1980s women-­oriented state-­sponsored TV such as Rajani and Udaan. In some of her more recent work, Mankekar examines some newer TV series (such as Tara, Shanti, Swabhimaan, Hasratein) that reveal “ambivalent and shifting discourses of ‘Indian womanhood’ in which w ­ omen strug­gled to juggle their responsibilities and duties to their families vis-­à-­vis their pursuit of erotic plea­sure.” 48 In conclusion, the essays in this collection investigate the problematic and enigmatic figure of the new ­woman in a range of Bollywood films from the last three de­cades. They bring together scholarship on the making of neoliberal India with research on new trends in the Hindi film industry, locating the cinematic new ­woman at the intersections between the two. Th ­ ese studies of her cinematic con-

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struction locate her as a product and index of post-1990s India; as a critical figure who performs the pedagogical functions of instructing new India and Indians in a new way of being in the world, of reconfiguring and conducting themselves in a wide variety of arenas—of marriage, ­family, friendships, education, sexuality, leisure, fashion, and appearance. Ultimately, then, the new w ­ oman provides an education in what “newness” can and should look like as we embrace our neoliberal (physical, sexual, emotional, professional) selves. As part of New Bollywood’s iconography, the malleable figure of the new ­woman underscores shifting repre­sen­ta­ tions of femininity, gender, and sexuality, and the exclusions, contradictions, schisms, and possibilities that inform this figure reflect ­those of twenty-­first-­century neoliberal global India. In examining dif­fer­ent aspects of the new ­woman, this collection thus reanimates conversations around the ambiguous gender, caste, class, and aesthetic politics associated with her cinematic renditions, even as it grapples with the comprehensive didacticism that constructs the new w ­ oman as a new phenomenon.

notes 1. ​Rupal Oza, The Making of Neoliberal India: Nationalism, Gender, and the Paradoxes of Globalization (New York: Routledge, 2006). 2. ​Ashish Rajadhyaksha, “The ‘Bollywoodization’ of the Indian Cinema: Cultural Nationalism in a Global Arena,” Inter-­Asia Cultural Studies 4, no. 1 (2003): 25–39. 3. ​A note on terminology. We use Bollywood to refer to the post-1990s or postliberalization popu­lar or box office–­oriented Hindi film industry, and we use popu­lar or mainstream Hindi films/cinema to refer to the pre-1990s period broadly. ­There has been much debate and discussion among scholars, stars, and directors in the film industry over the usage and popularity of the term “Bollywood.” The term’s origins have been traced to the 1970s. Tejaswini Ganti writes that it was a tongue-­in-­cheek term created by the English-­language press in India in the late 1970s. In his essay “This Th ­ ing Called Bollywood,” Madhava Prasad says that the term comes from an American engineer who called Indian cinema “Tollywood” (Tollygunge + Hollywood) based on the fact that the first sound-­a nd-­talking picture was produced in a locality called Tollygunge in the east Indian state of Bengal. While originally the term was perhaps more in use outside of India, now it has come to be used less ambivalently by cultural workers in the Hindi and Indian film industries themselves. In the introduction to their edited collection, The Bollywood Reader, Rajinder Dudrah and Jigna Desai point out that the critics of the term charge that “it overshadows and erases the diversity of other regional cinemas within India, privileging one par­tic­u­lar region and language over o ­ thers; that it is a poor second cousin to Hollywood, marking commercial Indian film industry as a derivative and mimic of its Western counterpart; and that it refers to the increasing globalization and diasporization of the film industry and its attendant industries (e.g. fashion, ­music, advertising, per­for­mances and media) which are proving to be more profitable than the films themselves.” Rajinder Dudrah and Jigna Desai, eds., The Bollywood Reader (London: Open University Press, 2008), 2. ­Today, the term “Bollywood” captures a “culture industry” that remains constitutively international in production and global in consumption. 4. ​Olive Schreiner, herself a Victorian new ­woman writer, noted in ­Woman and ­L abour (1911) that much “is said at the pre­sent day on the subject of the ‘New ­Woman.’ . . . ​On ­every hand she is examined, praised, blamed, mistaken for her counterfeit, ridiculed, or deified—­ but nowhere can it be said that the phenomenon of her existence is overlooked” (qtd. in “New ­Women, New Technologies: The Interrelation between Gender and Technology at the Victorian Fin De Siècle” (Dissertation, University of Edinburgh, 2012), 13, https://­w ww​.­era​.­lib​.­ed​ .­ac​.­u k ​/­handle​/­1842​/­7912.

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5. ​Carolyn Christensen Nelson, “Introduction,” in A New W ­ oman Reader: Fiction, Articles and Drama of the 1890s, ed. Carolyn Christensen Nelson (Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 2001), ix–­x iv. 6. ​Ouida, “The New ­Woman” (1894), in A New ­Woman Reader: Fiction, Articles, and Drama of the 1890s, ed. Carolyn Christensen Nelson (Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 2001), 153–160. 7. ​Wanggren, “New ­Women, New Technologies,” 18. 8. ​Mrs. Morgan-­Dockrell, “Is the New W ­ oman a Myth?” (1896), in The Late-­Victorian Marriage Question: A Collection of Key New ­Woman Texts, vol. 2, ed. Ann Heilmann (London: Routledge/Thoemmes Press, 1998), 339–350. 9. ​Partha Chatterjee, “Colonialism, Nationalism, and Colonialized ­Women,” American Ethnologist 16, no. 4 (Nov 1989): 622–633. 10. ​Alys Eve Weinbaum, Lynn M. Thomas, Priti Ramamurthy, Uta G. Poiger, Madeleine Yue Dong, and Tani E. Barlow, eds., The Modern Girl around the World: Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008). 11. ​Leela Fernandes, “The Politics of Forgetting: Class Politics, State Power and the Restructuring of Urban Space in India,” Urban Studies 41, no. 12 (2004): 2415–2430. 12. ​Rajni Kothari, Growing Amnesia: An Essay on Poverty and the ­Human Consciousness (New Delhi: Viking, 1993). 13. ​Jyotsna Kapur, “An ‘Arranged Love’ Marriage: India’s Neoliberal Turn and the Bollywood Wedding Culture Industry,” Communication, Culture and Critique 2, no. 2 (2009): 232. The opening of economic borders to global cir­cuits of capital does not simply lead to the redundancy of the nation-­state. Theorists of globalization and transnationalism like Arjun Appadurai, Antonio Negri, Michael Hardt, and Mc­Ken­zie Wark have suggested that the new networks and flows of goods, p ­ eople, information, knowledge, and images that extend beyond the confines of the state have meant that the nation, as a politico-­economic entity, has lost its authority and predominance. ­Others, such as David Harvey, Mike Featherstone, Rob Wilson, and Wimal Dissanayake, argue that globalization does not evaporate national bound­aries. On the contrary, it produces an intensification of national-­cultural identities; national chauvinism and traditionalism thrive in the midst of designer brands, and the “national breathes through ­every pore of the transnational.” Sushmita Chatterjee, “ ‘En­glish Vinglish’ and Bollywood: What Is ‘New’ about the ‘New ­Woman’?” Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 23, no. 8 (2016): 1190. 14. ​Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Conquest (New York: Routledge, 1994), 353. 15. ​Oza, The Making of Neoliberal India, 13. 16. ​L alitha Gopalan, “Avenging W ­ omen in Indian Cinema,” in The Bollywood Reader, ed. Rajinder Dudrah and Jigna Desai (London: Open University Press, 2008), 97–108. 17. ​Ajay Gehlawat, Twenty-­First ­Century Bollywood (New York: Routledge, 2015), 42. 18. ​For a discussion of the heroine and vamp figures in Hindi film, see the following: Asha Kasbekar, “Hidden Pleasures: Negotiating the Myth of the Female Ideal in Popu­lar Hindi Cinema,” in Plea­sure and the Nation: The History, Politics and Consumption of Public Culture in India, ed. Christopher Pinney and Rachel Dwyer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 286–308; Anustup Basu, “ ‘The Face That Launched a Thousand Ships’: Helen and Public Femininity in Hindi Film,” in Figurations in Indian Film, ed. Meheli Sen and Anustup Basu (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 139–157; and Ranjani Mazumdar, Bombay Cinema: An Archive of the City (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), 79–98. 19. ​Padma P. Govindan and Bisakha Dutta, “ ‘From Villain to Traditional House­w ife!’: The Politics of Globalization and W ­ omen’s Sexuality in the ‘New’ Indian Media,” in Global Bollywood, ed. Anandam P. Kavoori and Ashwin Punathambekar (New York: New York University Press, 2008), 180–202. 20. ​Jyotika Virdi, The Cinematic ImagiNation: Indian Popu­lar Films as Social History (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003), 146. 21. ​Virdi, 168. It is impor­tant to remember that this binarized framing operates not only for young ­women who occupy the role of prospective romantic-­seductive partners for the hero,

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but also for ­women who exist outside the field of sexual-­matrimonial availability. As a result, ­mothers, stepmothers, aunts, and mothers-in law are all invariably assigned a flattened subjectivity that simplistically classifies them as e­ ither good or bad (figurative and literal) m ­ others. 22. ​For the depiction of poverty in recent Hindi films, see Megha Anwer, “Cinematic Clearances: Spaces of Poverty in Hindi Cinema’s Big Bud­get Productions,” Global South 8, no. 1 (Spring 2014): 91–111. 23. ​Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Sangita Gopal refer to the “Bollywoodization” of the film industry, or how the Hindi film industry became Bollywood, a globally recognized brand of filmmaking from India. Rajadhyaksha writes, “Bollywood admittedly occupies a space analogous to the film industry, but might best be seen as a more diffuse cultural conglomeration involving a range of distribution and consumption activities from websites to m ­ usic cassettes, from cable to radio.” (Rajadhyaksha, “The ‘Bollywoodization’ of the Indian Cinema,” 27. For Gopal, similarly, Bollywoodization “denotes the set of pro­cesses that came into play in the early seventies and had the effect of unsettling the classic paradigm.” Sangita Gopal, Conjugations: Marriage and Form in New Bollywood Cinema (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2012), 14. She suggests the term “New Bollywood” to refer to “the entire world of cinema—­industrial practices, financing, exhibition, audience, tie-­ins, and of course the films themselves—of the post-­liberalization period (1991–­pre­sent)” (14). 24. ​Anandam P. Kavoori and Ashwin Punathambekar, eds., Global Bollywood (New York: New York University Press, 2008). 25. ​Rustom Bharucha, “Utopia in Bollywood: Hum Aapke Hain Koun . . . !,” Economic and Po­liti­cal Weekly 30, no. 15 (April 15, 1995): 801–804. 26. ​Karen Gabriel, Translating Desire: The Politics of Gender and Culture in India (New Delhi: Katha, 2002), 59. 27. ​Tejaswini Ganti, Producing Bollywood: Inside the Con­temporary Hindi Film Industry (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012), 190. 28. ​Chatterjee, “ ‘En­glish Vinglish’ and Bollywood,” 1182. 29. ​Ranjani Mazumdar, Sangita Gopal, and Usha Iyer all make this point. For an in-­depth analy­sis of the significance of the meanings surrounding Dixit’s dancing body, see Usha Iyer, “Stardom Ke Peeche Kya Hai?/What Is ­behind the Stardom? Madhuri Dixit, the Production Number, and the Construction of the Female Star Text in 1990s Hindi Cinema,” Camera Obscura 30, no. 3 (90) (2015): 129–159. 30. ​Kareem Khubchandani, “Snakes on the Dance Floor: Bollywood, Gesture, and Gender,” Velvet Light Trap 77 (Spring 2016): 76. 31. ​Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, Real and ­Imagined W ­ omen: Gender, Culture and Postcolonialism (New York: Routledge, 1993), 131. 32. ​Ganti, Producing Bollywood, 4. 33. ​Anna Morcom, The Illicit Worlds of Indian Dance: Cultures of Exclusion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 109. 34. ​Megha Anwer, “Consumer Pleasures and Hindi Cinema’s En-­gendered Distribution of Moral Capital in Hum Aapke Hain Koun (1994) and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011),” in ‘Bad’ ­Women of Bombay Films: Studies in Desire and Anxiety, eds. Saswati Sengupta, Shampa Roy, and Sharmila Purkayastha (London: Palgrave, 2019), 297–312. 35. ​Mazumdar, Bombay Cinema, 221. 36. ​Neepa Majumdar, Wanted Cultural Ladies Only: Female Stardom and Cinema in India, 1930s to 1950s (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2009); Sanjay Shrivastava, “Voice, Gender and Space in Time of Five-­Year Plans,” Economic and Po­liti­cal Weekly 39, no. 20 (May 15, 2004): 2019–2028. 37. ​Gehlawat, Twenty-­First ­Century Bollywood, 53. 38. ​Shoma Chaudhury, “The Man of the F ­ amily,” Tehelka Magazine 5, no. 39 (October 4, 2008). 39. ​Paromita Chakravarti, “Fantasies of Transformation: Education, Neoliberal Self-­Making and Bollywood,” in Enterprise Culture in Neoliberal India: Studies in Youth, Class, Work and Media, ed. Nandini Gooptu (New York: Routledge, 2013), 42–56.

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40. ​Sikata Banerjee, Gender, Nation and Popu­lar Film in India: Globalizing Muscular Nationalism (New York: Routledge 2017), 9. 41. ​Anne Cieko, “Superhit Hunk Heroes for Sale: Globalization and Bollywood’s Gender Politics,” Asian Journal of Communication 11, no. 2 (2009): 129. 42. ​Sudhavna Deshpande, “The Consumable Hero of Globalised India,” in Bollyworld: Popu­l ar Indian Cinema through a Transnational Lens, ed. Raminder Kaur and Ajay Sinha (New Delhi: Sage, 2005), 186; Gehlawat, Twenty-­First ­Century Bollywood, 109. 43. ​Paromita Vohra, “Tracking SRK’s Journey Is to Map the Growth of the Indian ­Middle Class,” Indian Express, July 24, 2016, https://­indianexpress​.­com​/a­ rticle​/­entertainment​/ ­bollywood​ /­shah​-r­ ukh​-k­ han​-­on​-s­ vreen​-­journey​-2­ 932000​/.­ 44. ​See Megha Anwer and Anupama Arora, “#ImNotAChickFlick: Neoliberalism and Postfeminism in Veere Di Wedding (My Friend’s Wedding, 2018),” Bioscope: South Asian Screen Studies (forthcoming, 2021). 45. ​See Megha Anwer and Anupama Arora, “Re-­c ast(e)ing the New ­Woman: Caste and Gender in Recent Indian Cinema,” in Caste in/and Film, eds. Judith Misrahi-­Barak and Joshil Abraham (Abingden: Routledge; forthcoming, 2021). 46. ​One genre/form of New Bollywood films that do not fit the mainstream mold has been referred to as hatke (dif­fer­ent) films. Sangita Gopal writes that “multiplexes have given rise to a unique, low-­budget, nonformulaic genre known as the multiplex film, sometimes referred to in the vernacular as hat-­ke (lit., ‘eccentric’ or ‘offbeat’)” (Conjugations, 125). While it is hard to distinguish the precise outlines of this genre b ­ ecause of the dizzying variety of indie films that could be loosely classified as hatke as well as the blurring of sharp lines in some postmillennial middle/mainstream Hindi cinema, one could ­hazard an explanation that some recognizable industrial, aesthetic, and thematic features of t­ hese films are use of lesser-­k nown actors, eschewal of melodrama and an attempt at realism, refusal to espouse cultural nationalism, smaller bud­gets, ­limited releases, appeal to middle-­class audiences, and use of hybrid Hinglish language. Examples of such films would be Dev D. (2009), Love, Sex, aur Dhokha (2010), Margarita with a Straw (2014), Lipstick ­under My Burkha (2016), Anarkali of Aarah (2017), and so on. 47. ​Sangita Gopal, “Media Meddlers: Feminism, Tele­v i­sion and Gendered Media Work in India,” Feminist Media Histories 5, no. 1 (Winter 2019): 39–62. 48. ​Purnima Mankekar, “Dangerous Desires: Tele­v i­sion and Erotics in Late Twentieth-­ Century India,” Journal of Asian Studies 63, no. 2 (May 2004): 425.

chapter 1

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Mompreneur in the Multiplex entrepreneurial technologies of the “new ­woman” subject in the age of neoliberal globalization Koel Banerjee and Jigna Desai

In ChaalBaaz (Trickster, 1989), Sridevi plays Anju and Manju, twins separated at birth. Growing up in the slums, Manju is street-­smart, while Anju, held prisoner by her scheming ­uncle, is timid and fearful.1 In an iconic scene, Anju is shown hiding b ­ ehind the curtains, looking at the birthday cele­brations of her u ­ ncle Tribhuvan. She is cajoled into joining the festivities by a guest. Anju reluctantly joins the party, where the ­music sends her into a trance in which she starts dancing. The typically docile Anju captures the fury of Shiva through her movements and resembles a figurine of the dancing Nataraj on which the camera repeatedly focuses. Her doe eyes, full of fear and doubt, belie the purposefulness of her movements. The spell is broken when Anju slaps Tribhuvan and, in the blink of an eye, transforms back into a ner­vous wreck. While Sridevi frequently overshadowed male superstars on-­screen, this scene highlights the ways in which Sridevi’s iconic star image combines vulnerability, camp, and unapologetic self-­assured sensuality, even in one character.2 This duality comes across in many of her roles, including Rajini, the sensual, shape-­shifting snake ­woman (Nagina, 1986), and Seema Soni, the fearless investigative journalist who is enamored with neighborhood orphaned ­children (Mr. India, 1987).3 Unlike other screen divas, including Rekha, Sridevi’s star image from the 1980s yokes innocence and sensuousness, the tragic and the comic, and even excess and containment. This polysemic and contradictory image enabled Sridevi to emerge as the “new ­woman” of “old” India—­that is, before the introduction of neoliberal market reforms in the 1990s. This ability to harness old and new, as we argue, is put to dif­fer­ent purposes in Sridevi’s animation of the new modern ­woman in En­glish Vinglish (2012), the critically acclaimed and commercially successful directorial debut of Gauri Shinde, a former advertising executive.4 In a radical departure from her star image from the 1980s, Sridevi makes her way onto the multiplex screen not as a diva but as a middle-­class ­mother, specifically 27

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as a mompreneur.5 This essay explores how the middle-­aged ­woman is situated within the emerging formulations of the new ­woman of India. We argue that the iteration of the new middle-­aged woman-­mother in this film is distinct from the typical formations of the new modern young ­woman (usually the romantic interest of the male lead) as heroine in most popu­lar films, but she too must become a proper laboring and consuming subject of neoliberalism. With the liberalization of the Indian economy in 1991 and the bestowal of national industry status upon the industry in 1998, the proliferating urban ­middle class became increasingly the subjects and consumers of films. “Bollywoodization” signals at once the subsumption of popu­lar Hindi cinema by neoliberal global culture industries and its concomitant urbanization, diasporization, and globalization.6 The rise of multiplex theaters and the corresponding low-­budget, city-­centric multiplex films attests to Bollywood’s turn to urban cosmopolitan audiences. This new genre “malltiplex” cinema designates films that, by virtue of their exhibition sites, combine the experience of watching a movie with shopping.7 The growing popularity of the shopping mall and the multiplex, no longer exclusive to big cities, signals both the steady rise in disposable incomes of (semi)urban middle-­class families and the greater penetration of consumerist tendencies into Indian society. Multiplex films capture new configurations of urban middle-­class aspirations and anx­i­eties through their content, aesthetics, and spatialities.8 The emergence of multiplex films and Bollywood’s attendant industries has given rise to indie directors such as Gauri Shinde. Th ­ ose in attendant neoliberal creative economy occupations, such as advertising, are particularly well positioned to make this transition. Shinde’s own ­career in advertising informs her portrayal of the changing facets and desires of the urban middle-­class ­family. Interestingly, Sridevi made her comeback to cinema, a­ fter tele­vi­sion (Malini Iyer, 2004), in a multiplex film and not in a big-­budget masala film like ­t hose on which she had built her star image.9 While many female actors from the South entered the Bombay film industry, Sridevi was able to mobilize this regional identity in her star image. In her tele­v i­sion role on Malini Iyer, for example, she played a South Indian marrying into a Punjabi f­ amily. Similarly, as a non-­Hindi-­speaking actor, Sridevi could also relate to the plot of En­glish Vinglish on a personal level. As a superstar, Sridevi held her own in an industry that has discriminated against its female actors on multiple fronts and continues to do so; during the 1980s, her earnings ­were second only to ­t hose of Amitabh Bachchan. More generally, the patriarchal functioning of the industry is obvious in the wage gap between male and female actors, discrepancies in their star status, and the more ­limited roles available for w ­ omen, especially older ­women. This incongruence extends beyond the industry and spills over into the academic research produced about Bollywood and the relative dearth of scholarship examining the phenomenon of w ­ omen’s stardom in contrast to that of male actors.10 Even with the proliferation of genres in present-­day Bollywood, few films center on ­women protagonists, and still fewer on middle-­aged ­women, who are typically relegated to roles associated the self-­sacrificing motherhood (e.g., Jaya Bachchan in Kal Ho Na Ho, 2003).11 While films integrate the star

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image of male stars, older female stars are assigned stock characters who serve as foils to the patriarch and the younger female lead. Sridevi’s last film, Mom (2017), inverts the typical paradigm, centering a vengeful murdering ­mother figure as the protagonist.12 Sridevi’s iconic 1980s star persona is difficult to domesticate as she stands as an unusual archetype in Bollywood’s oeuvre. She was not typecast as the traditional wife or m ­ other b ­ ecause her polyphonic and somewhat contrary star image resisted being rendered one-­d imensional. Even more, Sridevi’s queer iconicity, one that questions the heteropatriarchal norms of domesticity and femininity, stands as a contradictory presence in India’s neoliberal feminist fantasy.13 What makes En­glish Vinglish stand out, then, is that it marks Sridevi’s return to the silver screen as a ­mother and wife ­after having taken a long ­career break to raise her own ­daughters. The simplicity of the character in the film, unlike previous roles offered to her during her c­ areer hiatus, appealed to the star as a “­woman, wife, and m ­ other.”14 During her fifteen-­year gap from cinema, her real-­life role as wife and ­mother as well as her tele­vi­sion role make it pos­si­ble to distance her 1980s star image in this comeback film. This essay contributes to feminist conversations about w ­ omen actors and protagonists in relation to Sridevi’s return to the screen in En­glish Vinglish to better understand the domestication of this 1980s icon as the new w ­ oman of neoliberal India. Put differently, if Sridevi’s per­for­mances are characterized by excess in her early films, then we query what kind of a new w ­ oman she represents as the middle-­ class ­mother who negotiated the bound­aries of tradition, modernity, locality, and globality in her return to the screen a­ fter fifteen years. The new ­woman is an old trope, a recurring trope to be precise. It is reformulated and recalibrated during times of social change and points to the dynamic relationship between the public and the domestic. The introduction of neoliberal market reforms in India in the late 1980s and early 1990s called for a new iteration of the “new w ­ oman” as urban, middle-­class Indians found themselves navigating a world of newfound mobility and newly available commodities and lifestyles. Inasmuch as the new w ­ oman enables w ­ omen to seek agency through consumption and display of class mobility and aspiration, the new ­woman is also restricted to a par­tic­u­lar class and location—­t hat is, the urban m ­ iddle class. En­glish Vinglish is a film about a middle-­aged, urban, middle-­class ­woman, Shashi, whose inability to speak En­glish makes her the source of her English-­speaking ­daughter’s embarrassment and the target of her husband’s condescension. The film depicts Shashi’s journey to self-­discovery as she secretly takes language lessons in New York and fi­nally gains the re­spect of her ­family. It is through mastering En­glish that Shashi reclaims her agency and, by the same act, claims her position as the new ­woman of neoliberal India. The film opens with daybreak in the city and cuts to an out-­of-­focus shot of Shashi getting out of bed and tiptoeing out of the bedroom. The shots that follow do not immediately show her face. Instead, the camera focuses on her hands as she boils milk and makes a cup of coffee. She ­gently adjusts a box of laddoos, handmade dessert served during religious and auspicious occasions, that have slipped

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from the neatly arranged pile of boxes ready to be distributed to the customers of Shashi’s home-­based laddoo business. Her attempts to take a sip of her coffee keep getting thwarted by domestic ­labor—­rearranging laddoos, giving her mother-­in-­ law her tea and biscuits; even her final attempt to sit down with her Navbharat Times (a Hindi newspaper) and her coffee is interrupted when her husband asks for his morning tea. It is only then that the camera focuses on her face—so far, she has been a synecdoche of limbs and homely and entrepreneurial chores. In short, the opening sequence emphasizes her (undervalued) emotional and reproductive ­labor, care work, and home-­based business. In a marked departure from the cinematic conventions associated with establishing the female protagonist (typically as the romantic interest), the camera does not immediately give us sexualized access to her face or her body. For ­women who are Shashi’s age, it is not their beauty or sexuality that makes them valued, but the ­labor and consumption that they provide to sustain the heteronormative bourgeois ­family and nation. Just as Shashi’s many attempts to have even one sip of her coffee are repeatedly interrupted, our desire to catch one glimpse of her face remains unfulfilled. By presenting Shashi as an aggregate of limbs and familiar domestic chores, the film defers the spectatorial expectation and visual plea­sure of Sridevi’s stardom. Instead, by the time the camera focuses on her face, she has been established as a wife and ­mother in an urban, middle-­class ­family. Sridevi’s star image from the 1980s had to be completely reformulated in order for her to make a convincing comeback on the multiplex screen. The opening sequence from En­glish Vinglish accomplishes this task through its visual estrangement and the postponement of satisfaction of spectatorial expectation. The “modern” w ­ oman, the ideological other of the traditional ­woman Shashi, is invoked several times in the film. First, when Shashi feels squeamish about her husband Satish hugging a colleague in public, he dismisses her unease. Shashi won­ ders out loud if her husband would have been better off had he married a “modern” w ­ oman. The modern and traditional debate comes up again ­later in the film when Shashi visits her ­sister in New York to help out with her niece’s wedding. Radha, her niece, trying to explain the word “judgmental”, says that it would be judgmental to dismiss Shashi as a typical traditional, conservative ­woman based on her clothes, implying that the sari-­clad Shashi is a modern ­woman. The traditional-­modern binary is invoked again when Laurent, Shashi’s French classmate in her New York City ESL class, praises Shashi publicly, thus prompting the Indian and Pakistani men from the class to object by saying that Indian ­women are not like French w ­ omen. While the third instance squarely equates the modern ­woman with the Western w ­ oman, the first instance posits the modern ­woman as one who is something e­ lse besides a wife and m ­ other, which, in this case, is the working ­woman. The second example, however, complicates this binary by suggesting that the traditional, stay-­at-­home ­woman can be modern too, modern being a shorthand for liberal broad-­mindedness. Not l­ imited to En­glish Vinglish, the traditional/modern dyad is often used by the “new” Indian ­middle class itself to distinguish itself from the pre-­neoliberal m ­ iddle class, citing, among other t­ hings,

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its cosmopolitan outlook, unpre­ce­dented mobility, global visibility, and consumption patterns. Postliberalization Hindi cinema demonstrated a notable shift in repre­sen­ta­tions of femininity as it collapsed prior distinctions between the vamp and the heroine. The vamp figure previously embodied the corrupt westernization and/or modernization of the Indian w ­ oman whose sexual impropriety, excessive consumption, and immodest clothing marked her as the counterpoint to the chaste, selfless, sari-­ clad traditional ­woman. The new ­woman of Bollywood cinema conjoins the characters of the traditional heroine and the vamp into a single figure who is young, modern, urban, and cosmopolitan while remaining quintessentially Indian.15 This avatar encapsulates the antinomies between tradition and modernity and between locality and globality in one figure who is, all at once, sexual and marriageable, cosmopolitan and Indian. The new young ­woman’s counterpoint is no longer the vamp, but the older social reforms educated yet traditional m ­ other. The new young ­woman’s desirability and suitability as wife and ­mother within the ­family balance the modernization of India (through her l­abor and consumption) and also maintain the significance of the patriarchal nuclear ­family in reproducing the nation. The traditional-­modern and local-­global distinction become mapped gen­er­a­tion­a lly so that the middle-­aged ­woman as mother/mother-­in-­law serves as a foil for the new modern young w ­ oman. Tradition, in this emerging worldview, is no longer the repressive force of heteropatriarchy in the form of an abusive husband and mother-­in-­law who prevent Shashi’s embrace of the modern. Instead, Shashi’s mother-­in-­law defies the dominant ste­reo­t ypes and is shown to be similarly traditional, kind, and supportive, reflecting one version of Shashi’s pos­si­ble f­ utures and, by extension, the ­f uture of all new ­women in the film. It is Shashi’s husband and ­daughter who continue to put Shashi down and berate her for not being modern enough. The modern w ­ oman, in this new consensus, does not contradict or question the patriarchal status quo or the social polarization accelerated by neoliberalization. Being modern h ­ ere is equated with being a canny consumer—­one who speaks brands, lifestyles, and En­glish with equal ease. In fact, in being fluent, in consumerist trends and En­glish, the modern ­house­w ife confers prestige on the husband who no longer has to be embarrassed of his wife’s shortcomings, both linguistic and cultural. It is Shashi’s own limitations that she has to overcome in order to become a modern w ­ oman. What the neoliberal worldview posits as a shortcoming is placed squarely on the individual whose responsibility it then becomes to transcend such inadequacies. What is critical ­here is that although middle-­aged bourgeois ­women actually have more capital and purchase power than their younger peers, they are seldom counted as the new w ­ omen” of new India. Shashi represents a traditional w ­ oman who seems to have it all—­she prioritizes care l­ abor within the ­family and still manages to run a successful home-­based business. Shashi does not enter the workforce; instead, she commodifies her “homely” reproductive skills providing laddoos. As a mompreneur, Shashi resolves the conflict inherent in the supposed contradiction between work and home by locating work within the home as private and

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reproductive l­abor. Hence, Shashi does not become a public modern consuming subject b ­ ecause her ­labor and productivity are still connected to the traditional space of the home. She is constantly infantilized by her husband and made to feel inadequate by her ­daughter. Shashi’s small catering business, which by all accounts is thriving, does not command re­spect from her husband, who dismisses it as a mere hobby. When her husband tells the guests at Shashi’s niece’s wedding that his wife was born to make laddoos, Shashi feels demeaned. This is despite the fact that her business was generating profit. The incident demonstrates the gap between capitalism and heteropatriarchy in which the former seeks to grow through expanding the financialization of l­abor and profit into new domains and the latter continues to devalue the kind of ­labor leading to profit. The film seeks to reconcile t­ hese through its neoliberal feminism by asserting Shashi’s value and entrepreneurship. The irony h ­ ere, of course, is that as a mompreneur Sridevi has already resolved the tension between work and home by integrating her entrepreneurship within her reproductive l­abor, but not the one between productive and consuming subjects. En­glish Vinglish posits the incomplete proj­ect of converting Shashi (and, by extension, all middle-­class, middle-­aged Indian ­women, especially stay-­at-­home ­mothers) into consuming and laboring subjects as the crisis faced by (Indian) neoliberal feminism. When Shashi expresses desire for consumption, she does so as a means to connect and establish sociality with her ­daughter Swapna’s teacher. During the parent-­teacher conference, Shashi remarks that the teacher’s hometown is known for its banana chips and remarks that she would very much like some. Embarrassing her d ­ aughter as an improper consumer, Shashi not only chooses incorrect items, such as banana chips and white bread, but also pursues them through improper means—in this case, through sociality rather than purchasing power. Shashi’s inability to adapt, unlike Swapna, makes her unable to stake her claim as a member of this new urban m ­ iddle class b ­ ecause she does not, as it w ­ ere, yet speak consumerism or participate in it with the same ease with which her husband and her d ­ aughter do. Her inability to converse in En­glish only highlights the prob­lem further, much to Swapna’s embarrassment. If the establishing shots of domestic work in the Godbole h ­ ouse­hold set up Sridevi as Shashi in her maiden appearance on the multiplex screen as the middle-­ class ­house­wife and ­mother, the scene at breakfast underlines how the middle-­ aged w ­ oman strug­g les to come to terms with the new India. As the f­ amily gets together to eat before leaving for work and school, Shashi’s young modern d ­ aughter complains about the white bread toast that Shashi serves. Shashi’s relationship with her d ­ aughter is fraught ­because of Shashi’s outdated tastes, inability to speak En­glish, and incompetence at presenting herself as the “modern ­woman” who epitomizes the neoliberal ethos, much to the embarrassment of her convent-­educated ­daughter. The tensions between the ­mother and her teenage ­daughter arise over everyday t­ hings that signal cosmopolitanism, or what Pierre Bourdieu calls taste—­ for white bread versus brown bread or Shashi’s mispronunciation of the word “jazz.” Taste, Bourdieu argues, is the way in which we make meaning of the econ-

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omy of cultural objects. In his reading, the taste for refined objects manifests in similar ways as taste for food.16 ­Here, cultural capital does not manifest in the consumption of specific name brands or luxury items that has often accompanied the product placement of fashion, luxury cars, and jewelry in Bollywood, but around cultural knowledge, taste, and regimens of self-­care. While designer brands appear ­later in a song about Manhattan, luxury name brands are not the kind of consumerism that the film propounds. Rather than simply unleash a desire for specific commodities (e.g., branded goods), the neoliberal market reform brings about new forms of self-­care and wellness, as evinced by the rise of self-­help books, resulting in what Bourdieu calls the “barbarous reintegration of aesthetic consumption into the world of ordinary consumption.”17 The film captures the increased l­abor demands of neoliberalism placed on middle-­class, middle-­aged ­women but seeks remedies within the same system in the form of modernization and remaking of the self. Neoliberalism and the consumerist cosmopolitanism that it entails make cultural and spatial mobility both desirable and mandatory. The ability to speak En­glish then gains a valence that supersedes linguistic competence, attesting to the ability to navigate alien cultures and spaces. Locating the colonial legacies of En­glish imposition on India, Sushmita Chatterjee points out the latent tendency to equate the mastery of En­glish with freedom.18 En­glish, then, is more than language—it becomes a marker of cultural competence and the possibility of spatial (transnational/global) and class mobility. In this light, Shashi’s embarrassment is only partly linguistic, ­because she cannot speak En­glish, and partly cultural, especially given that she is out of place in the world that her husband, her ­daughter, and soon also her son ­will inhabit. Shashi’s trou­bles, then, are not merely linguistic. On the one hand, her traditional role in the f­ amily has been to surrender her interests and needs to further her husband’s and c­ hildren’s autonomous and modern subjectivities; in turn, her f­ amily has internalized t­ hese expectations and relationships, which then undermine and devalue her sacrifices, ­labor, and interdependence. She is held responsible for the sacrifices that are required of her and that si­mul­ta­neously preclude her from being more culturally adaptive to the new ethos unleashed by neoliberal market reforms. Through the pro­cess of what Wendy Brown terms “economization,” the logic of the neoliberal market permeates all aspects of life and manifests as taste and cultural competence.19 While neoliberalism interpellates every­one as market actors, Brown contends that gender brings out the contradiction between (its promised freedom and its expected obligations. She adds that in the neoliberal ethos, w ­ omen can e­ ither assert themselves solely as Homo economicus (i.e., h ­ uman capital whose sole concern is to augment its monetary and sociocultural value by suspending their functions of social reproduction), or they continue to be the “unacknowledged props and supplements to masculinist liberal subjects.”20 She argues: “As provisioners of care for ­others in ­house­holds, neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces, ­women disproportionately remain the invisible infrastructure for all developing, mature, and worn-­out h ­ uman capital—­children, adults, disabled, and el­derly. Generally uncoerced,

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yet essential, this provision and responsibility get theoretically and ideologically tucked into what are assumed as preferences issuing naturally from sexual difference, especially from w ­ omen’s distinct contribution to biological reproduction. It is formulated, in short, as an effect of nature, not of power.”21 Despite all the caveats and promises of consumerist freedom, the subordination of ­women intensifies ­under neoliberalism. Neoliberal economies rely on gendered ­labor, but also specifically on the feminization of ­labor. In this case, the feminization of l­ abor refers specifically to the increased presence of feminized l­ abor such as ser­v ices and care work within the global ­labor market. As noted ­earlier, Shashi has forged a home-­based business making laddoos, which function to further networks of kinship and sociality. ­These networks that continue to require reproductive l­abor are experiencing stress from the pressures of neoliberal capitalism. Reproductive l­abor has become more attenuated u ­ nder global capitalism as care work is disavowed in neoliberal rationality. While most attention to neoliberalism in India has focused on consumption, more emphasis needs to be placed on understanding subjecthood and specifically forms of the management of the self, or self-­governmentality u ­ nder neoliberalism. Neoliberal reason produces subjects who ­w ill “comport themselves in ways that maximize their capital value in the pre­sent and enhance their ­future value . . . ​ through practices of entrepreneurism, self-­investment, and/or attracting investors.”22 Self-­worth, affirmation, and esteem are all iterations of the self-­i mprovement promulgated by neoliberalism as self-­governmentality: “Foucault theorizes neoliberal governmentality as a par­tic­u­lar mode of producing subjectivity: neoliberal governmentality produces subjects who act as individual entrepreneurs across all dimensions of their lives. Governable subjects are understood as self-­interested and rational beings who ­will navigate the social realm by constantly making rational choices based on economic knowledge and the strict calculation of the necessary costs and desired benefits. They are atomic individuals whose natu­ral self-­interest and tendency to compete must be fostered and enhanced.”23 The market model expands to domains that extend beyond the economic and extend to subjecthood; as such the self becomes a site requiring investment to enhance its market value. Clearly the gendering of the neoliberal subject must be brought further into question. The feminine subject within the institution of the ­family cannot be accounted for through neoliberal rationalities that are simply driven by competition or self-­interest. W ­ omen are constituted in contrast to this. What kind of subjects does neoliberal feminism produce? Neoliberal feminism forwards self-­improvement for ­women as a mode of empowerment in response to patriarchy’s devaluation and subordination of ­women. It furthers self-­governmentality to facilitate and increase individual fulfillment through self-­management. Self-­ improvement involves actions of ­labor, but more impor­tant of investment. The “new” ­middle class implies more than social mobility; as Leela Fernandes observes, it “refers to a pro­cess of production of a distinctive social and po­liti­cal identity that represents and lays claim to the benefits of liberalization.”24 This new ­middle class consists mostly of English-­speaking, urban, white-­collar segments of

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the population employed, for the most part, in the rapidly growing private sector. Shashi’s inability to converse in En­glish, unlike her husband, c­ hildren, and other ­mothers in her milieu, bars her entry into this new class that lays claim to represent the new mobile India. Being unable to speak the language that increasingly represents more than the vestiges of colonialism has become the chosen medium to represent class position. Shashi is unable to assert her status as the new w ­ oman of new India. In not being able to speak in En­glish, she is alienated not only from her d ­ aughter but also from her own subject location as a m ­ other as her d ­ aughter speaks for her at the parent-­teacher meeting in her school; similarly, while crossing borders, she strug­gles to articulate the sentence she has memorized. En­glish, in the neoliberal consensus, becomes one of the prime sites for self-­affirmation, both as a consumer and as a citizen. One’s own identity has to be continually reaffirmed through such linguistic markers of a cosmopolitan sensibility. Not only does consumption becomes one’s patriotic duty; it is through consumption that the dominant m ­ iddle class emerges as cosmopolitans. In the film, cosmopolitanism is glossed as a broad-­mindedness (including an ac­cep­tance of gay characters, among them the gay English-­language instructor in Manhattan), but more impor­tant as someone who exhibits an ability to be mobile across institutions, nations, and markets, a canny and comfortable sampler of global socialities, goods, and ser­vices. Shashi’s discomfort due to her lack of En­glish fluency increases not only at national borders but also when she attempts to order food at cafés. As the language of global capital, En­glish becomes central to the new Indian ­woman who can mobilize her fluency to bridge the local-­global divide. Her familiarity with the urban cosmopolitanism of global cities should translate into po­liti­cal mobility and easy consumerism. At the interview for a tourist visa to the United States, where she is headed on her own to help her s­ ister prepare for her ­daughter’s wedding, Shashi is unable to comprehend the questions. When she confesses that her En­glish is ­limited, the interviewer asks her how she ­w ill be able to survive her stay in the country if she does not speak any En­glish. While Shashi looks confused, another person at the embassy, an Indian man (or of Indian origin) reminds the interviewer that he lives in India without speaking Hindi. When she lands in New York, Shashi again is confused by the questions of the immigration officer. She hands him a piece of paper with her details. When she ­later feels embarrassed about her inability to answer the question that she had rehearsed many times, her fellow passenger from her flight (Amitabh Bachchan) g­ ently tells her that she should no longer be afraid of ­these English-­speaking p ­ eople—it is now time that they are afraid of the non-­English-­speaking, nonwhite cosmopolitans. The newfound pride in being Indian, which at first glance might look like cosmopolitanism from below, is in fact founded on the financial perks of liberalization that have been reaped solely by the ­middle class. When asked by the immigration officer about the purpose of his visit, Bachchan’s character proudly claims that he is visiting the United States to spend some dollars to help revive the American economy. H ­ ere is the central premise of neoliberalism and its promise of freedom: neoliberalism promises the freedom to the individual; f­ree markets and f­ree

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individuals have the mobility to cross borders as states are subordinated to the market and ­t hose with capital. The neoliberal feminism of the film offers the new ­woman the opportunity to become a border-­crossing world traveler too, due to her access to global capital. While she herself appears to be the improper gendered subject of global travel, not a successful corporate English-­speaking man or ­woman, Shashi is to be understood to be deserving in her own right with her proximity to her husband’s finances, her s­ ister’s diasporic capital, and her own entrepreneurship as a worthy global citizen. The cosmopolitanism evinced by Bachchan’s character, though providing us with a counterpoint to the dominant narrative of cosmopolitanism, is one that is based on the financial ability to be a worthy consumer and, by the same token, a worthy cosmopolitan. Shashi, in turn, emerges as the cosmopolitan when she rediscovers herself not as a ­house­wife or a m ­ other but as an entrepreneur (the first word she learns in her En­glish class in New York). One’s self-­worth, or even one’s worth as a citizen or world citizen, is mea­sured when one positions herself as the ideal consumer. Shashi’s travels to New York are emboldened by kinship and familial relations. ­These travels also allow Shashi to use her profits from her laddoo business to take English-­language classes. Learning En­glish becomes a technology of the self that goes beyond fluency in the language of global capital; it signals a willingness to invest in the self, acquire proper taste and a consumerist disposition, access geopo­ liti­cal mobility, and espouse cosmopolitanism. This investment in the self suggests that no investment is as profitable or significant as the investment in the self as it is the most impor­tant site of production of value. Shashi can only partake in the classes when she escapes the ­house­hold during her travels. Unlike her, almost all of Shashi’s classmates are seeking to learn En­glish as an investment to improve their employment and investment possibilities. Nevertheless, Shashi gains a transnationally useful vocabulary—­t he first word she learns is “entrepreneur.” While the word is French in origin, an entrepreneur u ­ nder neoliberalism has become the ideal man­ag­er of self and capital. Amid her classmates, Shashi stands out as already successful financially, but in need of self-­improvement and investment in order to align her financial capital and her self-­capital. Her intuitive cosmopolitanism manifests as an ac­cep­tance of the sexual, racial, and ethnic diversity of her classmates and instructors as she explains that sexual and ethnoracial differences are parallel and that their gay instructor should be accepted as they wish to be. She quickly becomes the model student as she is identified as an entrepreneur, someone who has already taken on and managed investment, risk, and profit of capital and the neoliberal cosmopolitan self. The self is less about desire and interest than it is a self that is worthy of investment and amelioration via self-­governmentality according to the conduct of local and global capital.25 While the proliferation of private-­sector jobs in the wake of neoliberal financial reforms led to a greater visibility of w ­ omen in the public sphere, it si­mul­ta­ neously made h ­ ouse­hold ­labor, deemed a w ­ oman’s duty, even more invisible. The usual distinction between work and leisure, whereby the worker proves one’s worth as a worker and as a consumer, does not hold for ­women who stay at home. While

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Manu, Shashi’s ­sister, is respected as a ­woman who has a ­career and raised her ­daughters single-­handedly, Shashi’s business, despite its profit and popularity, is dismissed by every­one as a mere hobby b ­ ecause it is regarded as feminized l­abor and an extension of her domestic chores. It is only when Shashi is able to see herself as an entrepreneur that she begins to re­spect herself and l­ater claim recognition from her husband and ­daughter. However, we may want to note how Shashi’s business as a feminized ­labor signals the changing nature of all work in global capital as it is characterized by precarity, flexibility, lack of stability, and fragmentation. It is impor­tant to remember that within the nexus of capitalism, nationalism, and heteropatriarchy, ­woman is neither just a consumer nor simply a gendered consumer. Commenting on the changing relationship between w ­ omen, f­amily, and capitalism, Brown queries: “When neoliberal reason casts each h ­ uman, positively and normatively, across ­every domain of existence, as self-­investing entrepreneurial capital, responsible for itself and striving to appreciate its value vis à vis other capital entities, how does this comport with the need-­based, explic­itly interdependent, affective, and frequently sacrificial domain of ­family relations?”26 In other words, what need does the new modern ­woman have for ­family once she has achieved autonomy and demonstrated a capacity for self-­management? Ultimately, Shashi proves that the new ­woman of modern India chooses marriage and ­family. Shashi willingly crosses national borders alone for the sake of her f­amily and ­later willingly transforms into the new modern w ­ oman empowered by her diasporic ­sister and nieces. En­glish Vinglish adds the middle-­class, middle-­aged ­woman to its panoply of the new modern w ­ oman that includes Shashi’s ­daughter, s­ ister, and nieces, all of whom initially appear to be much more modern, more assertive, and more fluent than she. How, then, to reconcile the pos­si­ble ­f utures for the new modern w ­ omen of the film? Shashi’s s­ ister is forced into the position of the self-­sufficient new modern ­woman by the death of her husband; in short, she is modern and autonomous by necessity and does not have to reconcile the tensions of capitalism and marriage as long as she provides for her ­family, her two ­daughters. Shashi’s nieces have yet to enter into matrimony. Their modernness remains untested, and it is in part up to Shashi to demonstrate the necessity of modulation, self-­management, and entrepreneurship that is required of the new modern w ­ oman within marriage. The film culminates in Shashi’s speech in En­glish at her niece’s wedding. That her per­for­mance is at a wedding, the launching of a marriage, serves as a guiding document on the institution. Her nieces, who see her more clearly than the other modern w ­ omen, including her ­sister and d ­ aughter, encourage her as she speaks En­glish in public for the very first time. In turn, her speech articulates the aspirations and desires of a modern ­woman within a modern marriage. We witness the culmination of the transformation of the middle-­ aged, middle-­class ­woman into ­human capital through neoliberal feminism. We are ultimately offered economic rationalities and entrepreneurial technologies of the self as constituting the new modern ­woman. Sridevi’s capacity to harness old and new becomes domesticated within neoliberal feminism as the conjoining of tradition and modern, but also local and global, modern and

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married. More broadly, the film advocates balance and choice as a way of reconciling the dilemma of reproduction within neoliberalism. Such a convergence seeks to reconcile tensions between capitalism and the heteropatriarchal ­family through formations of neoliberal feminism that demand transformation into subjects who self-­invest and self-­manage as ­human capital. But to read against the grain, to push back against neoliberal rationalities and discourses of choice and balance, we, as feminists, can question the market logics and economic rationalities that now expand to all aspects of life.

notes 1. ​ ChaalBaaz, directed by Pankaj Parashar (1989; Mumbai: Lakshmi Productions & Video Sound), DVD, 155 min. 2. ​Sridevi stands out among her peers for her uncanny ability to harness ­t hese contradictory modes of femininity with a certain per­for­mance of campiness that is singular to her star image. While Sridevi stood as a queer icon among ­others, including Meena Kumari, Helen, and Rekha, her excessive per­for­mances of heteronormativity, femininity, and female sexual desire w ­ ere marked by a self-­reflexive, playful campiness. 3. ​ Nagina, directed by Harmesh Malhotra (1986; Mumbai: Emkay Enterprises & Ea­g le), DVD, 137 min.; Mr. India, directed by Shekhar Kapoor (1987; Mumbai: Narsimha Enterprises & Eros International), DVD, 149 min. 4. ​ En­glish Vinglish, directed by Gauri Shinde (2012; Mumbai: Curbside Films, Eros International, Hope Productions & Lola’s Films), DVD, 134 min. 5. ​The neologism combining the words “mom” and “entrepreneur” has become popu­lar recently, especially with the proliferation of online resources for w ­ omen to run successful businesses from their homes. The mompreneur, unlike the working ­mother or stay-­at-­home m ­ other, embodies the ideal neoliberal female subject who “has it all” as she performs all the duties of care t­ oward her ­children while r­ unning a business as a m ­ other, typically within the home. 6. ​Ashish Rajadhyaksha, “The ‘Bollywoodization’ of the Indian Cinema: Cultural Nationalism in a Global Arena,” in Global Bollywood, ed. Anandam P. Kavoori and Aswin Punathambekar (New York: New York University Press, 2008), 17–40. 7. ​Amit  S. Rai, Untimely Bollywood: Globalization and India’s New Media Assemblage (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009). 8. ​Sangita Gopal, Conjugations: Marriage and Form in New Bollywood Cinema (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011). 9. ​ Malini Iyer, directed by Satish Kaushik (2004; Mumbai: Sahara One & Boney Kapoor). 10. ​This is not to say that t­ here is no scholarship on ­women stars, just less in comparison to male stars. 11. ​ Kal Ho Na Ho, directed by Nikhil Advani (2003; Mumbai: Dharma Productions & Yash Raj Films), DVD, 186 min. 12. ​Mom, directed by Ravi Udayar (2017; Mumbai: MAD Films, Third Eye Films & Zee Studios), DVD, 146 min. 13. ​See Kareem Khubchandani, “Snakes on the Dance Floor: Bollywood, Gesture, and Gender,” Velvet Light Trap 77 (2016): 69–85, accessed December 1, 2018, https://­muse​.­jhu​.­edu​/.­ 14. ​PTI, “Happy That I Am in Position to Select Scripts: Sridevi,” Hindustan Times, October 5, 2012, accessed July 22, 2018, https://­w ww​.­hindustantimes​.­com​/ ­bollywood​/­happy​-­t hat​ -­i​-­a m​-­in​-­position​-­to​-­select​-­scripts​-­sridevi​/­story​-­wRgpuzE09fG8XliaS6td7M​.­html. 15. ​Jigna Desai, Beyond Bollywood: The Cultural Politics of South Asian Diasporic Film (New York: Routledge, 2004). 16. ​Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984). 17. ​Bourdieu, 100.

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18. ​Sushmita Chatterjee, “ ‘En­glish Vinglish’ and Bollywood: What Is ‘New’ about the ‘New ­Woman’?,” Gender, Place & Culture 23, no. 8 (2016): 1179–1192. 19. ​Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (New York: Zone Books, 2015), 31. 20. ​Brown, 105. 21. ​Brown, 103–104. 22. ​Brown, 22. 23. ​Johanna Oksala, “Feminism and Neoliberal Governmentality,” Foucault Studies 16 (2013): 41. 24. ​Leela Fernandes, India’s New ­Middle Class: Demo­cratic Politics in an Era of Economic Reform (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), xviii. 25. ​It is notable that the instructor who is charged not only with teaching students En­glish but also with making them over is a gay man. His lessons further their self-­esteem and cultural knowledge as much as provide lessons in the En­glish language. With their increased fluency and cultural capital, the students are better entrepreneurs of the self. Gay masculinity is charged with such an endeavor within the American landscape. 26. ​Brown, Undoing the Demos, 102.

chapter 2

Q

Lethal Acts bollywood’s new ­woman and the nirbhaya effect Sangita Gopal

New conceptions of womanhood in con­temporary Bollywood cinema have emerged in and through a broader and ongoing transformation of Bollywood film typologies into conventional industrial genres. For instance, the consolidation of the genre of the romantic comedy occurred si­mul­ta­neously with the exploration of new norms of gender and sexuality where the w ­ oman’s need for autonomy and her right to express desire are fully accounted for and thus serve as obstacles that must be negotiated in order for the ­union to occur. Films ranging from Jab We Met (When we met; Imtiaz Ali, 2007) and Pyaar Ke Side Effects (The side effects of love; Saket Chowdhury, 2006) through Shuddh Desi Romance (Pure Indian romance; Maneesh Shama, 2013) and Pyaar Ka Punchnama (Love’s postmortem; Luv Ranjan, 2011) to Hasee to Phasee (Smile and be snared; Vinil Matthew, 2014) and Dum Laga Ke Haisha (My big fat bride; Sharat Katariya, 2015) used the narrative structure of the romantic comedy—­meeting, parting, reuniting—to negotiate a more egalitarian relationship between the ­couple, one that could re­spect the hard-­earned sovereignty of this “new w ­ oman.”1 Based on the premise that the new w ­ oman in Bollywood must be viewed in her generic habitat and, in a sense, is coexpressive with the emergence of certain “new” genres such as romantic comedy and horror, this chapter turns to the action genre and its reinterpretation in recent Bollywood cinema as a particularly rich site for examining new conceptions of womanhood, especially as it pertains to notions of individuated agency that emerge from vari­ ous strains of neoliberal feminisms.2 While the woman-­centered action genre in its pure form remains a minor one within Bollywood cinema, what I am calling the “take-­action” genre has emerged as a significant re­orientation of the action genre and can be witnessed in films ranging from En­glish Vinglish (Gauri Shinde, 2012) and Queen (Vikas Bahl, 2014) to Mardaani (Masculinity, Pradeep Sarkar, 2014), Neerja (Ram Madhvani, 2016), Mom (Ravi Udyawar, 2017), and Kahaani (Story, Sujoy Ghosh, 2012).3 While the 40

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latter films might be designated thrillers that are a more natu­ral habitat for the action ingredient, in the former pair the protagonists take actions—­learning En­glish in ­middle age, ­going on a honeymoon of one to Paris when stranded at the mandap by a feckless fiancé—­that result in self-­transformation. In other words, this is an action genre insofar as agency is not just an ontological attribute of the protagonist; rather, by acting—­unexpectedly, uncharacteristically—­the pro­cess of becoming “new” is activated. Thus we must distinguish the modes of agency as practiced by the generic new ­woman of romantic comedies or horror from this gendered variation of the action genre where w ­ omen characters are forced to take action owing to vari­ous contingencies, including scenarios of crisis or abandonment by ­family, community, and state. ­These are films in which ­women act ­under conditions not of their own choosing and over which they have no choice, and yet, in acting, they access certain “new” forms of selfhood. As such, the take-­action genre is particularly adequate to the modes of self-­activated, self-­governing personhood favored by neoliberal globalization, and so the emergence of this genre is hardly surprising at this historical moment in the history of India and its cinema. Though t­ hese films frequently show up on lists of “Bollywood Feminist Films” or “Women-­Centered Bollywood Cinema,” they do not imagine any kind of abstract feminist subject or collective social action. Rather, they are solely focused on empowering the protagonist. They “unlock” the power within the individual ­woman, and we are instructed—­t hrough her—in self-­care and self-­actualization. They highlight how ­women, when faced with challenges, are capable of changing their situation by attending to their long-­repressed needs and desires. Unlike women-­centered films of a previous era such as Arth (Meaning; Mahesh Bhatt, 1982), Rihaee (Liberation; Aruna Raje, 1988), or Damini (Lightning; Raj Kumar Santoshi, 1993) that focused on how ­women are structurally oppressed by ­family, community, or state and how they strug­gle against t­ hese ideologies and institutions or, indeed, on how social attitudes and institutions need to be reformed in order to ameliorate the condition of w ­ omen, ­these films are centered on one ­woman’s journey to a better ­future.4 In short, while historically the women-­centered films explored the structural limits and prohibitions on ­women’s lives, ­t hese next-­ generation action films emphasize the potentials and possibilities available to ­women and the importance of “leaning in.” Bollywood’s “new ­women” refuse to be victimized and through grit, courage, determination, or spontaneous action achieve their goals. Most of all, they learn how to look out for themselves. As such, they are the exemplary subjects of a neoliberal order, with its emphasis on transformation whereby the subject evolves by casting off or migrating out of the social conditions and cultural scripts that “hold them back.” The generic emphasis on action aligns well with the thematics of self-­actualization through which Bollywood’s new ­woman is figured. But what if such flights out are not narratively (or socially) pos­si­ble? What kind of actions do w ­ omen take when they are placed in unbearable situations ordered by neoliberal precarity and the intensified forms that patriarchy assumes ­under ­t hese conditions of uncertainty? Would such actions—­d ictated by the need to

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survive—­still count as feminist, or do they rather reveal how l­ ittle choice ­women ­really have ­under neoliberal globalization? I focus ­here on two films—­Titli (Butterfly; Kanu Behl, 2014) and NH10 (Navdeep Singh, 2015)—­that pre­sent us, I argue, with more radical, if less optimistic, instances of Bollywood’s new ­women. If Meera (Anushka Sharma) and Sarpanch Amma ji (Deepti Naval) in NH10 represent violent femmes whose viciousness is more than a match for the brutal worlds they inhabit, Neelu (Shivani Raghuvanshi) and Sangeeta (Sarita Sharma) in Titli are variations on the femme fatale figure in classic noir and neo-­noir, navigating the urban underbelly armed with an arsenal of secrets, lies, and survival strategies; they are alternately passive and active and ultimately a “threat” that the narrative has to ­either eradicate or domesticate.5 The emergence of ­these action figures—­violent femmes and femme fatales—is aligned with currents of economic, social, and sexual unrest as globalization, consumerism, and ever-­deepening inequalities exacerbate existing forms of gendered exploitation.6 As such, they are the body doubles of characters such as Rani (Queen), Shashi (En­glish Vinglish), Vidya (Kahaani). Their actions are neither empowering nor self-­actualizing but instead violent, cynical, treacherous, amoral, and entirely dictated by sheer contingency rather than liberatory futurities. Though constantly threatened and betrayed by a precarious social world ordered by toxic masculinity, t­ hese ­women are neither victims nor heroes but testify rather to stagings of agency that foreclose the po­liti­cal ­future of feminism. Iw ­ ill explore the emergence of the violent femme and the femme fatale in the take-­action genre through a close reading of NH 10 and Titli, but I ­will first locate ­these readings within the generic framework of the new ­woman in Bollywood cinema. I suggest that we view the take-­action genre as a response to and pro­cessing of certain sociohistorical transformations especially as they pertain to the gendered effects of neoliberal globalization, increased vio­lence against ­women, and the new frameworks for feminist activism that responded to t­ hese social forces. Neoliberalism’s focus on the individual lends itself very well to the “action” genre, with its focus on a hero, but if the classic hero was engaged in saving the world, the hero of neoliberalism is only interested in saving or realizing the self. Neoliberalism attenuates the capacity for social action; thus, ­these new ­women act entirely on their own behalf, and t­ hese actions neither produce moments of intersubjective recognition between ­women nor propose that the protagonist’s actions can be generalized ­toward collective change. This “absence” of mutuality is especially noteworthy, for each film features female characters—­Sangeeta and Neelu in Titli and Meera and Ammaji in NH10—­whose fates are aligned and who are all subject to the same structural oppressions, and yet any recognition of ­t hese shared ecologies of precarity remains unavailable to them. Rather, they e­ ither become antagonists or become mired in mutual resentment.

The Nirbhaya Effect Neither Titli nor NH10 makes any direct references to the New Delhi Nirbhaya rape case of 2012, and, yet, I suggest that the exploration of gender in both films is s­ haped

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by the Nirbhaya (Fearless) effect.7 First, they are set in New Delhi—­a city widely acknowledged as the sexual assault capital of a country that a recent ­Reuters Thompson report deems “the most dangerous country in the world for w ­ omen.”8 More impor­tant, they explore a culture of routinized masculinist vio­lence—­much of it directed ­toward ­women—­anchored in anx­i­eties surrounding class, caste, consumerism, and w ­ omen’s mobility and aspiration. Nirbhaya, readers w ­ ill recall, was the name given to the victim of this notorious rape case (whose name, Jyoti Singh Pandey, was ­later revealed to the public by her ­father in contravention of the law regarding rape victims in India). On December 16, 2012, in New Delhi, Pandey and her male friend, returning home from a screening of the Life of Pi, boarded a bus that had five male passengers and a driver. For the next two hours, as the bus crisscrossed the nighttime megapolis, Pandey was gang-­raped, penetrated with an iron rod, and brutally beaten and then thrown on the street unconscious. A few days ­later, Pandey succumbed to her injuries. News of the incident spread like wildfire, and within forty-­eight hours provoked large-­scale and nationwide protests and demonstrations on the streets and on social media. The initial response on the part of the state was repressive and apathetic; then, in the wake of intensifying protests and global criticism, it acted to initiate some ­legal changes that would “fast-­ track” justice for sexual assault victims. By all accounts, Nirbhaya was a landmark event in India’s history of gendered vio­lence, activism, and l­egal reform. ­There has been extensive scholarly and popu­lar analy­sis of the Nirbhaya case and its significance in con­temporary India as a watershed for gender-­based activism. I would like to draw attention to some per­sis­tent themes in ­t hese discussions in order to understand the frames through which Nirbhaya was theorized and how Titli and NH10 reengage t­ hese analyses of structural conditions, toxic masculinity, and rape culture. Most accounts drew attention to the po­liti­cal economy of gender vio­lence.9 The rapists w ­ ere mi­grants whose economic marginality, in the context of a metropolis flush with the many signs of prosperity, only exacerbated their sense of failed masculinity and converted to brutal gender-­based vio­lence. Unlike in previous instances such as the Mathura rape case that had attracted national debate, feminist action, and ­legal reform, the victim ­here was not poor, rural, or lower-­caste but rather an educated, upper-­caste, upwardly mobile denizen of the aspirational ­middle classes of globalizing India.10 The violation of such an exemplary subject of neoliberal India by lower-­class mi­grant laborers intensified the outrage, fueled no doubt by the m ­ iddle class’s anx­i­eties11 about its own precarity in the wake of ever-­expanding structural inequalities, credit-­driven consumption, and economic insecurity.12 As commentators have noted, the public response to Nirbhaya cast gender vio­ lence as a “universal” prob­lem (rather than a ­woman’s issue) but did so by identifying a certain kind of eco­nom­ically disenfranchised, nonmetropolitan, aggressive, and violent masculinity (rather than patriarchy itself) as the prob­lem. Certain cultures of masculinity ­were deemed deviant, prone to rape and sexual vio­lence. In contrast, the rape victim struggling for her life in a hospital bed, her ­father taking the unconventional step of “outing” her or indeed the monikers first used to refer

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to Pandey—­Nirbhaya (Fearless) and Jagruti (Awakening)—­before her identity was made public emphasized Pandey’s agency and heroism. The ­woman as agent, demanding justice, reform, and safety and willing to take action against the state ­were impor­tant mobilizing tropes, but as scholars emphasize in the gender justice movement that emerged out of Nirbhaya, t­ here was “evidence of a distancing from the po­liti­cal and an individualizing and psychologizing of structural prob­lems associated with choice, post-­and corporate-­feminisms.”13 While some of the mobilization had an explic­itly po­liti­cal and feminist cast, other frameworks emphasized that the achievement of gender equality was a m ­ atter of individual transformation. This latter, more neoliberal variety of feminism has been viewed as a legacy of the NGOization of Indian feminism that commenced in the 1990s.14 This led, scholars emphasize, to the greater policing of w ­ omen’s lives and the introduction of new forms of surveillance, in addition to subjecting feminist action in the Global South to the agendas and priorities of funding agencies from the Global North. Th ­ ese organ­izations w ­ ere accountable to the needs of donors rather than the communities they served, and this curtailed their potential for transformation.15 Moreover NGOs introduced discourses of self-­actualization, self-­help, enterprise, and individual agency at odds with the collectivist/party-­based ethos of Indian feminism.16 So, too, the forms of protest—­candlelight vigils, marches to Delhi’s India Gate, slut walks, Pink Chaddi (underwear) Campaigns—­were informed by global trends and managed by social media.17 Commentators note an aspirational, middle-­class, upper-­caste, and decidedly urban tenor to ­t hese activities that remained distant from the needs of poor, lower-­caste, rural ­women and unaware of the forms that activism that includes the voices of t­ hese subaltern constituencies should take. In Jyoti Pandey they had found a figure whose class position was aligned to theirs and whose aspiration they could relate to and galvanize around.18 ­There was emphasis on spontaneous action—­whether this took the form of digital activism or marching in the streets—­that was adapted to the temporality of the 24/7 media cycle and its advertising markets. The depoliticized, elite nature of aspects of the Nirbhaya movement that erases a long and hard-­fought genealogy of feminist protest and collective action is clear if we consider this statement by Anu Ramdas in the journal Savari, which features writings by Dalit and Adivasi w ­ omen: “No, all the coverage that the Delhi rape incident gets is not excessive attention; the amount of expressed outrage never needs to be quantified for crimes such as ­t hese against w ­ omen. But yes, this rightful but selective national exclamation of horror against this urban gang rape furthers the normalization of rapes and gang rapes of dalit and adivasi w ­ omen. Yes, this is an erasure of the protests by dalit and adivasi w ­ omen in Vachati, in Chattisgarh, in Haryana, in Manipur, in jails, in thanas, in courts and in villages all over the country.”19 While the calls to reform w ­ ere e­ ither focused on the law—­which Indian feminists have long warned is a double-­edged sword that can exacerbate gender hierarchies—or emphasized the need for self-­expression, ­t hese discourses paid scant attention to the necessity for structural reform, for taking another look at a neoliberal economic regime that was rendering ever-­g reater sections of the

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population precarious or outright destitute. The emphasis, rather, was on how the personal was automatically po­liti­cal and all ­women—­even elite urban ones—­had earned their right to protest, even if such protests deliberately took sensationalist forms. Gilbertson quotes an activist Ayesha: “The very fact that I am taking out a Slutwalk, or I am d ­ oing a ‘Pink Chaddi’ campaign, it’s absolutely right, b ­ ecause that is the issue closest to me. For example, if I think that not being allowed to wear short clothes is of primary importance to me and I am struggling for that, I mean it is equally feminist. It is feminist and I have the right to do that b ­ ecause it is the issue that is closest to me.”20 This emphasis on a sex-­positive feminism that views choice as a key component of gender justice is s­haped by consumerist ideologies where the notion of the rights-­bearing individual is no longer implicated in a social network where norms are relational, contingent rather than abstract, and where freedom is negotiated rather than guaranteed.21 Implicated ­here are also notions of the body as display and subjectivity as per­for­mance, that can be resignified through a series of actions pertaining to speech, self-­presentation, and so on. Thus Ayesha—in a bid to challenge the morality police who have used honor to oppress w ­ omen—­wills herself into a state of besharmi (shamelessness) asserting, “If you want to call us sinful, if you want to call us immoral, please go ahead and do it ­because we ourselves recognize ourselves as sinful ­because we ­don’t want to stick to your morals.”22 While Ayesha’s agenda is avowedly po­liti­cal, she also sees politics as a m ­ atter of changing the self and its relation to the social w ­ hole. In short, taking action. Agency is no longer the goal of the collective feminist strug­gle but rather an automatic given, a starting point. The skepticism about the label “feminism” seems to be shared by many in the Nirbhaya movement. Thus another activist states, “I personally have never identified myself as a feminist ­because for me this (or any other identity label) is a po­liti­ cal statement and I ­haven’t been in advocacy but personal transformation and gender education.”23 The preference for “education” over “advocacy” and the emphasis on personal transformation are both aligned to late-­capitalist modes of individuation where the attachment of any kind of label—­feminist—­that might come with some restriction to how one performs the self is repudiated. This ethic where one acts on and acts on behalf of the self alone is perhaps the most significant contribution of neoliberalism to con­temporary notions of subjectivity. Such a notion of the subject—­f ully capable of and constantly acting on the self—is amply on display in the take-­action genre featuring Bollywood’s new ­woman that I have identified e­ arlier in the chapter. In sharp contrast to an e­ arlier phase of women-­centered cinema where the protagonist realized her capacity for action through strug­gle and a­ fter much suffering (in temporal terms in the latter half of the film, typically through a pro­cess of “awakening”),24 the new ­woman in Bollywood cinema is always already ready to spring into action.

Acting without Agency However, not all actions performed by the new w ­ oman are affirmative or indeed transformative. The ­women in NH10 and Titli, in keeping with the new ­woman in

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Bollywood, are ready to take action, and act swiftly and decisively they do. But as I ­shall show ­later, their acts have no emancipatory effects: although Meera in NH10 nominally achieves her goal of avenging her husband’s killing, we are no longer sure w ­ hether she is any dif­fer­ent from the antagonist Ammaji Sarpanch, while Titli’s Neelu makes a dev­il’s bargain only to return with a broken heart to a marriage she never wanted, her dreams of upward mobility shattered. Both films are saturated with the Nirbhaya effect. They evoke the bipolar world of neoliberalism’s winners and losers only to profoundly queer the gendered equation between active and reactive forces. As such, in ­t hese films the link between action and actualization that defines neoliberal selfhood is severed, and the upbeat, life-­affirming affects evoked by the new w ­ oman in Bollywood in films such as Queen or En­glish Vinglish are entirely absent. The title of Navdeep Singh’s film NH10 names the national highway that connects New Delhi to Punjab and cuts through the badlands of Haryana, a state known in the national imagination for its khaps—­community organ­izations that, unlike panchayats, have no ­legal standing but have sovereign power over the populations they govern. They are known to promote honor killings and other atrocities against ­women inhering in brutal codes of masculinity. At a superficial level, the film seems to endorse the spatial imaginary of Nirbhaya—­modern city versus primitive hinterlands peopled by regressive, violent men who resemble Jyoti Pandey’s rapists, and yet the film undoes this gendered geography by first emphasizing that toxic masculinity does not map quite so neatly onto a urban/rural divide and further that vio­lence against ­women cannot be viewed solely through the framework of masculinity but instead needs a structural reading in which both sexes are equally implicated. Power is reproduced and consolidated with the participation of ­women; moreover, in this era of global precarity, the line separating the “modern” from the “primitive” is not a very bright one.25 NH10 might be a national highway, but it runs through lands where the laws of the nation do not apply, especially ­t hose pertaining to citizenship and individual rights. As a policeman reminds the protagonist Meera midway through the film, “Where the last mall in Gurgaon [an upscale neighborhood at the edges of New Delhi] ends, ends democracy and the constitution as well.” He goes on say that if electricity and ­water have not reached this village, how can she expect that the constitution ­matters ­here, thus making explicit the symbiotic relationship between development and the rule of law. In this space deprived of the basic amenities of “Shining India,” the only way to keep order is to stringently enforce the rules of caste that decree who may or may not be loved, and in the absence of economic equality, any abstract notion of a sovereign rights-­bearing subject has no relevance. He thus challenges the civilizational rhe­toric that had taken hold in the wake of Nirbhaya by establishing the parasitic relation between t­ hese two Indias. He first emphasizes the state’s alignment with consumer capital and then suggests that the brutal rule of khap is but a response to the abandonment by the state. The denizens of metropolitan India must own and own up to the savagery beyond its city

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limits and the film does this by showing us—­through Meera—­how quickly the citizen transforms into a barbarian. The films opens, however, in the city, where vio­lence and misogyny are barely concealed u ­ nder a veneer of civility. Within a few quick scenes, we learn that Meera’s male colleagues attribute her professional success to her sexual charms; we witness her being attacked by carjackers while driving home from a party and barely escaping; and we see her guilt-­ridden husband, Arjun (Neil Bhoopalan), who had “allowed” her to drive home alone, buy a gun so they can be better prepared next time. The c­ ouple sets out on NH10 for a weekend getaway—­Arjun brings his gun—­and very soon ­after mayhem ensues. The trou­ble starts when they stop at a dhaba (roadside eatery) for lunch. Meera, while in the rest­room, runs into a terrified young ­woman, Pinky, who is clearly u ­ nder some grave threat and who begs for help. As the camera cuts back from her face to Pinky’s, who first appears reflected in a mirror, we see Meera at once terrified by the other w ­ oman’s desperation and yet determined not to heed this call. Indeed, Meera’s panic is perhaps prompted by her realization of their mutual precarity, and she runs back to the safety of her car (and by extension her “world”). Arjun, smarting perhaps from his prior inability to protect Meera, intervenes in a bid to rescue Pinky and her husband from their murderous clansmen. He is severely beaten, and, in a profound irony, the men use Arjun’s gun to shoot Pinky. Almost immediately, Meera springs into action and uses this same gun to shoot the aggressors dead and then runs for help. Her make­over from bourgeois subject determined to keep her distance from the barbaric mores of the hinterlands to action figure is instantaneous. She finds her way to a cop, who lectures her on the wages of uneven development but refuses to help. Undaunted, as is typical of Bollywood’s new w ­ omen, she finds her way to the h ­ ouse of the village leader, Ammaji Sarpanch’s (Deepti Naval), only to realize that Pinky is Ammaji’s ­daughter and the order to kill had been issued by Ammaji. She somehow punches and kicks her way out of ­t here and discovers that Arjun has been slain, and so she returns, sledgehammer in hand, to wreak the most violent vengeance on Ammaji, who, though fierce, is no match for Meera, who viciously clubs her to death. Meera’s transformation from urban sophisticate to lethal killer is as accomplished and proficient as Rani’s, Shashi’s, or Vidya’s, with the difference that she is the “final girl,”26 weapon in hand, in a landscape of corpses. And she gets to this sovereign place by turning away from a younger w ­ oman and killing an older one. In the entrepreneurial milieu of post-­Nirbhaya neoliberal feminism—­where we must each look ­after ourselves—­t here is only room for the one fearless ­woman. A significant theme in the cultural mapping of con­temporary India—­both on-­ screen and off—­draws on the enduring trope of “two worlds.” This bifurcated imagination was, as we have seen, fully operational in the wake of Nirbhaya, where Jyoti Pandey’s India—­f ull of hope and enterprise—­stood in sharp contrast to that of her benighted rapists.27 NH10 intervenes in this landscape to suggest that t­ hese two worlds are produced by the same set of social and economic forces, and thus neither party has a mono­poly on vio­lence. The trappings of “civilization” can be

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discarded in an instant, and Meera, Pinky, and Ammaji are all subject to and subjects of allied vectors of abandonment and capture. If Meera recognizes in Pinky her own (potential) vulnerability, she matches Ammaji in her viciousness. We glimpse h ­ ere, in however damaged a form, a potential collectivity, for the film repeatedly suggests that the “space” between t­ hese subjects is illusory and easily reversed. Yet no alliance is pos­si­ble. Per the logic of neoliberal feminism, with its hyperindividual ethos, Meera’s survival depends on repressing any recognition of the shared precarity of Bollywood’s new w ­ oman. Dismantling the spatial and gendered imaginaries of Nirbhaya is also at the very heart of Kanu Behl’s Titli. In an interview, Behl and his coscriptwriter, Sharat Katariya (who subsequently went on to direct Dum Laga Ke Haisha), directly reference Nirbhaya and say that they wanted to make a film that anatomized the anger roiling through the city that makes Nirbhaya just one instance of a much bigger phenomenon, but “neither of us w ­ ere interested in employing a voy­eur­is­tic or top-­down gaze to show this world. We wanted to understand the internal context through which such acts come to be.” This “internal” context brings them to an impoverished neighborhood in New Delhi and to the power dynamics of a ­family of three men overseen by a silently domineering patriarch. The ­family in postin­de­pen­dence Hindi cinema has been a very significant source of affective, economic, po­liti­cal, and juridical power. Though the apparatuses of the modern state ­were nominally pre­sent—­t he police, courts, and educational institutions—­t he ­family remained the ultimate arbiter of values and norms. Thus a portmanteau genre that Madhava Prasad called the “feudal ­family romance” served to or­ga­nize dif­fer­ent kinds of narrative ele­ments.28 This master genre—­a lso called the social—­ included dif­fer­ent ingredients from song and dance to comic routines to action sequences, and its primary aesthetic mode was melodrama. The feudal f­amily romance accommodated individual desire, romantic love, and f­ ree choice, and ­t hese hallmarks of modernity ­were often a source of dramatic conflict and visual plea­sure, but narrative closure demanded a reconciliation between traditional (heteropatriarchal) norms and modern yearnings with some give-­and-­take on each side. From the 1970s, however, we begin to notice a disassembling of this narrative and ideological complex and a gradual waning of the power of the feudal ­family. Consequently, the norms of the ­family begin to diverge from the ­legal frameworks of the state, and the individual now has the power to choose between the two—­ thus, for instance, one may marry against the wishes of the f­ amily without any material consequences. Interestingly, we also notice during t­ hese de­cades (1970s onward) an emergence of genres (comedy, thrillers) and the first iteration of the woman-­centered film. This iteration finds its most elaborate exploration in the parallel cinema, but ­t here are several instances of woman-­centered films in the mainstream cinema as well. ­Woman’s oppression (and subsequent awakening) is the framework through which feudal patriarchal norms that anchor both the ­family and the state are analyzed and contested. Though ­t here is a “formal” resurgence of the upper-­caste, Hindu patriarchal ­family in the “Non Resident Indian genre” in the postliberalization

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period (1990s), the ideological task in ­t hese films seems to be to bind the diasporic Indian to the nation, and so the f­ amily is a source of cultural and affective rather than juridical and economic power, and the individual can (but would rather not) be estranged from the ­family.29 The meme—it is all about loving your ­family—as I have argued elsewhere is but a sentimental symptom of the decentering of this ­family. While the ­family is no longer central in Hindi cinema, the transformation of the Indian state from a putatively socialist to a neoliberal one has also meant that safeguarding the sovereignty of the citizen and bringing development to the “­people” is no longer the state’s charge. Rather, its task is to protect (and provide for) the ­f ree market and the ­f ree play of enterprise that are now viewed as the twin guarantors of ­human emancipation. We are now on our own—to flourish or perish—­and this si­mul­ta­neously induces delirious freedom to pursue one’s dreams and a heightened sense of precarity. From this perspective, the ­family in New Bollywood cinema is a space of dependence and negativity—­its power exercised not through consent and affective attachment but through physical and emotional vio­ lence. The aspirational ­middle classes are almost never represented in the context of an intergenerational “joint” f­ amily; rather, it is typically a ­couple living in a shiny high-­rise with a kid or two and pets. Only ­t hose who cannot afford such in­de­pen­ dent living remain in their families.30 It is precisely this lower-­class ­family forced to live together owing to economic contingencies that Titli turns its attention to. Behl and Katariya contend that in order to understand Nirbhaya, one has to look at the “in-­between”—­t hose who live at the edges of malls and condominiums and work as ser­vice staff in t­ hese spaces. As Behl puts it, “The idea for the half-­completed ­house came from a lot of p ­ eople I had seen in my neighborhood, the depression of ­people jinke ghar aadhe ban ke reh jaate hain (whose homes are left half-­built). They would be eaten away by the anger and frustration that stemmed from this.”31 They are not destitute, but they have not quite made it, and so they live in a constant state of resentment, on edge, skirting vio­lence. They ­were interested in locating ­these two populations—­those who have moved ahead quicker than ­others, ­t hose who have been left ­behind on a continuum—­a ll denizens of an ecol­ogy of aspiration and precarity where some live at the center while o ­ thers inch ­toward it. Titli (Shashank Arora), the youn­gest of three ­brothers in just such a ­family, dreams of clambering up this ladder to live in the flats and shop at the malls that he now drives by on his rickety scooter. The other two—­Vikram (Ranveer Shorey) and Pratap (Amit Sial)—­have no such aspirations. The ­family business is carjacking, but the b ­ rothers are also marginally employed in low-­end jobs. It is clear that their controlling ­father wants to keep ­t hings this way. This f­ amily of three ­brothers and their dad dwells in one such unfinished h ­ ouse. In the film’s opening scene, the elder b ­ rother, Vikram, who works as a security guard at a downscale mall, is supervising the delivery of a dining ­table—an object of middle-­class life that has tremendous symbolic value for him. He is cradling his baby ­daughter while yelling instructions to the delivery men. He is clearly a hothead and soon gets into a violent physical altercation with one of the delivery

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men. His estranged wife, Sangeeta, who does not live with him and has come to pick up the child,—­looks on impassively. It is clear that such vio­lence is a routine fact of life ­here. As ­matters escalate, she calmly retrieves the child and walks away, the camera tracking her from ­behind. Sangeeta is no rebel, but she has learned to take actions that grant her some minimum safeguards in this volatile environment. She is asking for a divorce, and when she visits next with an NGO worker in tow, she makes sure that Vikram keeps his end of the financial bargain. Her enigmatic reserve—­she is tender one moment and steely the next—is evocative of the femme fatale, an impression that is further confirmed when we realize that though not yet divorced from Vikram, she has taken a new lover and lives with him. With Sangeeta’s departure, the f­amily decides that it is the younger b ­ rother Titli’s turn to bring in a bride who can take care of the ­house and curb his desire to take flight. And so the ­family marries him off to Neelu, whose ­family is a few rungs up the socioeconomic ladder, grossly misrepresenting the nature of the f­ amily business. Neelu appears passive, docile even, but we quickly discover she is anything but. The morning a­ fter the wedding, when a car -­dealer mistreats Titli, suspecting that he is merely window-­shopping, Neelu swiftly intervenes and reproves him. She manages to fend off Titli’s advances on the marital bed, and even while she is waiting on Titli and his f­amily at the dining t­able, her demeanor suggests her contempt for their crude ways. The b ­ rothers are clearly in awe of her lighter skin, superior education, and greater worldliness. Like Sangeeta, she too has a lover, a real estate developer called Prince. If ­family honor and authority in NH10 inhered in controlling w ­ omen’s sexuality and romantic habits, ­t here is a sexual boldness and a capacity for betrayal in Neelu (and Sangeeta) that reminds us of the femme fatale. Each uses her sexuality and remoteness to secure some quotidian advantages, and while Sangeeta is hospitable ­toward Neelu, it is also clear that in this each-­one-­for-­themselves climate, ­there is no possibility for solidarity. Among t­ hese urban lower ­middle classes, the ideological control of the ­family is actually quite weak—it is rather an economic expediency or a psychological trap, and ­women’s newfound assertiveness is always threatening its survival. ­Under such circumstances, patriarchy appears as and only as vio­lence. The excess of vio­lence that we witness in the Nirbhaya rape case as well as in NH10 is also on display in Titli in a brutally violent carjacking scene that Neelu is made to witness and in Vikram’s frequent outbursts. The only way Titli and his ­brothers can assert any control over Neelu is through vio­lence, for as one of Bollywood’s new ­women, Neelu is better equipped to navigate the neoliberal order of new India—of malls, multiplexes, and self-­transformation. Sangeeta, too, knows how to make her way in this world. The men, however, with the exception of Titli, are ill at ease, loutish, among the deplorables. Though Titli threatens to kill her if she tries to escape, Neelu runs off in the m ­ iddle of the night, for she is Nirbhaya, Bollywood’s new ­woman. Realizing he is no match for her, Titli makes her a deal to which she readily agrees. She w ­ ill hand over some fixed deposits her ­father had given her as a wedding pre­sent so Titli can buy himself the right to run a mall park-

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ing lot. In return, Titli w ­ ill bring her to Prince each day and eventually divorce her so she can marry him. Neelu knows what she wants and is willing to take actions to make her ­f uture happen; she is willing to play by the rules of neoliberal selfhood and fully monetize all social relations, but alas this new ­woman is subject to a very old-­fashioned betrayal when Prince turns out to be married with a child. She returns to her parent’s h ­ ouse defeated, and Titli comes for her; she goes to him, but we are not sure if this act is motivated by choice or resignation. In the film’s ambiguous ending—at once morose and tender—­she is back riding on Titli’s scooter, gazing once again at a world that is not yet hers. In Meera and Ammaji, Neelu and Sangeeta, we encounter Bollywood’s new ­woman as a lethal actor. Faced with contingencies beyond their control, fueled by desires for self-­assertion, they take actions that, while swift and decisive, are nonetheless harmful and destructive to self (and society). ­These actions—­occurring in the absence of consciousness and consequence—do not follow the liberatory scripts of feminism, and yet as a type of action that Agamben in a dif­fer­ent context called “means without end,” they may indeed be po­liti­cal acts.32

notes 1. ​Jyotika Virdi, “A National Cinema’s Transnational Aspiration: Considerations on Bollywood,” South Asian Popu­lar Culture 15, no. 1 (2017): 8. 2. ​For the ways in which feminism has been transformed by neoliberalism, see Ann Orloff and Talia Schiff, “Feminists in Power: Rethinking Gender Equality a­ fter the Second Wave,” in Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences, ed. Robert Kosslyn and Robert Scott (London: Sage, 2014); Nancy Fraser, Fortunes of Feminism: From State-­Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis (London: Verso, 2013). For a more recent essay that claims that neoliberalism has now reclaimed the label feminist, see Catherine Rottenberg, “Neoliberal Feminism and the ­Future of ­Human Capital,” Signs: Journal of W ­ omen in Culture and Society 42, no. 2 (Winter 2017): 329–348. Specifically in the Indian context, see Ipsita Chatterjee, “Feminism, the False Consciousness of Neoliberal Capitalism? Informalization, Fundamentalism, and ­Women in an Indian City,” Gender, Place & Culture 19, no. 6 (2012): 790–809; K. Wilson, “­Towards a Radical Re-­appropriation: Gender, Development and Neoliberal Feminism,” Development and Change 44, no. 4 (2015): 803–832. 3. ​For inspired readings of some of ­t hese films that productively locate the stakes of a category such as “new w ­ oman” in historical contexts, see Anupama Arora, “Nobody Puts Rani in a Corner: Making of the New Indian ­Woman in Queen (2014),” South Asian Popu­lar Culture 17, no. 2 (2019): 145–157; Sushmita Chatterjee, “ ‘En­glish Vinglish’ and Bollywood: What Is ‘New’ about the ‘New ­Woman’?,” Gender, Place & Culture 23, no. 8 (2016): 1179–1192; Sukanya Gupta, “Kahaani, Gulaab Gang and Queen: Remaking the Queens of Bollywood,” South Asian Popu­lar Culture 13, no. 2 (2015): 107–123; Shubhra Sharma, “Transnational Publics, Nationalist Ideology and the ‘­Woman Question’ in Hindi Cinema: The Film Queen (2014),” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 41, no. 1 (2018): 106–120; Tupur Chatterjee, “Rape Culture, Misogyny, and Urban Anxiety in NH10 and Pink,” Feminist Media Studies 19, no. 1 (2017): 130–146. 4. ​Mainstream melodramas tended to highlight ­women’s suffering and victimization by a patriarchal society while parallel cinema analyzed the institutions—­caste, class, feudalism, marriage—­t hat ­limited her freedom and self-­expression. From the 1980s onward, this typology mutated as “women-­centered” films in both mainstream and indie film tended to stress how w ­ omen gained agency through suffering. This shift from “figure” to “agent” is elaborated in my forthcoming book, Media Meddlers: A History of ­Women’s Filmmaking in India, but aspects of this argument can also be found in L. Gopalan, “Avenging ­Women in Indian

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Cinema,” Screen 38, no. 1 (1997): 42–59; and Jyotika Virdi, “Reverence, Rape—­and Then Revenge: Popu­lar Hindi Cinema’s ‘­Woman’s Film,’ ” Screen 40, no. 1 (1999): 17–37. 5. ​One of the most classic accounts is, of course, Mary Ann Doane’s Femmes Fatales: Feminism, Film Theory, Psychoanalysis (New York: Routledge, 1991). For a more global account of the femme fatale, see H. Hanson and Catherine O’Rawe, The Femme Fatale: Images, Histories, Contexts (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). 6. ​The appearance of violent action figures in cinema, especially an uptick in such figurations in recent years, has been linked to the sociohistorical transformations of globalization. See Hilary Neroni, The Violent ­Woman: Femininity, Narrative, and Vio­lence in Con­temporary American Cinema (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005); J. Loreck, Violent ­Women in Con­temporary Cinema (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). For a historicized account of the emergence of this figure in Hollywood film, see J. Maxfield, The Fatal ­Woman: Sources of Male Anxiety in American Film Noir, 1941–1991 (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996). 7. ​The phrase “Nirbhaya effect” has been used by Raminder Kaur to designate creative and digital art activism that responds to the Nirbhaya rape case. Although, in a sense, ­t hese films might also be viewed in that canon, I am using this term more broadly to connote cultural productions that meditate on the social and economic contexts that shape quotidian gendered vio­lence of the kind that Nirbhaya epitomizes. See Raminder Kaur, “Mediating Rape: The Nirbhaya Effect in the Creative and Digital Arts,” Signs: Journal of W ­ omen in Culture and Society 42, no. 4 (Summer 2017): 945–976. 8. ​India ranked above Af­g han­i­stan and Syria—­countries ravaged by long wars. Belinda Goldsmith and Meka Beresford, “India Most Dangerous Country in the World for ­Women with Sexual Vio­lence Rife,” ­Reuters Poll, July 26, 2018, https://­in​.r­ euters​.­com​/­article​/­women​ -­dangerous​-p ­ oll​-i­ dINKBN1JM076. 9. ​Adrija Dey, “ ‘­Others’ within the ‘­Others’: An Intersectional Analy­sis of Gender Vio­lence in India,” Gender Issues 36 (2019): 357–373. 10. ​Tara Atluri, “The Young and the Restless: Gender, ‘Youth,’ and the Delhi Gang Rape Case of 2012,” Sikh Formations 9, no. 3 (2013): 361–379. 11. ​An excellent quantitative analy­sis of tweets about Nirbhaya suggest the seminal role played by anxiety in both online and offline protests. See Saifuddin Ahmed, Kokil Jaidka, and Jaeho Cho, “Tweeting India’s Nirbhaya Protest: A Study of Emotional Dynamics in an Online Social Movement,” Social Movement Studies 16, no. 4 (2017): 447–465. 12. ​Krupa Shandilya makes an excellent case for the middle-­class/upper-­c aste nature of ­t hese protests. See Krupa Shandilya, “Nirbhaya’s Body: The Politics of Protest in the Aftermath of the 2012 Delhi Gang Rape,” Gender & History 27, no. 2 (2015): 465–486. 13. ​Amanda Gilbertson, “Between Inclusivity and Feminist Purism: Young Gender Justice Workers in post-­Nirbhaya Delhi,” ­Women Studies International Forum 67 (2018): 1 14. ​See S. Roy, “Politics, Passion and Professionalization in Con­temporary Indian Feminism,” Sociology 45, no. 4 (2012): 587–602. 15. ​S. Roy, “The Indian ­Women’s Movement: Within and beyond NGOization,” Journal of South Asian Development 10, no. 1 (2015): 96–117. 16. ​Sumi Madhok and Shirin M. Rai, “Agency, Injury, and Transgressive Politics in Neoliberal Times,” Signs 37, no. 3 (2012): 645–669. 17. ​Durba Mitra, “Critical Perspectives on SlutWalks in India,” Feminist Studies 38, no. 1 (2012): 254261. 18. ​D. Dutta and O. Sircar, “India’s Winter of Discontent: Some Feminist Dilemmas in the Wake of a Rape,” Feminist Studies 39, no. 1 (2013): 293–306. 19. ​Quoted in Dutta and Sircar, 299. 20. ​Quoted in Gilbertson, 4. 21. ​For an analy­sis of the motif of sexual affirmation in the light of Nirbhaya and its links to middle-­class formation, see Mahima Taneja, “From Slutwalks to Nirbhaya: Shifts in the Indian W ­ omen’s Movement,” ­Women’s Studies International Forum 74 (2019): 179–187. 22. ​Quoted in Gilbertson, “Between Inclusivity and Feminist Purism,” 5–6.

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23. ​Quoted in Gilbertson, 7. 24. ​One can think of films as diverse as Arth (Meaning; Mahesh Bhatt, 1982) or Damini (Lightning; Raj Kumar Santoshi, 1993)—­t wo canonical titles in Bollywood’s “feminist” canon in which the protagonists come into their agency by first suffering and then recognizing that they have the capacity to repudiate the world as it is and try to bring into being a dif­fer­ent world. The protagonists are not action heroines to begin with, though. 25. ​See Šarūnas Paunksnis, “­Towards Neurotic Realism: Otherness, Subjectivity and New Hindi Cinema,” South Asian Popu­lar Culture 15, no. 1 (2017): 73–85, for a reading of this “binary” as structured by neurosis of the middle-­class subject in con­temporary Hindi cinema. 26. ​A trope in horror films to refer to the last ­woman left to face the killer (and by implication tell the story). 27. ​This two-­India trope can be gleaned, for instance, from two books, both published in 2012: The Beautiful and the Damned: A Portrait of New India, by Siddhartha Deb, and Beyond the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in an Undercity, by Katherine Boo. Though closely observed and incisive cultural analyses, they nonetheless work through some of the same binaries that have always rhetorically structured repre­sen­ta­tions of India as contradiction. 28. ​Madhava Prasad, Ideology of Hindi Film: A Historical Construction (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995). 29. ​Sangita Gopal, Conjugations: Marriage and Form in New Bollywood Cinema (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012). 30. ​This figuration of the ­family as stifling and provincial is especially marked in films set in small towns. ­Here a sharp contrast is drawn between the socially and sexually progressive ­women of the f­ amily and the men who must learn how to become worthy of them. From Tanu Weds Manu (Annand Rai, 2011) to Sui Dhaagha (Needle and thread; Sharat Katariya, 2018) to Bareli Ki Baarfi (Bareli’s Barfi; Ashwini Iyer Tiwari, 2017) and even Manmarziyan (Husband material; Anurag Kashyap, 2018), all place the onus of reforming the ­family on the ­woman. 31. ​Taran Khan, “Interview with Kanu Behl and Sharat Katariya,” Live Mint, October 15, 2015, https://­w ww​.­livemint​.­com​/­Leisure​/­7K3s5rDg6v8f5fg0cGpClO​/­Kanu​-­Belh—Sharat​-­Katariya​ -­We​-w ­ erent​-i­ nterested​-­in​-­a​-t­ op​.­html. 32. ​Giorgio Agamben, Means without End (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000).

chapter 3

Q

Beyond the ­Couple Form the space of the new w ­ oman in yash raj films Baidurya Chakrabarti

The figurations of ­women in con­temporary Bollywood cinema not only have been varied and boundary-­pushing but also have taken her out of the dual binds of ­family and conjugality, thus introducing the term “New ­Woman” in the popu­lar discourse. In the pre­sent essay, I strive to historicize the emergence of this New ­Woman vis-­à-­v is the long history of Hindi popu­lar cinema’s fraught relation with modernity. In addition, by looking at certain common thematics prevalent in the cinema produced by Yash Raj Films (hereafter YRF), I ­shall try to arrive at the ideological fantasy within which such con­temporary New ­Women of Bollywood operate.

The New ­Woman and the Modern Girl The category of “New ­Woman” is not new. This is significant ­because it opens up, in an oblique manner, an inquiry into the question, what is specifically new about the New W ­ oman.? At least one account, by Christine Stansell, traces back this English-­language neologism1 to the British journalist Sarah ­Grand in the early twentieth ­century, who coined the term to “refer to the educated middle-­ class ­woman who was trying to break out of her m ­ other’s parlor and aim somehow to ­matter.”2 In other words, the category, at that historical point, denoted a specific entry of ­women of a certain class into public lives of the time. This middle-­ class (new) ­woman, who entered into public life—­a nd especially the urbane imagination—as not entirely subsumable by the familial, belonged to the early twentieth ­century and was a major cultural presence, even if caricatured and exaggerated, in the globalized capitalism of the age of empire, especially during the de­cades between the two world wars. An anthology titled The Modern Girl around the World: Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization demonstrates that the aforementioned emergence took place during the era just mentioned across vast swaths 54

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of the world, including colonial India.3 The New W ­ oman had quickly “reified in the public imagination, assuming a stock appearance, a fixed set of be­hav­iors, and a cultural weight all her own.” 4 The title of the aforementioned anthology brings in a companion term that in popu­lar cultural discourse denoted this “stock appearance,” namely, the “Modern Girl.” The Modern Girl, defined by the editors of the anthology as signifying “the contested status of young w ­ omen, no longer c­ hildren, and their unstable sometimes subversive relationship to social norms relating to heterosexuality, marriage, and motherhood,”5 represented the more properly ideological but also the performative aspect of the New ­Women of that historical era. The more contested nature of the term “Modern Girl” stems from the fact that it was a more concrete term, as compared with the metaphysical and messianic valence of “New ­Woman.” This interplay between the “new” and “modern” signaled at the societal anx­i­eties that underlay the New Woman/Modern Girl discursive matrix: the forever-­new threat/ hope of modernity, the in-­between and overtly sexualized nature of the working and consuming ­woman outside the familial-­social as someone “not yet“ ­woman (whereas one of the counterthrusts of the New W ­ oman was and is to legitimize this figure as a ­woman and not a girl), and so on. In other words, the New ­Woman, and its attendant Modern Girl alter ego, emerged as a specifically cap­i­tal­ist and global phenomenon; it produced specific cultural anx­i­eties about ­t hings related to the “modern” ­woman. The New Woman/Modern Girl discursive axis at once recognized this emergence and tried to produce cultural affects and normative ideals that could stabilize and make meaning of it. What, then, is the significance of this New Woman/Modern Girl discourse, given its historical time period, with re­spect to con­temporary Bollywood and ­today’s New ­Woman? Before we begin indulging in analogies between two moments of globalized liberal economy then and now, it is helpful to note that this specific New Woman/Modern Girl discourse was one of the founding fascinations of early Indian cinemas, including the then-­emerging Bombay cinema. As Priti Ramamurthy shows, early Indian female film stars of ­silent cinema and early talkies, like Sulochana, operated around the narrative of the Modern Girl.6 Ramamurthy refers to this significant subsection of early social genre films as Modern Girl films, and it is pretty clear that it is around ­t hese films, and not the mythologicals and historicals, that the first star-­texts of Indian cinema ­were born. Kaushik Bhaumik shows how the entry of the bourgeoisie, especially from Bengal, into film production signaled the hegemonic rise of the melodramatic social realism of, for example, Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay, which, “as a po­liti­cal and cultural weapon,” countered the “effect” of Modern Girl films and was “bracketed by an emerging consensus about the essential core of Indian culture.”7 It produced a “cultural ethnoscape” that subsumed the drive of the modern apparent in the Modern Girl figure, reemplaced her in the familial sphere, bound her public appearance to the question of need (rather than desire), and so on; it is this cultural ethnoscape that most of the significant works on Hindi popu­lar cinema analyze.8 The unbound and feared “modernity” of the Modern Girl was now subsumed within the feudal f­ amily

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romance, the feudal ­family and normative conjugality being the exemplars of the aforementioned cultural ethnoscape. The manifestation of such modernness in the ­woman figure, ­whether a heroine or a vamp, became the narrative crisis whose resolution was to be found in the subsumptive power of the ­family and conjugality. In short, as Hindi narrative cinema settled down, its ideological grundnorm became that a ­woman can be a modern subject only as part of the conjugated ­couple sanctioned by the traditional gaze of the feudal ­family.9 If this has been the historical trajectory of the New Woman/Modern Girl discursive axis within Indian cinema, then the resurgence of the terminology now, in the time of neoliberalism, must signal at a definitive passing away of something that had for long been able to subsume the modernity of such figure. If the New ­Woman has experienced resurgence, then some older form of w ­ oman must have moved over or at least made the space for new figurations.

The Modern Girl Redux: 1990s Bollywood and YRF But before we move on to the con­temporary, we need to first glance at 1990s Bollywood and its genre of the diasporic ­family melodrama (the masala film), as it is in ­t hese films that we again encounter a consumerist return of the repressed Modern Girl. However, this “return” was then thoroughly disguised as a memorialized/spectacularized traditional conjugality. The term “Bollywood”—­hinting at a semantic linkage and equivalence with “Hollywood”—­has become omnipresent since the 1990s. The provenance of the term has been curious, since it does not r­ eally denote a “new” paradigm but works like an ever-­hungry signifier that retroactively subsumes the entirety of Hindi popu­lar cinema, functioning through an accretion and flattening of historically multiple structures of meaning and feeling, almost like a moment of “original accumulation” of cultural history as one huge repository of pre­sent images. Thus, the arrival of Bollywood created a crisis in dominant narratives; this crisis came in the form of a nostalgic memorialization of Hindi popu­lar cinema into a minimum, flat template immediately recognizable as “Bollywood masala.” I ­shall argue that the New W ­ oman of con­temporary Bollywood owes its existence to this moment, in a roundabout albeit decisive manner. It must be noted, though, that the films that tend to represent this 1990s moment of Bollywood in most discussions, like Hum Aapke Hai Koun..! (1994), Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (1995), Pardes (1997), Dil To Pagal Hai (1997), and Kuchh Hota Hai (1998),10 ­were part of a numerically minor but generally significant genre, often identified as the diasporic f­ amily melodrama. This genre produced a romantic melodrama of generational conflict between a ­father -­figure and a recalcitrant son (or son-­in-­law and other variations), full of pastiche, homage, and spectacle. However, this sort of de jure narrative centrality of the generational conflict, always precipitated by the question of who ­w ill take the Modern Girl away, was a foil for foregrounding the spectacle of the son figure, along with the Modern Girl, navigating new, global spaces of consumption. Spectacle ruled the roost of the diasporic

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f­ amily melodramas of the 1990s, and the content of the spectacle was specifically the dead bodies of erstwhile modes of sociability, including caricatures of (Hindu upper-­caste) customs, rituals, and f­ amily situated in a nowhere-­land. The only ­thing living in t­ hese narratives came in the form of the newfound mobility of both the male and the female protagonists. The film that arguably started this trend, Hum Aapke Hain Koun..!, was a remake of a 1982 film, Nadia ke Paar,11 made by the same production concern, Rajshri Productions. The 1982 version, an adaptation of a Hindi short story, was a domestic melodrama placed in an Uttar Pradesh village, made recognizable by the dialect and extensive location shooting. The 1994 version, however, transforms the story into one of a class of rich industrialists and affluent professors living in an idealized domestic space. The film’s title scene begins with both stars of the film, Salman Khan and Madhuri Dixit, looking directly at the audience against a black backdrop, tilting their heads in vari­ous ways, as if representing the moment of the first encounter between two lovers. This is a visual strategy of libidinous relay, where we are made the passive mediator who witnesses the gazes of the lovers reach each other from the left to the right of the screen and vice versa, thus telescoping the fact that the two stars are preordained to be together even before the narrative begins. This effectively transforms the subsequent falling in love of the c­ ouple to a ­matter of redundancy. Such narrative destitution then allows other attractions to take over, enabling the two protagonists to continuously tease each other in lighthearted games of preconjugal foreplay. In other words, the familial crisis of value that appears to be the narrative center is a thin guise that allows for spectacles that signal at a dif­fer­ent picture. But even at the level of spectacle, it shows a duality. While the elder ­brother (Manish Behl) and his wife (Renuka Shahane) are a serious industrialist and a conventional homely girl, respectively, the main protagonists are presented in a very dif­fer­ent manner. The hero, Prem (Salman Khan), seems to be the spoiled younger son of the f­ amily, chiefly occupied with playing cricket and driving fast cars; the heroine (Madhuri Dixit) is a mandolin-­playing, roller-­skating Modern Girl, the tomboy of the ­family. Interestingly, ­t hese two are the only ­people who keep inserting En­glish into their regular verbal exchanges in the midst of chaste Hindi. The onus of the film h ­ ere is to absorb the differences of the disposition of this leading ­couple within the framework of the spectacularized Hindu traditions. In other words, the two poles of the narrative ­were inhabited by the Modern Girl and Boy and “tradition.” Unlike in former Hindi popu­lar cinema, the “tradition” in masala films was a tradition of no-­place, and thus alienated enough to be invoked at any-­place-­whatsoever. On the other side of this absolute superficiality was, however, the absolute necessity of it, since its existence worked as the necessary point of reference vis-­à-­v is which the existence of an outside of new bodily skills, new terms, new technological attractions, and the possibility of a new subjectivity can be posited, from which the figures of the protagonists, both male and female, seemed to be drawing their distinctions. This cinema came across as the cinema of noncontradiction: an immanent emergence of a performative new

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(generation) within the alienated strictures of a tradition bereft of spatial referent, as if the new and the old can easily coexist! In other words, like the protectionist state in the early nineties that believed it could selectively exercise liberalization of the economy without losing itself completely, the onus ­here was on the abstracted, ritualized (Hindu, upper-­caste) social of the no-­space to be supple enough to absorb, to make space for the threateningly performative modernity of new generational figurations. For this to take place, the erstwhile tradition/ modernity binary of Hindi popu­lar cinema was insufficient. H ­ ere, tradition instead became a dead code, supremely alienated, so that it could achieve the ubiquity of being “the Tradition.” Rather than being ­actual national allegories like Hindi popu­lar cinema, ­t hese films simulated the allegory: the simulation of a codified tradition within which a new, globalized subject can find easy habitation by mimicking the language of the same simulated tradition. The global and consumerist habitus of the female protagonists of ­t hese films harked back at some of the repre­sen­ta­tions of the Modern Girl, while being nested within the aforementioned simulation of tradition. This nesting in simulated tradition meant that t­ hese figurations w ­ ere not yet t­ hose of the New W ­ oman, as their newfound modern consumerist and bodily disposition did not translate into e­ ither an autonomy or a sovereignty of ­these subjects. The performative dexterity in negotiating the sovereignty of the ­couple remained the exclusive preserve of the man, rendering the melodramas along the father-­son axis, of which Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, a landmark film by Yash Raj Films was a clear example.12

New ­Woman and the Precariat as the Postnuptial C ­ ouple Form In the con­temporary, the narrative vehicle for the New ­Woman is generically vastly dif­fer­ent from the masala melodramas of the 1990s. The con­temporary repre­sen­ ta­t ion of the New W ­ oman is nestled within a generic tendency that we can call urban/suburban realism, where the New ­Woman forms one half of a new ­couple form whose narrative trajectories reflect a specific allegory for neoliberal aspiration in con­temporary India. Then how do we bridge the 1990s manifestation of the Modern Girl with the con­temporary New ­Woman? In the first years of the new millennium, Bollywood was undergoing momentous changes, becoming more capitalized and or­ga­nized. Corporatization and the attendant “portfolio approach” meant, along with the growing presence of multiplexes, that the logic of risk management and division of l­abor made a product-­ differentiating “realism” the preferred business logic. Soon, Bollywood cinema reor­ga­nized itself into a system of a few blockbusters, incredibly spectacularized, being surrounded by a large number of small-­budget films, where both followed very dif­fer­ent generic and actorly conventions and managed to allay the risks involved with re­spect to each other by addressing very dif­fer­ent demands. It was in the latter films the New ­Woman found her repre­sen­ta­t ional ground. Such films (1) gave up on the nineties’ spectacularized melodrama of reified tradition, (2) maintained the historicity of Bollywood as a shared memory that transcends

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gender and class differences, and (3) created a new ­couple form whose right to be was no longer the central narrative drive. Sangita Gopal, while describing this reinvented c­ ouple form, states, “New Bollywood cinema disavows traditional romance and replaces the problematic of romance with one concerned with intimacy,” which she terms the “postnuptial problematic.” She continues: “One of my central suggestions . . . ​is that the postnuptial c­ ouple produced by new Bollywood serves as a ground for elaborating on the citizen-­subject of the emerging post-­liberalization state. Two conditions need to be met if this proj­ect is to succeed. First, the c­ ouple must be extracted from the domain (and dominion) of the social . . . ​in order to be properly individuated. Second, the c­ ouple must be ‘technologized.’ ”13 In the next section I s­ hall venture to demonstrate that such narrative figures do form a generic ­couple in a number of films, many of which came from the YRF banner and helped it rebrand itself. The ­women of t­ hese postnuptial romances are often from a higher class, and their habitation in the neoliberal times is primarily marked by their “working” status, to be understood as ­women not merely holding jobs but also being able to navigate the public world of neoliberal urbanity without the crutch of the familial. The other half of the c­ ouple form of Gopal’s postnuptial romance, the man, tends to come from a more precarious class than the New ­Woman. I s­ hall call this male figure, following Guy Standing, the precariat.14 Marked by Standing as the “dangerous” new class of neoliberalism, the precariat—­like its more famous pre­ de­ces­sor, the proletariat—­represents the precarious ground zero of the cap­i­tal­ist hierarchy of ­labor. Unlike the proletariat, however, this figure is the embodiment of thoroughly modern, socialized l­abor,15 being the owner of the knowledge and the tools of technologized, decentered, and often outsourced production pro­cesses. Some of the most obvious examples of such work of producing postnuptial romance between the New W ­ oman and the precariat have come from the stables of YRF. The disappearance or the nonfeasibility of the diasporic f­ amily melodrama must have come as a significant narrative challenge for the studio, which it seems to have tackled quite skillfully. At the level of the narrative, a slew of YRF films took recourse to the older Bollywoodian idioms of the nineties and turned them upside down, producing a space of identification for both the new m ­ iddle class and the precariat.

Locating the Postnuptial C ­ ouple Form in Yash Raj Films At the forefront of the transformation of the erstwhile diasporic f­ amily melodrama are the works of Maneesh Sharma, now a producer for YRF. Continuing the trend already vis­i­ble in films like Fanaa (2006), Aaja Nachh Le (2007), and Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi (2008),16 Maneesh Sharma’s films Band Baaja Baaraat (2010), Ladies vs. Ricky Behl (2011), Shudhh Desi Romance (2013), and Dum Lagaa Kar Haisha (2015),17 which he produced, center on female characters who represent the New W ­ oman of Bollywood, essentially a “worker” in the neoliberal economy, and male characters

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who represent the precariat aspiring to be part of the new m ­ iddle class by being parts of all the industries the “Bollywoodization” of Hindi cinema seems to have produced. The “romance” part and the foundational fantasy of ­t hese films stem from the staging of the rehabilitation of such precariat through a romantic conjugation with the New (working) ­Woman, with the latter being the stand-in for the eventual promise of a sociopo­liti­cal legitimation. On the other hand, this rehabilitating stature of the New W ­ oman wryly acknowledges, almost as a return of the repressed, the precariousness of the public lives of such ­women. In Band Baaja Baaraat, the female protagonist, Shruti Kakkar (Anushka Sharma), hails from a ­family residing in a middle-­class neighborhood of Delhi. She has struck a deal with her parents that she w ­ ill marry the boy of their choice if she is given five years’ time to set up her own wedding planning business. We immediately see how the public in­de­pen­dence of this New ­Woman figure is at once transitory, negotiated, and yet aspiring ­toward the sovereignty achieved by owning an in­de­pen­dent business. On the other hand, the familial h ­ ere is reduced to a real­ity referent—­a fact-­of-­t he-­matter casually mentioned once, with not much presence, ­either materially or symbolically, in the film. The male protagonist, Bittoo Sharma (Ranveer Singh), comes from a village and is ­under pressure to go back and join the ­family enterprise of farming sugarcane. Living in a college hostel, he is the polar opposite of business-­minded Shruti, busying himself with gate-­crashing weddings for f­ ree food, where, during the last days of his college life, he meets Shruti, who was assisting in the organ­ization of that wedding. His romantic advances are, however, spurned by Shruti, who informs Bittoo of her ­grand business plan, thus subjugating romance to the business logic of public sovereignty—­when compared with the right-­to-be of the neoliberal aspirational subject, the interiorized logic of romantic conjugality takes a backseat. Disillusioned by the “cheating” practiced by big wedding planning concerns, they open their own wedding planning business, Shaadi Mubarak. Being virtually an unknown entity, they find their first assignment at the most unlikely of places, namely, the mohalla (quarter) of Janakpuri. They manage to convince a lower-­middle-­class Hindu man to allow them to arrange the impending wedding of his ­daughter. Shruti decides to take up the substantial challenge of organ­izing a “theme” wedding in this lower-­middle-­class neighborhood, where the extended community has traditionally or­ga­nized weddings on the very lane on which ­these ­houses are situated. The film registers in detail the density of the lived environment of an alley of a lower-­middle-­class mohalla. What follows is a long montage accompanied by the soundtrack of the song “Band Baajaa Baaraat,” with laborers of vari­ous informal sectors—­the tent makers, the electricians, the flower vendor, the cook from a roadside dhaba, the beauticians, and even a college band—­ working together ­under the supervision of Shruti, in order to fi­nally transform the lane and the adjacent park into a space that is very clearly marked as “Bollywood.” While not being exactly a fantasy sequence, certain choices of camera ­angles and the pacing of editing imbue the scene with the fantasies of aspirational transformation.

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Once the setup is complete and the lights are switched on, Bittoo and Shruti choose to take a walk down the red carpet, anticipating their eventual becoming of a c­ ouple. At this moment, the camera chooses to magnify the figures through a low-­angle shot, with the rows of Chinese lights shining against the backdrop of the darkening sky, which closely resembles, in a self-­reflexive nod, the ubiquitous photo­graph of stars entering a premiere or an award function. In a series of such maneuvers, a mode of relay is produced between the material signifier of a wedding structure and its referent, namely, Bollywood weddings. What is even more in­ter­est­ing is that this shift does not take place through the usual grafting of an entirely dif­fer­ent space onto another, where we need to suspend our disbelief with some ­will to imagine that it is still the same space. On the contrary, it still retains the mohalla, now the vis­i­ble skeleton of this Bollywoodized space, hinting at the possibility of a realism of postmodern aspirations embodied by the New W ­ oman and the precariat, the new subjects of the neoliberal economy. Let us note ­here how the YRF’s reinvention of its brand in the new millennium through small-­budget, putatively “indie,” films often represent a thorough inversion of the discursive space created by the nineties’ diasporic melodramas. In a sort of ethnographic gaze turned inward, it, in this film, examines the “real­ity” of wedding planning, a new entrepreneurial, informal, and “socialized” activity influenced by what is known as the “Bollywood” aesthetic. While the nineties’ melodrama maintained the aura of its spectacular settings by thoroughly distancing them from the signifiers of urban middle-­class real­ity, ­here, in an inside-­out pro­cess, the space of a mohalla lane is shown to undergo a detailed ­labor of transformation, by which it comes to resemble a set right out of the nineties’ films. The realist register of the film underscores the act of l­ abor that achieves this transformation. The transformation, while foregrounding the indexicality of the mohalla, also foregrounds the possibility of transforming it, in however transient a manner, into an aspirational space, modeled ­after the image of the memorialized “Bollywood.” The message h ­ ere is ­simple: the improvisational quality of the informal economy is supple enough to transform the existing into the aspirational. In such films, Bollywood becomes a socially shared aspirational code to be used to transform the real into the ideal. While such a deliberate foregrounding of the transformation of urban spaces into the productive spaces for the precariat/New W ­ oman c­ ouple is essentially the work of fantasy, ­today’s cinema demonstrates a virtual explosion of such spaces and their subjects on-­screen. Dum Laga Ke Haisha, another YRF production by Maneesh Sharma, is about an “overweight,” well-­educated, working bride, Sandhya (Bhumi Pednekar), living in Hrishikesh, Uttarakhand. She is being married off to a reluctant husband, Prem Prakash Tiwari (Ayushman Khurrana), with the latter having trou­ble accepting her into his life. Again, we see the unlikely coupling of the precariat man and the new working w ­ oman, now placed squarely in a suburban space, where the initial in­equality between the two becomes the source of narrative tension and dynamics.

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In comparison to Sandhya, Prem Prakash has failed in his matriculation several times and now runs his ­father’s cassette player repair shop. Situated in the time when the cassette culture was slowly ­dying ­under the attack of CDs and DVDs, this film portrays Prem Prakash as someone whose creativity and indeed any depth of character are expressed solely through his deep audiophile immersion within nineties’ popu­lar Hindi film songs, especially ­those by Kumar Shanu, and his mastery over the production of mixtapes. He is the quin­tes­sen­tial precariat of India’s pirate modernity: lacking in conventional educational qualification, he is the devalued artisan whose creativity, cannibalizing existing and patented cultural products, at once saturates the life of a small town like Hardwar and is ignored as a site of creative, formal ­labor. True to the general gender politics of t­ hese films, Sandhya is educated enough to belong to a dif­fer­ent class of ­labor (schoolteacher) and have a completely dif­fer­ent set of values—­Prem is a Sanghi, while Sandhya strongly believes in her in­de­pen­dence and is comfortable in her body—­which are the sources of the initial friction between the two. However, they share their interest in the idiom of Hindi film ­music, which ultimately helps them in becoming the ideal conjugal c­ ouple; this they celebrate in spectacular fashion during the end-­title sequence by reenacting the dance routine of a Kumar Shanu song. The film stages an encounter between a new ­middle class, which is precarious in its newness, and the precariat, which lacks the cultural wherewithal necessary to enter the new m ­ iddle class. Through the contrivance of a marriage that takes place at the very beginning, this class problematic is shifted to one of cohabitation, where they discover a shared space in memorialized Bollywood m ­ usic, a passion for which they share. The legal-­social legitimization of the private is resolved much before the question of mastery and intimacy is solved in the public, which is the exact obverse of erstwhile Hindi popu­lar conjugal romances. I would like to claim that this is one of the fundamental fantasies of con­temporary Bollywood realism: a coupling of the New ­Woman and the precariat, which no longer legitimizes itself in the eye of the feudal familial gaze but must attain a mastery over one’s relation to the world of neoliberal, informal production. The space that this fantasy inhabits is a space-­to-be, one that does not yet feature on the blueprints of any urban planner. This is also what Rem Koolhas has termed the “junkspace,” where all the cultural detritus of the official industry enter into new assemblages for the localized consumption of the inhabitants. In other words, this is a city blooming within the city, working at a subterranean level and producing the productive infrastructures of its subjects, while the subject remains informal, po­liti­ cally and legally uncounted for. Such utopic dimensions, however, are couched within the suturing ideology of aspiration. In a rather contrived climax, Prem Prakash is shown capable of literally carry­ing the “burden” of his wife and winning the race. While the rehabilitating agency remains with the New ­Woman, in the end, she still needs to be literally carried over the line, thus reinstating, in the last instance, the patriarchal ideal. Maneesh Sharma’s third film, Shuddh Desi Romance, further illustrates my point about the gender politics of t­ hese films. This film, situated in the nonmetro-

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politan city of Jaipur, centers around another branch of the ancillary industries produced by the Bollywood-­i nfluenced wedding industry. While we are accustomed to seeing the long entourage of ­family members bedecked in flashy costumes in almost any Indian wedding, this film unearths an entire industry that hires ­people to act as this “­family.” In an inversion, the narrative center of 1990s Bollywood diasporic melodramas, namely, the “­family,” is exposed as being also a cap­i­tal­ist construction, indeed an informal culture industry, pre­sent even in the hinterlands of nonmetropolitan Rajasthan. F ­ amily, indeed, is one signifier that is ­under threat in con­temporary Bollywood realism, through e­ ither demystification, as in this instance, or outright vilification (as in Love Sex aur Dhokha [2010]).18 One such former “hired hand” (nakli baraati) of marriage parties, Raghu (Sushant Singh Rajput), meets Gayatri (Parineeti Chopra) on the eve of his own marriage. The latter, a college student living in­de­pen­dently in a pent­house flat, has come to play the part of his English-­educated ­sister. On the long bus journey to the wedding venue through the night, he is attracted to Gayatri and makes out with her. The memory of the encounter fi­nally convinces him to run away from his own wedding, setting off a series of such escapes by both Raghu and Gayatri, creating a sort of relay between ­t hese two characters across the gender gap. Conforming to the template of gender/class relation of the previous two films, Gayatri is the sole d ­ aughter of a civil servant and joins the realm of the informal economy as a ­matter of choice. Raghu, in contrast, is the “au­t hen­tic” precariat, working as a guide as well as a tout, among other ­things. Raghu quickly moves into a live-in relationship with Gayatri, staying at her place, while feigning to be her b ­ rother. As mentioned ­earlier, the private is consummated much before their public status can be established, making the question of the right-­to-be of the c­ ouple redundant. The rest of the film revolves around the inability of both the protagonists to commit to the institution of marriage—­whose underbelly both of them had inhabited—­ despite mutual love and attraction. By the trope of the live-in relationship, the film achieves an equivalence of the relation to desire for both the ­woman and the man, which has in­ter­est­ing ideological implications. Given the class difference between the w ­ oman and the man, which the film tends to elide, this equivalence seems more about the construction of a shared space between the new m ­ iddle class and the precariat than any genuine gender sensitivity. Despite that, though, the connection between liberalized gender relations and the self-­definition of the emerging new ­middle class points at the constituency of this realism being essentially liberal. The postnuptial ­couple form described ­here is essentially a fantasy, suturing in representation—as popu­lar cinema often does—­disparate social ele­ments who are in real­ity violently antagonistic. It is not the repre­sen­ta­tion of the New ­Woman as somebody who has achieved autonomy at ­every level of life, now beginning to building the world in its own image. Instead, she is coupled with a figuration, the precariat, who in real­ity is the chief antagonist to a­ ctual new working w ­ omen of neoliberal India. This narrative coupling is thus a fantasy, which recognizes the specifically neoliberal character of t­ hese social ele­ments, while positing repre­sen­ ta­tional “resolutions” to their (lack of) social coexistence.

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Conclusion This postnuptial conjugal romance between the New ­Woman and the precariat man should, thus, be seen as embroiled necessary ideological ele­ments for allegories of public aspirations. What this new narrative reveals, besides the emergence of the New ­Woman and the precariat man, is the close, almost umbilical relation of this emergence to the memorialization of the former Hindi popu­lar cinema into abstract Bollywood aesthetic, the mastery of which is often what distinguishes and separates t­ hese new ­women subjects from their e­ arlier counter­parts. This is also a transitional genre, as it has gone on to produce similar films working with a similar template (Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhaniya [2014], Meri Pyari Bindu [2017], Bareily Ki Barfi [2017], Gully Boy [2019]),19 as well as films in which the trajectories of the New ­Woman have gone relatively in­de­pen­dent of the figure of the precariat man. ­There is a strange film like Highway (2014),20 where one such w ­ oman finds the voice to break out of her abusive f­ amily a­ fter paradoxically finding her freedom ­a fter being kidnapped by an equally abused Gujjar truck driver. Th ­ ere are aspirational narratives like Anarkali of Aarah (2017),21 where, ­u nder the guise of established generic conventions, a trenchant critique of patriarchy faced by performing ­women can be broached. ­There is even resurgence of group (homo)sociality, now found among affluent New ­Women, in films like Veere di Wedding (2018).22 Through t­ hese films, the ideological valence of the figure of the New W ­ oman is constantly changing, which demands a closer study of the trajectory of this change. What all t­ hese films demonstrate is the arrival of the neoliberal New ­Woman for whom the older tropes of the Modern Girl had to be reintroduced and a new neoliberal male subject of the precariat had to be produced. Her conjugation with this new subject is the price she is made to pay for her newfound public life.

notes 1. ​­There are historical parallels in other languages, like the Neue Frauen in Weimer Germany. 2. ​See Marie Louise Roberts, “Making the Modern Girl French: From New W ­ oman to Éclaireuse,” in The Modern Girl around the World: Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization, ed. Alys Eve Weinbaum, Lynn. M. Thomas, Priti Ramamurthy, Uta G. Poiger, Madeleine Yue Dong, and Tani E. Barlow (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), 78. 3. ​See Alys Eve Weinbaum, Lynn. M. Thomas, Priti Ramamurthy, Uta G. Poiger, Madeleine Yue Dong, and Tani E. Barlow eds., The Modern Girl around the World: Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008). 4. ​See Roberts, “Making the Modern Girl French,” 78. 5. ​See Alys Eve Weinbaum, Lynn. M. Thomas, Priti Ramamurthy, Uta G. Poiger, Madeleine Yue Dong, and Tani E. Barlow, eds., “The Modern Girl as Heuristic Device: Collaboration, Connective Comparison, Multidirectional Citation,” in The Modern Girl around the World: Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), 9. 6. ​See Priti Ramamurthy, “All Consuming Nationalism: The Indian Modern Girl in the 1920s and the 1930s,” in The Modern Girl around the World: Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization, ed. Alys Eve Weinbaum, Lynn. M. Thomas, Priti Ramamurthy, Uta G. Poiger, Madeleine Yue Dong, and Tani E. Barlow. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), 147–173.

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7. ​See Kaushik Bhaumik, “The Emergence of the Bombay Film Industry, 1913–36” (PhD diss., University of Oxford, 2001), 145. 8. ​For representative examples, see Madhava M. Prasad, Ideology of the Hindi Film: A Historical Construction (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998); Ravi Vasudevan, The Melodramatic Public: Film Form and Spectatorship in Indian Cinema (Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2010). 9. ​It should be noted that the Modern Girl figuration continued to be employed sporadically right up to the early 1950s, often in a comic vein. An impor­tant example w ­ ill be Shrimati Ji (I. S. Johar, 1951). It is the same figuration that ­w ill be the source of anxiety in comedies like Mr. and Mrs. 55 (Guru Dutt, 1955). 10. ​ Hum Aapke Hai Koun..!, directed by Sooraj Barjatya (1994; Mumbai: Rajshri Productions), DVD, 199 min.; Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, directed by Aditya Chopra (1995; Mumbai: Yash Raj Films), DVD, 189 min.; Pardes, directed by Subhash Ghai (1997; Mumbai: Mukta Arts), DVD, 191  min.; Dil To Pagal Hai, directed by Yash Chopra (1997; Mumbai: Yash Raj Films), DVD, 180 min.; and Kuchh Hota Hai, directed by Karan Johar (1998; Mumbai: Dharma Productions), DVD, 185 min. 11. ​ Nadiya ke Paar, directed by Govind Moonis (1982; Mumbai: Rajshri Productions); DVD, 150 min. 12. ​See Vasudevan, The Melodramatic Public, 369–370. 13. ​See Sangita Gopal, Conjugations: Marriage and Form in New Bollywood Cinema (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 18. 14. ​See Guy Standing, The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011). 15. ​This, according to Marx, is the hallmark of real subsumption of l­abor. Socialization of ­labor denotes the absorption of all traditional sectors and all traditional classes of production within the ambit of the informality of the neoliberal mode of production. This produces a markedly dif­fer­ent class scenario with a general movement t­ oward the m ­ iddle class; on the other hand, the informality and insecurity of the neoliberal economy render this new ­middle class precarious. 16. ​ Fanaa, directed by Kunal Kohli (2006; Mumbai: Yash Raj Films), DVD, 169 min.; Aaja Nachh Le, directed by Anil Mehta (2007; Mumbai: Yash Raj Films), DVD, 146 min.; and Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, directed by Aditya Chopra (2008; Mumbai: Yash Raj Films), DVD, 164 min. 17. ​ Band Baaja Baaraat, directed by Maneesh Sharma (2010; Mumbai: Yash Raj Films), DVD, 140 min.; Ladies vs. Ricky Behl, directed by Maneesh Sharma (2011; Mumbai: Yash Raj Films), DVD, 140 min.; Shudhh Desi Romance, directed by Maneesh Sharma (2013; Mumbai: Yash Raj Films), DVD, 140 min.; and Dum Lagaa Kar Haisha, directed by Sharat Katariya (2015; Mumbai: Yash Raj Films), DVD, 110 min. 18. ​ Love Sex aur Dhokha, directed by Dibakar Banerjee (2010; Mumbai: Balaji Motion Pictures), DVD, 102 min. 19. ​ Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhaniya, directed by Shashank Khaitan (2014; Mumbai: Dharma Productions), DVD, 135 min.; Meri Pyari Bindu, directed by Akshay Roy (2017; Mumbai: Yash Raj Films) DVD, 119 min.; Bareily Ki Barfi, directed by Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari (2017; Mumbai: Junglee Pictures), DVD, 122 min.; Gully Boy, directed by Zoya Akhtar (2019; Mumbai: Excel Entertainment/Tiger Baby Films), DVD, 153 min. 20. ​ Highway, directed by Imtiaz Ali (2014; Mumbai: Win­dow Seats/Nadiadwala Grand­son Entertainment), DVD, 133 min. 21. ​ Anarkali of Aarah, directed by Avinash Das (2017; Mumbai: Promodome Motion Pictures), DVD, 113 min. 22. ​Veere di Wedding, directed by Shashanka Ghosh (2018; Mumbai: Balaji Motion Pictures, Anil Kapoor Films and Communication Networks, Saffron Broadcast & Media), DVD, 130 min.

chapter 4

Q

Mera Saaya shadows of the ­woman in bollywood’s cultural imagination Aparajita De

Disparaged for their blend of tawdry escape, mindless song and dance sequences in exotic locales, and formulaic melodrama, or in their projection of utopic material culture, Bollywood films flamboyantly disregard any criticism. Hailed as a dominant vehicle of popu­lar culture, Bollywood propagates Indian aesthetic sensibilities and is a preeminent site exporting identity and nationalism. Seamlessly conflating and propagating India, its culture, and the concept of the nation to refer mostly to a normative Hindu, upper-­class/caste, male heterosexist location, Bollywood has sustained and consolidated, a myth about India. Moreover, the rise of a cap­i­tal­ist open market economy bolstered the reach of Bollywood as India’s cultural ambassador; si­mul­ta­neously, it perpetrated simplistic binaries about India by carving out an exclusive space shunning w ­ omen, minorities, and Muslims. My essay, while acknowledging such silences, focuses on the depiction of “new” ­women in the mapping of the nation in Bollywood films, primarily in films not markedly commercializing tropes of nationalism and identity. In action-­oriented films with feminine protagonists with a missing or passive male presence, and within urban landscapes, the idea of Bollywood’s “new” womanhood remains aligned with traditional values and majoritarian identities. Focusing on two recent films, Kahaani (2012) and The Lunchbox (2013), I show that ­t hese narratives, falling within the broader category of the domestic drama in Bollywood, easily reviewed as vehicles celebrating new, urban, empowered, and individualized femininity,1 apparently underpin and reendorse mainstream majoritarian identities of Indian womanhood. ­These identities are at once associated with upper-­caste sensibilities, focus on members of India’s multiply stratified m ­ iddle class located in urban metropoles, and largely embrace the compass of Hindu, Brahminical traditions. Although reviewed favorably to underline a reified space for w ­ omen, t­ hese films systemically erase minority narratives and portray women-­centric plots that reinforce dominant paradigms, even without a significant male presence. The title 66

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of my essay is mindful of this politics and alludes to a 1966 Bollywood classic whose literal translation from Hindi is “My Shadow.” This essay refers to the ways in which mainstream Bollywood films have invisibilized or profiled minority ­women and the idea of the Indian ­woman through repre­sen­ta­tions that are traditional, selectively modern, or, always only Hindu. Cultural theorists have highlighted Bollywood’s pandering to Hindu mainstream identities. For Madhava Prasad, Bollywood films resonate with dominant Hindu nationalistic codes to appropriate and reinforce the idea of a Hindu nation.2 For Prasad, the themes of kinship, loyalty, and codes of honor represented in Bollywood sustain an iconography that conflates “Indian” with Hindu, male, upper-­ caste/class, Hindi-­speaking, thereby eliding minority, feminine, and queer/trans identities. Bollywood genres propagating this brand of national identity have found more currency in popu­lar appeal within the domestic drama. This genre strategically locates the nature and scope of Indian modernity within cinematic portrayals; while dependent on cap­i­tal­ist desires of production and distribution; ­t hese portrayals have seamlessly projected masculine identities as valid proponents of that modernity. Rupal Oza’s book The Making of Neoliberal India importantly adds that “dif­fer­ent actors within civil society participate in promoting national and gender identities even when they hold po­liti­cally divergent positions.”3 So, Bollywood and civil society disseminate undergirded cultural codes to reterritorialize definitions of gender, sexuality, and patriarchal power structures to create a brand of modernity and newness. Nandana Bose had already demonstrated this alignment in studying Bollywood cinema through its increasing use of Hindu iconography to connote a par­tic­u­lar version of ‘Indianness.’ ” 4 While explicit cinepatriotism and Hindu nationalistic trends characterized a majority of Bollywood films in the 1990s, more recent films proj­ect ­women who masquerade as new and modern, but ostensibly reflect dominant cultural anx­i­eties and ideological preoccupations that respond to the rhe­toric of majoritarianism. Touted as novel, t­ hese ­women of Bollywood cinema remain blatant symbols championing a systemic Indian/Hindu female subjectivity. This repre­sen­ta­tion is both antithetical to minority (female) identities, helps articulate a norm for “good” Indian womanhood, and portrays feminine subjectivity as a site to proliferate and sustain heterosexist patriarchy. This repre­sen­ta­tional myopia (critically and functionally), not only disinvests Bollywood films from sociopo­liti­cal responsibility or issues of social justice, but also si­mul­ta­ neously exposes the rampant disenfranchisement of ­women and minorities within popu­lar culture. My discussion of gendered subjectivity in Bollywood as a symptom propagating a monolithic version of womanhood and national identity becomes more relevant when the rise of identity politics uses gender as its chief vehicle to market national belonging. The wave of xenophobia in the subcontinent, following the coming to power of the Hindu right, has resulted in a crisis in democracy. My argument is not that Bollywood functions as an unmitigated vehicle of rightist politics or that it is the only medium for articulating a Pan-­Indian Hindu identity. However, in drawing a significant amount of audience and investment from Indians

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settled abroad, in showcasing the extent of the reach of “brand India,” Bollywood is an undeniable product in the international culture economy with a secure Pan-­Indian consumer spectatorship. Cultural studies critics have concluded that popu­lar versions of nationalistic identities ­were circulated through film and an increasingly consolidated Hindu right.5 Observers w ­ ere concerned with filmmaking and the ways it reconfigured the aesthetic and social fibers of the nation. Shamita Das Dasgupta6 and Sangeeta Datta7 have both noted the role that ­women in filmmaking and the portrayals of ­women’s issues in films may have had on developing feminist consciousness in films. Although, with the advent of the w ­ omen’s movement in India during mid1970s through the 1980s, regional w ­ omen filmmakers, such as, Aparna Sen, Kalpana Lajmi, Sai Paranjpye, and ­others started to portray ­women from the margins of society and depicted their strug­gles; messages congruent with gender equality w ­ ere few and far between. Touted as art h ­ ouse/new wave, this e­ arlier crop of films never became the norm in projecting a dynamic feminine subjectivity. Additionally, the overall lack of female participation in script writing, producing, and directing, coupled with dominant repre­sen­ta­tions of a male heterosexist culture scripted a narrative binary in understanding w ­ omen as objects of desire or wrath and males as harbingers of stability, lionizing their one-­dimensional subjectivities. The repre­ sen­ta­tion of strong w ­ omen, however, has not been outside the purview of Bollywood. Lalitha Gopalan studies a Bollywood genre that depicts ­women as avengers, a cult distinguished from the action-­packed melodramas of the stock male films. In her essay ”Avenging W ­ omen in Indian Cinema,” Gopalan, however, argues that such genres depict vigilante justice run through a female buddy system that masquerades standardized male narratives of action, revenge, and repetition to simply ensure commercial success, instead of creating a parallel cultural narrative of gender re­sis­tance and/or empowerment.8 Although Gopalan’s essay refers to slightly dated films from the 1980s, her conclusions remain valid in the current context. My essay focuses on Kahaani9 and The Lunchbox,10 two films that portray exceptional yet regular w ­ omen who start to realize their self-­potential only when a contingency erases the male stakeholder in their lives. So, in Kahaani a widowed Hindu wife, Vidya Bagchi (played by Vidya Balan), convinces the retired head of the Indian secret ser­vice to hunt down the culprit who maligned her husband and nation. The Lunchbox narrates the dilemmas of a lonely urban ­woman, Ila (played by Nimrat Kaur), when her culinary skills open up possibilities of relationships outside her domestic space. Both films have woman-­centric plots that interrogate the choices made available to w ­ omen and the unobtrusive ways of their reinscribing a patterned enactment of the Indian w ­ oman. Literally translated to mean a “story” in Hindi, Kahaani pivots around the trauma of a widowed ­woman and her commitment to exonerate her husband’s honor. She has traveled, while supposedly pregnant, from London to Kolkata, India, in search of her husband, Arup Basu. Apart from her name, Bagchi also concocts the character of Arnab Bagchi, her “husband” to avenge Arup, who has been killed

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in a metro gas attack by a terrorist named Milan Damji. Damji is a rogue intelligence agent on the run. In Kolkata, she gets help from freshman inspector Rana, opposition from Intelligence officer, Khan, and threats from undercover assassin, Bob Biswas. The tropes of nationalist honor, treason, and vengeance that the film evokes are, however, intrinsically linked with male subjectivity, never associated with feminine characters.11 Nonetheless, the film chooses to tell the story differently despite this leitmotif. It pre­sents a story within a story, since Bagchi’s real character never surfaces and her mission is accomplished through an alias. Her pregnancy is also part of her plan to gain her access within a largely male-­dominated bastion—­the police station or the local intelligence office. While male counter­parts support her generally due to her pregnant “condition,” her bloated “belly” is both a symbol of the abject and an undesirable condition provoking “sympathy” making way for trivializing her intent and ability. Ironically, she uses her body as a ruse to confuse the police while she closes in on her target—­t he terrorist she was in search of. Thus, in the climax, Bagchi is no longer portrayed as the helpless mother-­ to-be but is shown as a vengeful w ­ oman who uses her body to deceive onlookers. Although the plot of Kahaani disrupts a simplistic feminist intervention, the conclusion shows Bagchi symbolically taking off her prosthetic belly and killing the betrayer using hair clips. This is an act that signifies disrobing in front of the male gaze without the sensual ele­ment while also representing disengagement and disowning of herself from her bodily and maternal functions, to discipline a miscreant. H ­ ere maternity, even if it is staged, is shown to be a ploy to pass as a docile, upper-­class, educated, Hindu ­woman, seeking the whereabouts of her husband. Readers may interpret the pregnancy plot as a feminist disruption; however, the consequent displacement of the trope of maternity by the figure of the avenging ­woman reinforces the notion that the maternal body cannot also be the revenging body. The simplistic dissociation of feminism from concepts of femininity, including the femininity of the pregnant body, is disturbing. Furthermore, Bagchi’s role as a feisty w ­ oman along with her maternal identity pre­sents a departure from known emotional strategies—­she births masculine rage and meta­phor­ically resides in a place reserved for men, while being maternal. In fact, she becomes more credible with her strategies through her staged pregnancy rather than by any explicit nationalistic assertions. In the binary vision of Bollywood credo, w ­ omen’s access to avenging powers surfaces as the covert replaying of conventional patriarchal codes rather than as overtly feminist. In the final frame of the film, Bagchi is shown as an ordinary ­woman who resumes her life ­after her husband’s exoneration. In a way, the dominant paradigm of the “good” Indian ­woman is also juxtaposed with the conventional idea of the good Hindu w ­ oman—­arising as protector to right a wrong, to preserve the honor of her husband, and then rapidly resuming her ordinary citizen’s life. I read her quick succession from avenging citizen warrior-­woman to docile subject as a ploy that categorically reminds the reader of the overdetermined semiotic of sociocultural silencing and invisibilizing of w ­ omen in the subcontinent’s culture in general, and in disavowing them directly from any relation to national security in par­tic­u­lar.

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In the killing scene, the weapon extracted from Bagchi’s flowing hair is a cinematic enactment of the mythical Devi Durga slaying the Asura. Bagchi’s staging of the savior hero recasts the space of gendered belonging especially when the demon is foreign and male and stands for nationalist projections of the Other. In this scene, the film pans through shots of thronging Bengali ­women in their festive red-­on-­white saris with vermilion smears marking the end of the festivity of Durga Puja. Bagchi’s character easily blends into the crowd in this traditional attire. In the meantime, the symbolic Asura, Milan Damji, lies severely wounded at a location that is communally unmarked and isolated from the fanfare, amid the sound of traditional drums (“dhaak”) and conch shells (“shaak”). In the festivity of Bengali-­Hindus, “Mrs. Bagchi” assumes the symbolic stature of the devi-­maa—­ ferocious, maternal, divine, and ­grand in her mythical resplendence. In promotional posters for the film, Bagchi’s figure is transposed with that of the goddess, which coalesces her identity as m ­ other, ­woman, goddess, and warrior. Bollywood’s rampant projection of popu­lar Hindu iconography and urban majoritarian religious identities, and its internalization of t­ hese identities as part of a Pan-­Indian feminine sensibility are particularly noticeable h ­ ere. Kahaani’s climax reinforces its position within the genre of Bollywood films that package quasi-­feminist characters within the trope of representing traditional and majoritarian Hindu sensibilities. The director uses several close shots of Bagchi with the idols of Kumortuli—­ traditionally the hub of idol makers in Kolkata, West Bengal. ­These shots blend easily to cast her character as a Durga avatar. While we may debate the topicality of her depiction as Durga neutralizing Milan Damji the devil, the use of cultural symbolisms throughout the film is predicated on an overwhelmingly Hinduized notion of the symbolic dimension of the Hindu w ­ oman in the proj­ect of nationalism. This binarizes the Hindu w ­ oman with that of the Hindu male and the Muslim female, in absentia, while “othering” the alien and the common e­ nemy, the Muslim. The apparent disavowal of denotative communal politics is further complicated in this scene. The mythic qualities of the goddess meta­phor­ically align with the myth of the character of Vidya Bagchi herself, distinguishing her from ordinary folks. In the urban setting of the film with an upper-­class w ­ oman as the savior of the normative system plagued by an invincible rogue, her deification as ­mother, combining mythical with “divine” feminine powers, thus swiftly replaces the vacuum of corporeal machismo associated with male actors (who are not the center of Kahaani). Scholar Sukanya Gupta delineates Kahaani and other films as works that “remap the Indian ­woman and place her beyond the bound­aries of tradition.”12 In her thorough reading of Kahaani with other woman-­centric films, however, the idea of examining w ­ hether Bollywood’s “new” w ­ omen emerge as feminist disruptors of majoritarian religious and identity politics remains unaddressed. Bagchi’s character resists normative femininity and propels her warrior qualities for her husband’s honor that sideline her maternal or patriotic impulses. Her affections for Paltu, the child server at the lodge she stays in, maintain her guise of a compassionate maternal figure. Her character also proj­ects a noncommunal agenda that precludes forceful qualities and subversive re­sis­tance. For instance, the

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film goes into past moments when she regrets agreeing to letting her husband go on his fatal mission. In this sense, her guilt is structured relationally; it stems from her perceived failure as a wife to protect her man. She failed her self-­designated bharatiya nari’s duty of protecting both her husband and her unborn child. She cannot, however, be universally seen as an agent in­de­pen­dent of other men. Her relationship with the nation (like her nationalism) is aligned with her social relationship with a man through marriage. In exonerating Arup Bose, her husband, from a terror plot, Bagchi proves that her citizenship is vitally mediated through her marriage. While Bagchi’s character literally departs from tropes of masculine nationalism, in her citizen warrior/pregnant ­woman image, she deceptively maneuvers a gendered space of belonging through enacting culturally dominant codes of masculinity and femininity that are impinged on developing Indian ­women’s subjectivity within an overarching Hindu paradigm. Ironically, her character becomes universalized to represent the Indian ­woman, essentializing all communities, castes, and classes. Her created persona con­ve­niently positions her within a caste, class, and religious structure from where she can have access to the means to succeed in her objective. So, her concocted character, Vidya Venkatesan Bagchi, signifies her privileged caste status (Bagchi is an upper-­caste, Bengali Hindu Barendra Brahmin last name), her intercaste marriage (as a Tamil Brahmin to a Bengali), and her socioeconomic class (software professional traveling from London), allowing her a permeation usually contested for another who can be a minority within any of t­ hese locations. As Jyotika Virdi evinces, using the figure of the w ­ oman in 13 such a way “blurs the bound­aries contested by dif­fer­ent communities”; although her assumed identity may work in ­favor of a blanket secular consciousness, it does not evoke ideals of plurality. Her allies and detractors are too well territorialized. So, unfamiliarly named p ­ eople are marked off as antagonists. Damji the traitor has a rare blood type (Bombay blood);14 as mentioned in the film, Bob Biswas (possibly an assimilated Bengali Anglo-­Indian) is a contract killer, Agnes DeMello is the sacrificial and the ste­reo­typical Anglo-­Indian h ­ uman resources ­woman, and Khan the only institutional antagonist. While avoiding an overtly communal implication in plot development and characterization, Kahaani makes vis­i­ble that which is not already vis­i­ble, namely, the nature of religious belonging and the way in which mainstream identity politics plays out. The film views gender as a premise to reinforce traditional constructions of communal, class/caste, and national identities, from within the perspective of the “new.” The symmetries of gendered belonging in an India of the urban m ­ iddle class that sustains Bollywood filmmaking takes us to the dilemmas surrounding the female character in our next film. This is Ritesh Batra’s The Lunchbox, released to critical acclaim in 2013. This film delves into the question of female agency within unconventional societal relationships. Experimenting with the options available for middle-­class, urban ­women if they think of a life outside their home, this film showcases their scruples about it. A similar consequence reserved for the male is, however, missing. Even if the film teasingly offers the female character a respite from marital isolation and abuse through a budding relationship based on admiration and re­spect, it ultimately

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advocates that a w ­ oman’s place is in her married home. In versions of Bollywood modernity, the option of leaving the h ­ ouse marked for a transgressive, resistant womanhood is often occupied by frivolous feminine characters. That the same option can be available for a demure, domesticated, middle-­class, traditional Indian (Hindu) ­woman without focusing on the overtly sensual is novel. The film charts the growth of an innocuous relationship based on gastronomic pleasures, between Ila (no last name) an urban middle-­class (Hindu) wife, and Saajan Fernandes, an about-­to-­retire el­derly widower (an Anglo-­Indian), over a switched lunchbox. The narrative unfolds two lives separated by age, experience, and expectation. Ila’s husband never re­spects her l­abor in the kitchen as his attention is diverted by work (and other ­women), while the widower, Fernandes, lauds it. Eventually, Saajan (his first name, uttered once, is Hindi for “beloved”) provides Ila the possibility of a life outside her suburban home. Their chance communication through handwritten notes is set up through a culinary misunderstanding triggered by an innocuous ­mistake of the public lunch distribution system called dabbawala. Fernandes’s short handwritten notes to Ila soon shift the drudgery of her culinary ­labors into a moment when she awaits the arrival of the empty lunchbox, with the note acknowledging her l­ abor, that her husband fails to appreciate. The film e­ tches a narrative of waiting and aspiration, both potentially explorative spaces for the el­derly and ­women. It teasingly throws out the possibility ­toward the end, panning a shot where the widower comes back for the ­woman who waits for the school bus, bringing her ­daughter home. The dispensability of Ila’s domestic l­abors in the kitchen, signified through the lunchbox items, becomes (accidentally) intertwined when she develops an in­de­pen­dent relationship outside her ­family. Eventually the two characters decide to relocate to Bhutan, since it is outside of the bound­aries of the traditions of India. Their choice of place is a symbol of the autonomy that both desire for themselves outside societal and normative pressures within India, while implicitly acknowledging that their relationship w ­ ill be deemed “unnatural” due to their age gap. Among other ­things, Ila is never known by her husband’s last name, as is the norm, and Fernandes’s Anglo-­Indianness is stressed by his never mentioning his Hinduized first name, Saajan. Their age disparity initially thwarts Fernandes when he gets a glimpse of young Ila and realizes that his advanced age and her youth make them an outlandish pair. Thereafter, Fernandes delays a potential meeting. By the film’s conclusion, Ila is seen waiting. She waits for her minor ­daughter, without Fernandes (who returns for her), outside her married home. In a way, Ila’s “Saajan” remains unrealized within her domesticity. In spite of its hesitant exploration of relationships within and ­after marriage, the film does not quite venture into the lures or risks of exploring life with dignity outside a home that failed the central female character, outside of marriage or sexuality. The dilemmas that shackle Ila to a compromised marriage intertwine gender and urban middle-­class morality. Her individuality is articulated through her lunchbox creations and stands at the confluence of a tradition where she prepares the lunchbox for her husband and that of self-­assertion, where she explores the options of life outside her married home. Her husband is spared such scruples and

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has an extramarital affair with a colleague. According to Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, the good Indian ­woman negotiates with modernity only when unchallenged: “It is only the female subject who can be shown as successfully achieving the balance between (deep) tradition and (surface) modernity.”15 Ila’s repre­sen­ta­tion is based on a precarity, one that is tipped on the pulls of a middle-­class morality that she represents, which bind her to a homeland and a ­daughter. Her situations represent conflicts within the cusp of a narrative of tradition, that which positions ­women and their practices to conform to a certain polarity with modernity. So, Ila enacts modes of womanhood that are scrutinized u ­ nder expectations promoting a type of tradition hinged on f­ amily, community, and national identity. Even if her aspirations make her modern, her conflicts limit her choices to the traditional. Although Ila becomes that ­woman who can decide to continue to explore culinary skills for men not in her f­ amily, she cannot explore domesticity with them, nor have heterosexual interpersonal relationships outside of domesticity. In a way, the w ­ oman is envisioned as modern in aspiring for re­spect and appreciation for her domestic l­ abor instead of being self-­sacrificing and unabsorbed. In films constructing the new Indian w ­ oman, ­women like Vidya Bagchi and Ila continue to be cast as oddly outside of traditional roles, yet they continue to signify the aspirations of the nation in the way they become markers of culture and national identity. Even if Ila’s narrative opens a slight possibility for resisting the normative structure allowed a ­woman, her mismatched expectations connect her to the overall matrix of gendered expectations linked through the lunchbox. She cooks to appease her husband through new dishes prepared for his lunchbox and expects better ac­cep­tance in her ­family through her culinary skills, but she never challenges his indifference. Ila is not represented as a sexual being or in any way threatening to the male hierarchy. In fact, she is docile and anxious to please. When the lunchbox goes to Fernandes, Ila earns appreciation and a kind of fulfillment that precludes sex. In essence, the negation of her (sexual) desires is complemented by the covert desires her husband has for other w ­ omen. The lack of access and the show of affection that Ila lacks also implicitly focus on the empirical strug­gles of the middle-­class existence in India. Affectionate gestures may be taken as signs of excess that the relative affluence and security of the upper ­middle class is allowed, an implication that long shots, even if fictional, are reserved for the plausibility of Bagchi’s upper-­middle-­class narrative in Kahaani. Moreover, Ila’s lack of domestic bliss is contoured with Fernandes’s lack of domestic space in the absence of a wife. Long shots of Ila’s kitchen stove are transposed with pan shots of Fernandes’s austere quarters where he eats his store-­bought dinners. Domestic space, it is implied, is gendered and in existence with the presence of a female. Instead of any indices to the middle-­class, urban married w ­ oman’s desire, the film also rejuvenates a community culture through food and ­recipes exchanged with the neighbor through a connecting win­dow. Ironically, desires of ­women remain subliminal as the neighbor ­woman is stuck with an ailing husband who is para­lyzed in bed. We hear her voice: her mobility is ­limited by her caregiving role; viewers never see her. She remains a voice for the gendered affective care community

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in urban India whose members are unknown. The film unobtrusively comments on the unpaid domestic and affective l­abor that codes Indian w ­ omen’s modes of belonging to nation and culture. The voice of a “Deshpande Aunty” who we never see on-­screen, one who shares ­recipes and tips with Ila as she herself stays confined at home with a convalescing husband, significantly informs the trope of underappreciated but vital role of domestic and affective ­labor—­a field of study lacking in the current trajectory of cultural criticism on Bollywood. Although the dabbawala system of distributing lunch across Mumbai is a time-­tested efficient system of l­abor,16 Ila and Deshpande Aunty do it for their homes as an “art” that disallows w ­ omen’s economic valence in affective ­labor. It is the agentic values of ­t hese kinds of l­abor that are worth revisiting as sites producing value—­symbolic, socioeconomic, and cultural—­for ­women. H ­ ere, ­women’s domestic and affective ­labors are traditional, but expectations of appreciation are not. Ila gets appreciated out of her domestic sphere; however, the film shows it to be pos­si­ble, but not acceptable. For Ila, her cooking becomes the catalyst for exploring life outside her claustrophobic marriage. Besides, ­women’s roles in private spaces are traditionally interrelational with t­hose of men in the public economic sphere, helping men to have control in the private space. ­Because this is a self-­sustaining system, if Ila leaves, as she ponders d ­ oing, her space in the kitchen may well be taken over by her husband’s current love interest or a domestic helper, for that ­matter. For Saajan Fernandes, with his age, widower status, and being a minority Anglo-­Indian from the lower m ­ iddle class, ­these changes may not work at the same pace or at all. Interestingly, the film deals with the ­middle classes concentrated by community identity, which is covertly indicated, but has no serious implication in the development of the narrative. Ila and her husband and d ­ aughter reside in a suburb called Malad east in Mumbai, whereas Fernandes is confined to the small Anglo-­Indian community in Bandra. ­These spaces within the urban metropolis situate identities along a specific sociocultural matrix, although plotting them along a similar class. From the center of the metropolis—­Kolkata in Kahaani to another, Mumbai, in The Lunchbox—­con­temporary Bollywood reveals the covert ways in which nationalism and national identities are experienced in urban space. As sites of articulating competitive and urban aspirational desires, ­t hese identities are part of the dominant discourse on nationalism, not read as one outside it. The redeployment of the nationalist trope marshals its own distinct methodology, including vouching for the “new” ­woman constructed in the interstices of ­t hose spaces. If we read Ila’s potential of escape from her entrapped marriage as an anticapitalist, feministic departure complicating questions of traditional national identity, then Bagchi’s subjectivity within that matrix becomes problematic, especially when read as a marker of communal identity. Although the two female characters belong on dif­ fer­ent socioeconomic rungs, they inform wider dimensions of belonging and reconfigure the idea of modern Indian womanhood within the structure of the ­middle class. Furthermore, the affective relationships explored through conflict, or its lack thereof, within the domain of the domestic drama reinforces the ways in which the microcosm of the ­family connects with the macrocosm of the nation. The inclu-

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sion of w ­ omen and their bodies as mere vehicles exploring nationhood through their maternal reproductive functions while stressing the role of piety, tradition, and chastity reinforces cultural and socioeconomic gender hegemonies and does not empower them in any way. It subsumes their autonomic identities and undercuts broader issues of health, systems of gender vio­lence, and individual demo­ cratic, civil, and h ­ uman rights. Nonetheless and despite t­ hese limitations, I agree with Jyotika Virdi that the ­women depicted in Bollywood “constantly create new spaces from which they speak or act, based on their own notion of “autonomy” and “power,” very dissimilar from the masculine subject with his “operative ­will.”17 Mainstream Bollywood has yet to depict real ­women and calls for redeeming itself beyond the casual tableaux depicting upper-­class/caste Hindu male/families only. Part of the prob­lem may be the lack of female presence and clout in the industry. Feminist filmmaker Pratibha Parmar opines in a recent interview: “Just consider some startling statistics: only 7% of directors, 13% of writers, and 20% of producers are female. Given the dearth of female repre­sen­ta­tion in front of and ­behind the camera, is it any won­der that we continue to have to strug­g le to get funding for female stories and voices?”18 Thus, instead of pandering to conventional notions of culture and belonging, creative artists should amplify po­liti­cally and socioculturally relevant themes that locate the shift in the experiences of the Indian ­woman. In more frequently and more vigilantly depicting female characters, Bollywood films can become truly representative of the real and new Indian w ­ omen whose stories they have shunned so far.

notes 1. ​“10 Bollywood Movies That Highlight W ­ omen Empowerment,” ITimes, October 20, 2016, https://­w ww​.­i ndiatimes​.­com​/­entertainment​/­c elebs​/­10​-­b ollywood​-­movies​-­t hat​-­h ighlight​ -­women​-­empowerment​-­305451​.­html; also Anuj Kumar, “This ‘Kahaani’ Is Truly a Thriller,” review, https://­w ww​.­t hehindu​.­com​/­news​/­cities​/­Hyderabad​/­t his​-­k ahaani​-­is​-­t ruly​-­a​-­t hriller​ /­article2981863​.­ece, The Hindu, March 10, 2012. 2. ​Madhava M. Prasad, Ideology of the Hindi Cinema: A Historical Construction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 8, 9. 3. ​Rupal Oza, The Making of Neoliberal India: Nationalism, Gender, and the Paradoxes of Globalization (New York: Routledge, 2006), 2. 4. ​Nandana Bose, “Between the Godfather and the Mafia: Situating Right-­Wing Interventions in the Bombay Film Industry (1992–2002),” Studies in South Asian Film and Media 1, no. 1 (2009): 23–43, doi:10.1386/safm.1.1.23/1. 5.  Urvashi Butalia and Tanika Sarkar, eds., ­Women and Right-­Wing Movements: Indian Experiences (London: Zed Books, 1995); Rajinder Dudrah and Jigna Desai, eds., The Bollywood Reader (Open University Press, 2008); Tejaswini Ganti, Producing Bollywood: Inside the Con­ temporary Hindi Film Industry (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012). 6. ​Shamita Das Dasgupta, “Feminist Consciousness in Woman-­C entered Hindi Films,” Journal of Popu­lar Culture 30, no. 1 (Summer 1996): 173–189, https://­doi​.o ­ rg​/1­ 0​.1­ 111​/­j​.­0022​-­3840​ .­1996​.­00173​.­x. 7. ​Sangeeta Datta, “Globalization and Repre­sen­ta­tion of ­Women in Indian Cinema,” Social Scientist 28, no. 3/4 (2000): 71–82, http://­citeseerx​.­ist​.­psu​.e­ du​/v­ iewdoc​/­download​?­doi​=1­ 0​.­1​.1­ .​ ­457​ .­3215&rep​=­rep1&type​= ­pdf. 8. ​Lalitha Gopalan, “Avenging ­Women in Indian Cinema,” in The Bollywood Reader, ed. Rajinder Dudrah and Jigna Desai. (Berkshire, ­England: Open University Press, 2008), 97–108.

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9. ​ Kahaani, directed by Sujoy Ghosh (2012; Viacom 18 Motion Pictures, Pen India ­Limited), Netflix, 128 min. 10. ​ The Lunchbox, directed by Ritesh Batra (2013; Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, India, Sony Pictures Classics, International), Netflix, 105 min. 11. ​A nne McClintock, “­Family Feuds: Gender, Nationalism and the ­Family,” Feminist Review 44 (Summer 1993): 61–80, https://­dept​.­english​.w ­ isc​.­edu​/­a mcclintock​/­w riting​/­Family​ _­article​.­pdf. 12. ​Sukanya Gupta, “Kahaani, Gulaab Gang and Queen: Remaking the Queens of Bollywood,” South Asian Popu­lar Culture 13, no. 2 (2015): 120, doi:10.1080/14746689.2015.1087107. 13. ​Jyotika Virdi, The Cinematic ImagiNation: Indian Popu­lar Films as Social History (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003), 72. 14. ​D. Balasubramanian, “Bombay Blood: How the Rare Blood Type Was Discovered,” Science, The Hindu, January 1, 2015, https://­w ww​.­t hehindu​.­com​/­scitech​/s­ cience​/ b ­ ombay​-b ­ lood​ -­how​-­t he​-­rare​-­blood​-­t ype​-­was​-­discovered​/­article6742286​.­ece. 15. ​Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, “Real and ­Imagined ­Women: Politics and/of Repre­sen­ta­tion,” in Real and ­Imagined ­Women: Gender, Culture and Postcolonialism (New York: Routledge, 1993), 126–27. 16. ​Stefan Thomke and Mona Sinha, “The Dabbawala System: On-­Time Delivery, ­Every Time,” Harvard Business School Case 610-059, Harvard Business School, February 8, 2010, https://­w ww​.­academia​.­edu​/­37021707​/­The​_­Dabbawala ​_ ­System​_­On​-­Time​_­Delivery​_­Every​ _­Time. 17. ​Virdi, The Cinematic ImagiNation, 126. 18. ​“­Women Filmmakers Forum: Pratibha Parmar,” interview, The Feminist Wire, May 11, 2012, https://­t hefeministwire​.­com​/­2012​/­05​/­women​-­fi lmmakers​-­forum​-­pratibha​-­parmar​/­.

chapter 5

Q

New Womanhood and #LipstickRebellion feminist consciousness in lipstick ­under my burkha Gohar Siddiqui

The film Lipstick ­under My Burkha (LUMB, 2016) came ­under fire by the Indian Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) for being “too lady oriented.”1 The film deals explic­itly with female desire and agency, and its trailer’s emphasis on the ­women, their sex lives, and their oppression immediately provided a context for the interpretation of the board’s prudish discomfort in using the euphemistic phrase. As a response to the censor board’s refusal to certify the film for release, pictures of cast members appeared on Instagram’s #LipstickRebellion, where they used a lipstick held by their ­middle fin­ger and exhorted men and ­women to do the same. Their response made the CBFC synonymous with the patriarchal system that, as Monika Mehta has argued, certifies ideologically conservative films but bans ones that question the status quo.2 The poster for the film developed out of this campaign and uses the image of the lipstick/middle fin­ger to protest against the CBFC and patriarchy. This chapter analyzes ­t hese conflicted messages of the film’s paratexts along with its feminist consciousness to explore possibilities and limits of female agency within the context of neoliberal new womanhood in India. Shrivastava employs what I argue are technologies of re­sis­tance and mobility through specific ele­ments of the film’s narration and mise-­en-­scène. LUMB’s main female characters—­Usha, Leela, Rehana, and Shireen—­live in the Hawai Manzil building in Bhopal, a small city in Madhya Pradesh, India. Usha, a middle-­aged, single w ­ oman, secretly loves reading pulp romance novels; Leela runs a beauty parlor and dreams of opening a joint business with her lover, Arshad. Rehana is a college student who secretly wears Western clothes u ­ nder her burqa; Shireen is a ­mother and wife who works as a door-­to-­door salesperson for Magic, a ­house­hold products com­pany. Usha and Leela are Hindu, whereas Rehana and Shireen are Muslim. This chapter focuses specifically on everyday tools at t­ hese ­women’s 79

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disposal—­t he romance book that Usha reads, the scooter that Leela drives, and the burqas worn by Rehana and Shireen—­that allow them to mediate between their private and public spheres. In this, the film resonates with the nineteenth-­century British New ­Woman, who was frequently depicted as empowered through new technologies like the typewriter and the bicycle. The fashioning and repurposing of certain tools like the book, the scooter, and the burqa into technologies of strug­gle and re­sis­tance make t­ hese twenty-­first-­century Indian ­women even more subversive. ­These three technologies are gendered specifically feminine in the Indian context. For example, the book is often understood as technology in terms of information dissemination, but romance novels are viewed as empty pap for ­women; I focus on its use as a tool that provides escape from patriarchy. Similarly, the scooter, pitched at lower-­class working ­women since the 1990s in India, assured their families safe travel to school and work. Fi­nally, the film’s most transgressive reinterpretation is evident through its title; whereas the title invites dominant perception of the burqa as oppressive, the film itself invokes its historically alternative meanings as “portable purdah,” thus focusing on its use as that of any vehicular technology.3 The burqa is a tool that provides w ­ omen in purdah mobility in public spaces, which b ­ ecause of the anonymity made pos­si­ble by the veil, becomes yet another power­f ul weapon of re­sis­tance. The chapter grounds the feminist aspects of the film within a context of neoliberalism and further analyzes its reception to argue how its feminism extends outside the film’s diegesis as well. The guerrilla technique at work in the ­women’s par­tic­u­lar use of ­t hese tools makes their agency explicit through their strug­gle as they negotiate spaces of freedom. ­W hether they are married or not, ­daughters, wives, ­mothers, or living alone, the film represents the significance of t­ hese ­women’s lives outside the bounds of patriarchy and marriage. In this, it revivifies the New ­Woman figure that intertextually invokes older debates about ­women’s freedom in South Asia. The discussions about the repre­sen­ta­tion of the modern Indian w ­ oman, particularly a­ fter the 1990s, tend to focus on the stranglehold of tradition as it has been tied with patriarchal institutions. In this essay, I use this dyadic understanding of the split between tradition and modernity, but instead of a binary understanding, I argue that the polysemic and ideologically conflicted dimensions of new womanhood are a productive site of analy­sis.

New ­Woman and Bollywood As scholars like Elora Halim Chowdhury, Rupal Oza, and Rajeswari Sunder Rajan have noted, with modernization and the specter of the liberated ­woman, the strug­ gle over the female body, desire, identity, and agency continues historically.4 Oza traces the engagement of media archives (cinema, tele­v i­sion, radio, print, ­etc.) in 1990s India to the idea of the New ­Woman, whose emergence coincided with India’s economic liberalization. All of ­t hese anx­i­eties about modernity coalesce onto this figure that shows up in advertisements as aggressive, confident, urban, and a sex-

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ually desiring subject who si­mul­ta­neously maintains the primacy of ­family.5 This ­woman remains the source of much anxiety in the 1990s b ­ ecause she exists in the interstitial spaces between traditional/Indian and modern/Western identities. Oza argues that this Indian w ­ oman was carefully crafted in public cultural discourses to be modern, representing globalizing India, yet “Indian” by being anchored in “core” values. Jyotika Virdi sees a constant reinvention of this figure of the New ­Woman in Bollywood as well, where she preserves tradition in the face of reformulated newness.6 Given that the New ­Woman is a consuming and laboring subject in a cap­i­tal­ist economy as well as a female citizen and a member of patriarchal institutions like the nation-­state and f­ amily, this figure reveals the ongoing negotiation over female subjectivity. The feminist potential of the New ­Woman figure is in this explicit revelation of the continued strug­gle and re­sis­tance against the dominant institutions that seek to overwrite its meanings. Bollywood, as a culture industry, remains a crucial player in the repre­sen­ta­tion of the New W ­ oman. This construction of new womanhood has intensified since the 1990s. The title of a 2013 article about the jewelry brand Tanishq unequivocally connects the New W ­ oman as a Bollywood commodity: “For the New ­Woman, a Film Like Race 2 Served as an Excellent Platform to Promote the IVA Collection.” “IVA or I Value Attitude” is the com­pany’s collection that targets the “new ­woman . . . ​the smart ­woman,” who is its intended market.7 The packaging, indeed the engendering, of specific consumptive desires for the modern, urban, and upper-­ class New W ­ oman reveals its self-­conscious use by the film industry that promotes this liberated upper-­class womanhood at the same time as it paradoxically seeks to commodify and ideologically contain it. Sangita Gopal uses the phrase “New Bollywood” for the post-2000 “new cinematic order,” indicating how the conjugal form and the ­woman’s role have been the biggest sites of change.8 Urbanization and the rise of the ­middle classes, she argues, have been two large ­factors that influenced New Bollywood as even small towns like Bhopal, the setting for LUMB, have become major urban centers. Gopal’s contextualization of New Bollywood contributes to an understanding of the New ­Woman in the twenty-­first ­century at the nexus of feminine modernity, urbanization, consumerism, and globalization. The post-2000 economic landscape shifted in f­avor of in­de­pen­dent filmmakers, resulting in several hatke/alternative women-­centric films like Parched (2015) and Anaarkali of Aarah (2017).9 Like the m ­ iddle cinema by directors like Shyam Benegal in the 1980s and 1990s, ­t hese films form a bridge between entertainment, aesthetics, and ideological purpose, and e­ ither reject or complicate the bound­aries of new womanhood. The space created for niche cinema then allows for filmmakers like Shrivastava to make socially conscious feminist films like LUMB, which self-­consciously play with the tropes of new womanhood to visibilize the conflict between empowerment and containment. The film ultimately reveals the power of patriarchy by depicting how the ­women have no choice but to submit to it. ­After Usha’s public shaming, they sit among her belongings and torn novels that are strewn everywhere, sharing a cigarette and talking about the impossibility of ­these dreams peddled by the romance novels. Unlike the New ­Woman’s advertised happy

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endings, the film’s resolution shows the impossibility of a happy coexistence between their freedom and their subjugated place in society. Th ­ ese new w ­ omen’s use of modern technology beyond its sanctioned uses to privilege their own desires goes against the demands of neoliberal modernity.

Narration, Romance, and Female Desire Calling out mainstream cinema for its participation in the male gaze,10 the female auteur Shrivastava has indeed produced a lady-­oriented film. The film uses Usha’s voice-­over narration from the romance novel about the protagonist Rosie and her desires to weave through and comment on the lives of the female characters. All of them are Rosies struggling against patriarchy and finding secret ways to fulfill their desires. By using a countercinematic form that employs a female voice-­over, is open-­ended, remains fictional but reflects social real­ity, and articulates female subjectivity and desire, Shrivastava’s film is an exercise in wresting control over female repre­sen­ta­tion. The framing device for the film is Usha’s voice-­over, which is also mediated through another text—­sections of the romance novel that she reads. The film’s alternative politics center female subjectivity by handing over narrative control to the New W ­ oman but via the highly commodified trope of the romance novel, which prioritizes female desire within contained spaces of patriarchy. The use of the voice-­ over is significant b ­ ecause the audience realizes that this is not a person speaking about herself in the third person. Instead, it is the narration of the romance novel that Usha has been reading, called Lipstick Waale Sapney (Lipstick Dreams). The juxtaposition of this voice-­over with the images creates differing results; sound and image function ­either complementarily or contrapuntally—­they intensify the articulation of female desire or provide stark ironic commentary on the sad real­ity at play in the scene. The desires of the character Rosie reflect the desires and angst of the ­women. The voice-­over does not privilege an individual or individualist assertion that is often at the heart of Western feminism. Instead, it is multilayered as the phrases from the book breach diegetic borders and become commentary on, or expressions of, w ­ omen’s lives that occur within or without the film. The voice-­over is at times serious, at times funny, but always feminist, and in speaking to the audience, it hails them as well. For instance, when Shireen sells the pest control gun to a h ­ ouse­w ife, the voice-­over provides commentary a­ fter the scene. Responding to the ­woman’s joke about the product’s efficacy with domestic pests—­meaning husbands—­Shireen had said that her own pest/husband was ­under control. The very next shot, however, reveals how afraid she is of him. She takes a call from him on the way back home a­ fter picking up her c­ hildren and lies about the reasons for her delay—it is clear that he does not know about her job. At this moment, the diegetic sounds recede as Usha’s voice-­over speaks over the close-up of her worried and scared face: “No one could see Rosie in the dark. No one could hear Rosie’s screams in the neighborhood. And the door to Rosie’s dreams would shut even before it could open.” The narration regarding Rosie’s despair and her

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inability to find freedom or agency to express herself combines with the stories of ­t hese ­women to intensify the lack of freedom they have, despite their efforts. The novel’s use in the film signals the vari­ous ways in which the New ­Woman figure is a site of ­battle u ­ nder global capitalism—it reveals the solidarity across the borders of race and location when the narration uses Rosie’s oppression to comment on the oppression experienced by t­ hese w ­ omen; it opens Usha’s sexual world when it shifts to a first-­person account and creates a doubling identification between Usha and the novel’s heroine, Rosie; it provides ­women affective pleasures of escape but does so via stories that repeat patriarchal endings; and it does it all to benefit corporations that remain entrenched in patriarchy and profit from commodification of ­t hese desires. As technology, the tools t­ hese w ­ omen use are connected with the cap­i­tal­ist and patriarchal economy. As a result, their use of this technology is in line with the film’s politics, where re­sis­tance happens tangentially and in small ways b ­ ecause the opposition is systemic and power­f ul; nevertheless, ­t hese acts threaten the status quo. In her study of the romance novel and its readership, Janice Radway detailed the vari­ous ways in which the romance novel functions as an escape for ­women within patriarchy. The very act of reading is transgressive ­because it transports them away from the familial situation and allows them to do their own emotional self-­care in this pursuit of individual plea­sure.11 ­There is an air of guilty plea­sure, a delicious furtiveness, to Usha’s experience of reading that mimics the forbidden pleasures of Rosie. The autoerotic act of reading romance shuts out men and threatens the patriarchal and heteronormative status quo. However, the act of reading ­t hese romances actually functions to contain the real threat as it neutralizes a­ ctual rebellion. The film’s audacity lies in Usha’s refusal to re­spect the borders of containment—­ she abandons the merely fictional, imaginative, and emotional. For her, the romance is not ­limited to its function as a pressure valve, providing momentary escape so that she can get back to her own life; instead, it functions like a catalyst. Usha’s identification with Rosie grows ­a fter her encounter with Jaspal, a much younger swim coach, with whom she starts taking swimming lessons. As she enjoys the lessons with him, her voice-­over reads through the naughty bits from the novel: “Rosie used binoculars to look at the tenant while he showered . . . ​his broad shoulders, the lines left on his chest by the ­water as it went down.” The camera, complicit with her gaze, produces discomfort as it repeatedly ogles Jaspal’s mostly naked body for the audience’s viewing plea­sure. The film then reverses not just the narrative but also the cinematic gaze as the male body is presented as an object of fetish. Where, ­earlier, Usha had enjoyed immersion in the novel, now she becomes an active subject who acts on ­t hese desires—­she indulges in phone -­sex with Jaspal (who thinks she is a younger ­woman) and then sets up a date to fi­nally meet him. Although the ending of the film is sad and expected given patriarchal laws that govern the world within and outside the film’s diegesis, as Usha has taught her readers, the endings do not ­matter—­you read for the naughty parts. ­These moments are the carnivalesque spaces of rebellion and plea­sure in the film, and through them

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Usha’s repurposing of Rosie becomes transgressive to the specific local patriarchal impositions.

Scooty-­bility and the Small-­Town New ­Woman The intertwining of technology and capitalism is central to the consumptive drive that underwrites new womanhood. Books, phones, scooters, and clothes function as technology and commodities through which the four ­women navigate their public and private spaces. They si­mul­ta­neously become parts of the machine of modernity that seeks to constrain w ­ omen’s freedoms and ones that allow for regulated freedoms. Usha consumes the imported romance novels and uses a phone to convey her desire and conduct her sexual liaisons with Jaspal; Leela traverses the town on her scooter for plea­sure and work; and Rehana and Shireen use their clothes (jeans and burqas, to find their own ways out of oppressive situations. As representative material objects, t­ hese tools become polysemic and contradictory symbols of oppression and empowerment. But unlike the New W ­ oman of the 1990s, ­t hese four ­women are not upper-­class. Their position as subalterns, ­because of both their gender and their lack of economic resources, results in unsanctioned uses of the technology at their disposal. Their workarounds of ­these tools foreground their strug­g le and express their subjectivities as opposite to the neoliberal and patriarchal forces and exacerbate the conflicts at the heart of new womanhood. The gearless scooter, just like the romance novel and the burqa, is significant in the film b ­ ecause it immediately contextualizes Leela as a modern small-­town ­woman with dreams and aspirations—­t he image of the New W ­ oman. As vari­ous news reports show, such aspirations are a result of commodification by companies seeking to profit from this new upwardly mobile consumer. TVS Scooty, the brand name that by now has become synonymous with the gearless scooter in India, changed marketing tactics in 1996 to attract ­women of working-­class and small towns as potential customers. They created all-­women driving institutes to train ­women and girls how to ­ride the Scooty, which was promoted in terms of safety and empowerment for ­women. The com­pany’s ads often used Bollywood stars who, according to Padma Govindan and Bisakha Dutta, represent a nexus of dif­ fer­ent global discourses on the issues of sexuality, desire, agency, and repre­sen­ta­ tion.12 Brand actresses like Anushka Sharma ­were chosen b ­ ecause Anushka 13 “played the role of an in­de­pen­dent girl in a lot of her movies.” Her star text thus coincides well with the advertisement, in which she fends off eve-­teasers on her Scooty. Capitalism and technological advancement go hand in hand with national ideas of pro­gress as small-­town ­women become the new consumers. In a move ­toward gender equality, the com­pany Hero Plea­sure followed TVS’s example and used the tag­line “Why Should Boys Have All the Fun?”14 Female in­de­pen­dence and desire are thus the twin foci of its ad campaign. Yamaha has overhauled its setup and production, hiring more female sales executives and appointing w ­ omen to assem­ ble the machines. Their national business head, Roy Kurian, explained the com­

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pany’s reasoning b ­ ehind this approach: “We are saying it is by females, for the females.”15 The state also caught on to this trend that connected the scooter to ­women’s emancipation. In February 2018, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a scooter scheme in Tamil Nadu, u ­ nder which one lakh (100,000) working ­women would be given scooters at subsidized rates. Modi said that the scooter scheme “would go a long way in the empowerment of w ­ omen in the state,” and added that “empowerment of ­women would mean empowerment of the ­family.”16 While the advertisements for the scooters unleash this subversive antipatriarchy strain, the rhe­toric surrounding the scooters si­mul­ta­neously tries to contain it through ideas of f­ amily. The scooter then sells the desire for economic freedom and mobility, but to support the ­family. The scooter that Leela rides is thus overdetermined by all ­t hese contexts where the New W ­ oman is at the crossroads of modern/individual pursuits and traditional/familial duties. As a beauty parlor owner, she rides her scooter, and the image suggests unrestricted freedom. But she has to sell her scooter to actually fulfill her dreams. Unlike the urban upper-­class New ­Woman, Shrivastava taps into the changing real­ity of ­t hese lower-­middle-­class ­women for whom the scooter is affordable, but just barely. Unlike the ads, the film does not show Leela’s use of the scooter as helpful to her work. Instead, it shows her in situations that are transgressive. Often Leela, in her traditional salwar suit, rides her scooter alone or with Arshad, her boyfriend, riding pillion. The scooter shows her in control of her world, particularly her relationships with men. In contrast, it facilitates bonding between ­women in their escapes—­Leela helps Rehana sneak out to her party on her scooter. Most impor­tant, the kind of mobility the scooter provides makes ­t hese w ­ omen almost run out of the frame while the camera keeps trying to catch up, ultimately showing their use of the scooter as transgressive.

Burqa as Jugaad: Consumptive Feminism and the New ­Woman Modern capitalism, technology, and consumption are intricately connected with individualism and desire in the New ­Woman. However, the ways in which ­t hese ­women utilize t­ hese technological products defy cap­i­tal­ist and patriarchal tendencies. They are, in local slang, jugaadus. Jugaad is the name given to a piece of machinery in rural India that is concocted out of disparate parts of other machines—it is a hack that is a poor person’s workaround to access technology that is other­wise not affordable. While used in business models now as a strategy, its roots in technology, frugal innovation, and local applications aligns it closely with what John Fiske calls “excorporation,” which is “the pro­cess by which the subordinate make their own culture out of the resources and commodities provided by the dominant system.”17 Amit Rai’s use of the jugaad framework to analyze digital technologies in India is more applicable h ­ ere. He argues that the term jugaad “comes out of subaltern, or ‘nonelite,’ strategies of negotiating conditions characterised by extreme poverty, discrimination, and vio­lence, which . . . ​are experiments in getting over the next hurdle confronting socially and eco­nom­ically disadvantaged

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communities.”18 The w ­ omen use ­these technologies as workarounds to find some escape from the normalized vio­lence and exploitation they experience. Their jugaad, “as the expression of subaltern and autonomous sensibility,”19 refuses the neoliberal subjectivity imposed on them via t­ hese technologies ­because they exceed the limits that have been de­cided for them. Much like the ­others, Rehana too is caught between two worlds. At one level, she registers as the oppressed Muslim girl and is readable as a prop for Western feminism that brings with it ties to global capitalism. At another level, she is a jugaadu feminist. As a burqa wearing girl who has to hide her desires, she wears jeans and makeup ­u nder her burqa, loves Miley Cyrus and Led Zeppelin, and equates freedom to wear jeans with the right to live. Her story positions her as a victim of Islamic patriarchy, and she yearns for the liberation that she sees encapsulated in ­t hese Western symbols of lipstick, jeans, boots, and so on. The prob­lem, of course, is that the individual that she wants to become has been commodified and sold through ­these products, not much dif­fer­ent from the packaged new womanhood discussed by Oza. She wants to conform to the lifestyle of the westernized ­women on campus, and she has internalized the ideological pressures of upper-­ class femininity. Her rebellion is absolutely about having choices, but the choices she makes are ­t hose of the upper-­class ­women, where freedom is about wearing what she wants, but choice u ­ nder capitalism is questionable given that it is determined by the prepackaged commodified desire sold by brands. However, even as brands and malls incorporate female desire and choice to sell their products, she cannot buy them, thus existing outside of economic relations that underwrite capitalism. Unlike t­ hese other rich ­women, Rehana’s lack of access to economic resources makes her actions transgressive; not having the money, she steals clothes from the mall. Like a guerrilla fighter, she excorporates; in other words, she, like Shireen, uses the burqa as jugaad. Shireen’s use of burqa had provided anonymity to her in public spaces and enabled her to work without her husband finding out. For Rehana, the burqa provides her with the same anonymity when she hides the stolen goods by wearing them ­under the burqa. Similarly, without the burqa, she would not have been able to wear jeans and dresses, but her hacking of the burqa allows her to traverse public spaces without any fear while wearing what­ever she wants under­neath it. Since the burqa provides the perfect veil for her to be unknowingly anticapitalist and antipatriarchy, it gives her some mea­sure of control over her own agency and becomes the means for rebellion. The meanings surrounding both items of clothing—­Western clothing and the burqa—­ are debunked as a result. Rehana’s movement between jeans and the burqa, and indeed moments in which she wears both si­mul­ta­neously, raises the issue of intersecting feminisms. The jeans and the veil function as opposites ­under Western feminism—­where the jeans, a Western product, connote freedom, the veil indicates absolute oppression. Indeed, the film’s name, Lipstick ­under My Burkha, indicates the ways in which the lipstick, like jeans, represents her desire to be ­free, and the burqa suppresses it. It is

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perhaps for this reason that Laura Bush’s words justifying U.S. imperialist war on Af­g han­i­stan end up resonating with the ads that use the figure of the New ­Woman—­she wanted to ­free Afghani ­women so that they could wear makeup and act as good ­mothers.20 The heightening of Islamophobia in India since the 1990s and transnationally a­ fter 9/11 has resulted in emphasis on the veil as a symbol of oppression. Even feminist discourses have fetishized the burqa as a metonym of victimization and thus result in supporting imperialist agendas of civilizing and taming the brown Muslim bodies.21 Seeing the veil itself, and not the form of insidious patriarchy that impacts its meaning in par­tic­u­lar contexts, as shutting down of female voice disallows the ways in which agency is and can be enacted ­under and through the veil. The film makes space for t­ hese interpretations too; a­ fter all, the lipstick is made pos­si­ble for Rehana precisely through the burqa/veil. The film raises ­t hese contexts of the burqa but also rejects the Orientalism and Islamophobia inherent in t­ hese interpretations. Both Rehana and Shireen use the burqa to get their own way indirectly. Unlike Rehana, Shireen never feels constrained b ­ ecause of her religion—­t he burqa does not hinder her movement at all and instead makes it pos­si­ble for her to have access to resources she would not other­wise have. With her, the film draws attention to other racist ste­reo­types about the burqa and Muslims. In the scene I referenced ­earlier in which she sells a customer the pest control gun, her per­for­mance as a burqa-­clad ­woman invokes t­ hese interpretations. She knocks at the ­woman’s door, seemingly lost, and hesitantly asks for w ­ ater. Her per­for­mance of timidity, which calls forth images of scared veiled ­women, gains her entry into the customer’s h ­ ouse. The next shot, from the point of view of the customer, is terrifying as Shireen turns around with a gun pointing straight at her (and at the camera/audience). In this reversal flashes the specter of the terrorizing Muslim. The situation, however, is immediately diffused as Shireen laughs and tells her that it is a pest control gun. Shireen’s use of her burqa and her per­for­mance of ­t hese dif­fer­ent femininities playfully, but deliberately, raise ­t hese ste­reo­t ypes before revealing the opposite as true. The equivalence between burqa and the terrorized/terrorizing other is eliminated as Shireen comes across as a funny, relatable, and successful working ­woman. The film positions the burqa-­clad ­woman as a New ­Woman who, like Usha and Leela, transgresses a bit too much. In direct contrast to westernized and globalized ideas of modernity, it pre­sents the burqa as technology that allows for safe movement across spaces, and enables re­sis­tance and transgression even as it registers the oppression inflicted on the w ­ omen. By pitting the stories of ­t hese Hindu and Muslim w ­ omen against each other, the film forces an acknowl­edgment of patriarchy, and not religion, as the oppressive force that binds their stories together. By equating the burqa with objects like the book and the scooter, it portrays the burqa as a valid tool of mobility even as all three tools are implicated in practices of oppression rooted in patriarchy. Ultimately, the film shows that by hacking and manipulating ­these tools, ­these w ­ omen push and redefine the borders to their freedom imposed by new womanhood.

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Leaky Bound­aries: Real to Reel and Back The trailer lies!—­more so than other trailers do. And the lie is a result of expectations that a viewer generates ­because of entrenched patriarchy that underwrites Bollywood productions, including much of hatke cinema as well. The original trailer packages the sexy scenes from the film like a cinema of attractions.22 It suggests and promises titillation; it also hints at comic relief through Ratna Pathak’s character, who is apparently engaged in phone sex. The trailer, perhaps b ­ ecause of existing promotional tactics in Bollywood, lends itself to an interpretation of a film dealing with ­women’s issues but also one that ­w ill ultimately be framed through the patriarchal lens that dominates Bollywood. It mentions ­women’s desires along with scenes and phrases from the voice-­over narration that show up as writing to describe each character. For example, intertitles produce the following phrases in hot pink letters against a black screen interspersed within the montage of scenes: “stolen kisses ­were not enough,” “Rosie’s body was wet with desire,” and so on. The editing of the trailer suggests a fun ­ride by promising a story for which the viewer has to fill the gaps. Since the viewers are ideologically complicit, the gaps are expected to be filled through a masculinist perspective. The same scenes in the film produce active discomfort instead of plea­sure. Ultimately, the trailer ends with the last scene of the film, except that taken out of context, it promises a happy ending as it shows four w ­ omen sitting in a courtyard sharing a smoke and laughing. However, the film is anything but happy or titillating. The Central Board of Film Certification refused to pass it, citing the following reasons: “The story is lady oriented, their fantasy above life. Th ­ ere are contanious [sic] sexual scenes, abusive words, audio pornography . . . ​hence film refused ­u nder guidelines.”23 The filmmaker, production team, and actors, as well as many Indian audiences w ­ ere shocked at the CBFC’s decision. The director, Shrivastava, has been very vocal about it and pointed to the hy­poc­risy and double standards of the censor board that passes films with content that includes sexualized female bodies and almost pornographic scenes but refuses this one: “It was a film not catering to the male gaze. It was making patriarchy uncomfortable.”24 Pathak had also revealed her worry about the film before she accepted the role. She did not want it to be titillating b ­ ecause that would go against its purpose. As she explained in an interview: “Every­one is ­going on about sex in the film. ­There is very ­little of it. All the sex that ­t here is, is uncomfortable. It’s not easy. In any case, for w ­ omen, sex is not easy, and h ­ ere’s a film that’s telling you so. And that is disturbing. Even for ­women.”25 In calling the film too “lady oriented,” the CBFC admitted its reservations about a film that flouts patriarchal conventions by showing how female desire is expunged within familial situations—in other words, it exceeds the demands placed by new womanhood of the 1990s, where female agency never conflicts with the ­family’s patriarchal unit. ­Family and its larger extension, the state, are patriarchal hubs and as such antithetical to the individual assertion of female desire and agency not in ser­v ice of ­these institutions—­thus the fear that it is also “contanious” b ­ ecause it can potentially spread the contagion of desiring w ­ omen.

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The film leaks outside its diegetic borders for vari­ous reasons: the issues it takes up are relevant, the stories it tells are individualistic enough and yet resonate strongly with the real­ity of ­women’s lives, and it refuses to offer a melodramatic resolution or to rely on mainstream cinematic style. As part of Bollywood, the film serves as technology at the ser­v ice of cap­i­tal­ist profit-­driven industry, but it si­mul­ ta­neously functions as a tool for conveying feminist attitude through the connection it plots between the w ­ omen on both sides of filmic bound­aries—­t he director, the characters, the actors, and the female audiences are all tied together as extensions of new womanhood that the film articulates. The film remains available for neoliberal consumption, but it si­mul­ta­neously threatens the existing status quo, vis­i­ble in the reactions to it. The wrath of the public, particularly w ­ omen, to the CBFC’s decision expressed solidarity with the production team. The resultant backlash to the board’s decision unequivocally visibilized the New W ­ oman cir­cuit that extended from the film to the filmmakers and female audiences. Th ­ ere w ­ ere protests against the CBFCs decision and in support of the film. Once Film Appellate Certification Tribunal (FCAT) passed the film, the director admitted that the film’s team had de­cided to go with an attitude of rebellion and defiance in terms of the marketing of the film. A new trailer was released that uses the censor board decision and the controversy around the film.26 It begins with a still from the film over which are splashed the words: “Feminism makes censor board uncomfortable: Lipstick ­under My Burkha director.” This is followed by a montage of headlines from vari­ous newspapers that had followed the CBFC decision: “India Censor Denies Release of Lipstick ­under My Burkha; Cites ‘Lady Oriented’ Story” “Lipstick ­under My Burkha Director Alankrita Shrivastava: ‘Censor Board in India ­Doesn’t Represent Its Citizens’ ” “Twitterati Lose Their Cool a­ fter CBFC Banned ‘Lipstick ­under My Burkha’ for Being ‘Lady Oriented’ ” “ ‘Lipstick ­under My Burkha’ Is the Much-­Needed Conversation India Refused to Have” “Shocker: ­Here’s Why Censor Board ‘Banned’ Lipstick ­under My Burkha” “ ‘Indian ­Women Need a Voice’ Alankita Shrivastava” Similarly, interspersed between the edited scenes are intertitles that refer to the CBFC’s reasons: THEY CALLED IT “A ­WOMAN’S FANTASY ABOVE LIFE” THEY SAID IT HAS “CONTAGIOUS SEXUAL SCENES” THEY CALLED IT “LADY ORIENTED” THE FILM THEY ­DIDN’T WANT YOU TO SEE! IT TAKES BALLS TO BE A W ­ OMAN

The new trailer also uses more sexual scenes and scenes that are clearly feminist, such as the interview given by Rehana at the protest: “­Don’t wear lipstick, you’ll have an affair. ­Don’t wear jeans, ­t here’ll be a scandal. I want to ask the

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authorities—­what exactly ­will happen? Why are you so frightened if we are in­de­ pen­dent?!” The direct address of the trailer makes explicit the politics of the film and makes them more relevant to the real­ity on the ground. The seamless movement between reel and real shows up the relevance and need for a film that reveals ­women’s meta­phoric veiling of their desires and voice. The CBFC’s decision resulted in a per­for­mance of the exact oppression the film seeks to uncover, along with the solidarity of w ­ omen and men as they protest against it. It then positions the CBFC as antiwomen and antifeminist and implies that it is an institution in Indian society that tramples on w ­ omen’s rights in order to perpetuate the masculinist state.

Conclusion In adding to the construction of the New W ­ oman—­t hrough its use of characters from everyday life, its centering of the female gaze, and the feminist politics of its form (by ­women, about ­women, for ­women) and reception—­t he film takes a self-­ conscious feminist stance. What emerges is that the idea of the New W ­ oman is multilayered, context-­specific, and very much a result of the confluence of local and global f­ actors. The film refuses neat and happy resolutions and instead makes vis­i­ble the contradictions inherent in this tug of war between tradition and modernity and between the commodification and liberation of female agency. The refusal to engage in conventions associated with standard mainstream cinema story lines is made pos­si­ble through hatke cinema, which allows Shrivastava to make the film straddle the boundary between popu­lar and po­liti­cal art. As a result, the film circumnavigates dominant interpretations that seek to overwrite the interpretations of ­these ­women as already inherently oppressed. It participates in the system to provide alternatives from within the system. The film’s value lies in the coming together of two f­ actors—­t he on-­screen per­for­mance of the strug­gle and re­sis­tance of the New ­Woman, and what Pathak called the theater of the absurd that happens off-­screen, which draws a clear line between patriarchy experienced at the level of f­ amily, society, and the state.

notes 1. ​ Lipstick ­under My Burkha, directed by Alankrita Shrivastava (2016; Mumbai: Prakash Jha Productions), DVD, 117 min. The film was eventually released in India on September 8, 2017. 2. ​Monika Mehta, Censorship and Sexuality in Bombay Cinema (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2011). 3. ​See Cyril Glassé, The New Encyclopedia of Islam (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008). 4. ​Elora Halim Chowdhury, “Feminism and its ‘Other’: Representing the ‘New W ­ oman’ of Bangladesh,” in Gender, Place & Culture 17, no. 3 (2010), 301–318. Rupal Oza, The Making of Neoliberal India: Nationalism, Gender, and the Paradoxes of Globalization (New York: Routledge, 2006). Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, “Real and I­ magined ­Women: Politics and/of Repre­sen­ ta­tion,” in Real and I­magined W ­ omen: Gender, Culture, and Postcolonialism (New York: Routledge, 2001), 123–140. 5. ​Oza, The Making of Neoliberal India: Nationalism, Gender, and the Paradoxes of Globalization, 22.

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6. ​Jyotika Virdi, The Cinematic Imagination: Indian Popu­lar Films as Social History (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003). 7. ​Caroline Diana, “For the New ­Woman; A Film like Race 2 Served as an Excellent Platform to Promote the IVA Collection,” Daily News and Analy­sis, accessed 3 July 2018, http://­ link​.­galegroup​.­c om​/­apps​/­doc​/­A316725132​/­S TND​?­u ​= m ­ lin​_­c​_­c larkunv&sid​= ­S TND&xid​ =­3a8c37a1. 8. ​Sangita Gopal, Conjugations: Marriage and Form in New Bollywood Cinema (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2011). 9. ​ Parched, directed by Leena Yadav (2015; Mumbai: Ajay Devgan Films), DVD, 118 min; Anaarkali of Aarah, directed by Avinash Das (2017; Mumbai: Promodome Motion Pictures), DVD, 113 min. 10. ​“Lipstick ­under My Burkha: CBFC Refuses to Certify Prakash Jha’s Film,” Hindustan Times, February 23, 2017, https://­w ww​.­h industantimes​.­com​/ ­bollywood​/­l ipstick​-­u nder​-­my​ -­burkha​-­cbfc​-­refuses​-­to​-­certify​-­prakash​-­jha​-­s​-­fi lm​/­story​-­bHkjpxbfZ7EzFK6Ye5nV4J​.­html. 11. ​Janice Radway, Reading the Romance: ­Women, Patriarchy, and Popu­lar Lit­er­a­ture (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 90–96. 12. ​Padma Govindan and Bisakha Dutta. “ ‘From Villain to Traditional House­w ife!’: The Politics of Globalization and W ­ omen’s Sexuality in the ‘New’ Indian Media,” in Global Bollywood, ed. Anandam P. Kavoori and Ashwin Punathambekar (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2008), 180–202. 13. ​Raahil Chopra, “Yamaha Ray Urges Young W ­ omen to Explore the World,” Campaign India, October 1, 2012, https://­w ww​.­campaignindia​.­in​/­video​/­yamaha​-­ray​-u ­ rges​-­young​-­women​ -­to​-­explore​-t­ he​-­world​/­417336. 14. ​Naveen Soni, “Why Should Boys Have All the Fun: Top 5 Scooters for Girls,” BikeDekho, last modified April 5, 2016, https://­w ww​.­bikedekho​.­com​/­features​-­stories​/­why​-­should​-­boys​ -­have​-­a ll​-t­ he​-­f un​-­top​-­5​-­scooters​-­for​-­girls​.­htm. 15. ​Raahil Chopra, “All About Marketing Scooters to ­Women.” Campaign India, November 22, 2012, https://­w ww​.­campaignindia​.­in​/­article​/­a ll​-a­ bout​-­marketing​-­scooters​-­to​-w ­ omen​ /­417615. 16. ​Julie Mariappan, “PM Modi Launches Amma Scooter Scheme, Says It ­Will Empower ­Women in TN,” Times of India: Chennai, February 24, 2018, http://­timesofindia​.­indiatimes​ .­com​/­a rticleshow​/­63058776​.­cms​?­utm ​_ ­source​= ­contentofinterest&utm​_ ­medium​=­text&utm​ _­campaign​= ­cppst. 17. ​John Fiske, “The Jeaning of Amer­i­c a,” in Understanding Popu­l ar Culture (New York: Routledge, 1989), 15. 18. ​Amit Rai, “The Affect of Jugaad: Frugal Innovation and Postcolonial Practice on India’s Mobile Phone Ecol­ogy,” Environment and Space 33, no. 6 (2015), 986. 19. ​Amit Rai, Jugaad Time: Ecologies of Everyday Hacking in India (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019), xi. 20. ​Gwen Bergner, “Veiled Motives: W ­ omen’s Liberation and the War in Af­ghan­i­stan,” in Globalizing Af­ghan­i ­stan: Terrorism, War, and the Rhe­toric of Nation Building, ed. Zubeda Jalalzai and David Jefferess (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 97–98. 21. ​See Srimati Basu, “V Is for Veil. V Is for Ventriloquism: Global Feminism in The Vagina Monologues,” Frontiers: A Journal of ­Women’s Studies 31, no. 1 (2010): 35. 22. ​Prakash Jha Productions, “Lipstick ­Under My Burkha/Official Trailer 2/ Releasing 21 July | Konkona Sensharma, Ratna Pathak,” October 14, 2016, video, 2:16, https://­w ww​.­youtube​.c­ om​ /­watch​?v­ ​=E ­ pHqeHF8NM0. 23. ​“Lipstick ­under My Burkha: CBFC Refuses to Certify Prakash Jha’s Film.” 24. ​Alankrita Shrivastava, Konkona Sen, and Ratna Pathak Shah, interview by Anupama Chopra, “Team Lipstick ­under My Burkha on Fighting for a Release,” July 6, 2017, https://­w ww​ .­fi lmcompanion​.i­ n​/­team​-­lipstick​-­under​-­my​-­burkha​-­interview​-­w ith​-a­ nupama chopra/. 25. ​Shrivastava, Sen, and Shah, interview by Chopra. 26. ​Prakash Jha Productions, “Lipstick ­Under My Burkha/Official Trailer 2/ Releasing 21 July | Konkona Sensharma, Ratna Pathak,” Jun 27, 2017, video, 2:14, https://­w ww​.­youtube​.c­ om​ /­watch​?­time​_c­ ontinue​=­2&v​=i­6​-­HzJ9​-6­ 50.

chapter 6

Q

Queering Bollywood sexuality of the disabled body—­ a case study Debadatta Chakraborty

Historically, Bollywood, or the popu­lar Hindi film industry in India, has had a tortuous relationship with queer sexual identities and disabled bodies as much of its repre­sen­ta­tion has been heteronormative and ableist, where nonnormative bodies and sexualities are consistently underrepresented and misrepresented. And very rarely does Bollywood deal with the intersection of disability and sexuality, especially so of a w ­ oman, as disabled bodies are often desexualized and turned into objects of pity.1 However, some films tell a dif­fer­ent tale, and one can still do queer readings of normative texts. Hence, despite its conservative orientation, we do see alternative sexualities claiming space in mainstream Bollywood films now more than ever. Shohini Ghosh claims that this can be understood as a reaction to several years of feminist and queer activism.2 Likewise, in the context of disability, Atanu Mohapatra and Swagata Chatterjee claim that despite the history of misrepre­sen­ ta­tion, in recent times we do see a relatively more sensitive repre­sen­ta­tion of disability in Bollywood.3 Within this context, this essay focuses on how Bollywood, as an impor­tant cultural artifact in the life of both the Indian nation and the transnational diaspora, has explored the “queer question” and disability, with a specific focus on lesbian relationships, using the case study of a film. The essay develops a close textual and contextual reading of the award-­w inning film Margarita, with a Straw (directors Shonali Bose and Nilesh Maniyar, 2014).4 This film, which focuses on the exploration of sexuality of a disabled young girl from India, is almost equally a popu­lar Bollywood drama as it is a member of a new line of indie transnational films. It won several awards in both the festival cir­cuits and the commercial realm and also did well financially. It was thus well received by audiences, especially in the urban areas of India and also by the Indian diasporic audiences. As Eleanor Margolis writes in her review of the film, “Margarita, with a Straw i­ sn’t a masterpiece. It is, however, a film with a lot to say about both disability and sexuality. And it says 92

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t­ hose ­t hings well.”5 This film thus occupies a central place in the narrative of Bollywood’s experience of dealing with alternative sexualities and disabled bodies within its mainstream fold. However, even as we may commend the film for its perceptive portrayal of sexuality of the disabled body, we need to be mindful of the (upper-­middle) class-­ based consumption practices that the characters engage in within the film’s universe, which root it firmly within the neoliberal modernity of India, ushered in during the 1990s. I argue that the bodies, bearing, life choices, and trajectories of the two central characters, Laila and Khanum, represent Bollywood’s “New ­Woman” and her complexities.6 Their transnational journeys and identities based on their sense of global modernity, made pos­si­ble by the opening up of markets by neoliberalism, offer them new possibilities. But ­t hese possibilities are marked by simultaneous exclusions based on class, language, and other identities in relation to the film. The transnational location and operation of both the main director (Shonali Bose) and the central protagonist (Kalki Koechlin), in the film’s text and in real life, also interpellate the film as a transnational product and make it open for what Rajinder Dudrah calls the “queer use of Bollywood by its urban South Asian and diasporic audiences.”7 The ­later sections of the essay, apart from delving into the film’s diegetic universe to explore this politics of repre­sen­ta­tion and interpellation, analyze the sociopo­liti­cal framework within which the film is located and also set it within the context of other Bollywood films dealing with alternative sexualities and disability. First, however, I briefly tell the story of how Bollywood has dealt with the queer and the disabled body.

Bollywood, Homo­sexuality, and Disability: A Brief Note As already indicated, it is difficult to find Bollywood films that have dealt with the sexuality of the disabled body at length and in a nonheteronormative fashion. In this section, I briefly highlight how Bollywood has dealt with queer sexuality and with the disabled body and then I conclude this section by bringing the two together. In briefly tracing the history of Bollywood’s experiments with alternative sexualities, I choose not to focus on two common (mis)repre­sen­ta­tional tropes, which portray them in e­ ither a comic (e.g., Kal Ho Naa Ho, 2003;8 Dostana, 2008;9 Masti, 2004)10 or a pathologizing stance (e.g., Girlfriend, 2004;11 Men Not Allowed, 2006).12 Instead, I focus on films whose central theme is the exploration of transgressive sexualities. In this context, several discussions begin with reference to the film Fire (Deepa Mehta, 1996),13 based on Ismat Chugtai’s story Lihaaf, as one of the first films based in India to deal with the theme of lesbian love as its central rhe­toric. The film has become a key referent in the discourse surrounding the repre­sen­ta­ tion of LGBTQ sexualities in India. It ignited virulent protests from the Hindu Right (especially from Shiv Sena, the Hindu nationalist party based in Maharashtra, India), which w ­ ere met with counterprotesters in the form of feminists, filmmakers,

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and other members of civil society. According to Ghosh, Fire generated the “first major public debate on queer sexuality” in India and led to the formation of a new constellation of actors—­t he queer activist.14 As Churnjeet Mahn and Diane Watt indicate, lesbians can be recast “at the heart of Fire by filtering them through the lens of transnational protest, and by offering a close reading of the film’s own play on religious and cultural symbolism.”15 Bypassing of heteronormativity in Fire is queer, and several scholars argue that it triggered an impor­tant public discussion about nonnormative female desire.16 Moreover, as Jigna Desai points out, Shiv Sena “not only attacked and closed theaters but also repeatedly condemned and attempted to communalize Fire for its “deviancy.”17 Desai demonstrates how the controversy surrounding the film illustrates how “con­temporary postcolonial and transnational cultural discourses articulate racialized, classed, sexualized, religious, and gendered forms of social regulation and normalization.”18 Ghosh argues that, ­after Fire’s release in 1996, we have witnessed a “coming out” of cinematic queerness in Bollywood.19 ­There has been an emergence of queer films that questioned traditional cinematic repre­sen­ta­tions of masculinity and femininity (e.g., Mango Souffle, 2002;20 My ­Brother . . . ​Nikhil, 2005;21 Bombay Talkies, 2013;22 Aligarh, 2015;23 Kapoor & Sons, 2016).24 We also witness the appearance of a discourse around alternative sexualities shrouded in misreadings and mistaken identities that lie at the intersections of “the erotic and the phobic”25 (e.g., films like Dostana, 2008; Kal Ho Na Ho, 2003; Masti, 2004).26 This ambivalence, Ghosh states, may be representative of the Indian public’s “dilemma around emergent sexualities and a strug­gle to come to terms with it.”27 In this context, it is impor­tant to note that ­t hese queer films have served to put the “queer question” firmly in the popu­lar lexicon and have kept alive the debate on queer sexuality in India, despite the conservative po­liti­cal backlash against the ac­cep­tance of nonheterosexual expressions of life within neoliberal India. ­After the much-­publicized attacks on Fire by the Hindu Right, one of the most potent of ­these backlashes in l­ egal terms was the Indian Supreme Court’s decision in December 2013 that struck down a lower court’s 2009 decision to decriminalize homosexual conduct and upheld the colonial-­era law criminalizing homo­sexuality. This was eventually struck down by the Supreme Court in September 2018.28 A schematic survey of films dealing with disability in India pre­sents a similar bleak picture. Julie Elman identifies certain per­sis­tent disability ste­reo­types in U.S. popu­lar culture that represent the disabled as the “inspirational hero” or “object of pity” or as “sinister and evil,” such as ugly pirates, criminals, witches, villains, or ugly old w ­ omen; the “eternally innocent,” also commonly associated with intellectual disability; the “victims of vio­lence”; the hypersexual or the asexual being; or the undesirable being who is incapable of sexual or romantic interactions.29 All of t­ hese (mis)repre­sen­ta­tional tropes are observed in Bollywood’s portrayal of disability. We see disability as a disease or as a super­natural punishment (karma)/ worse than death, or the disabled as evil crooks (e.g., Jeevan Naiya, 1936;30 Mehboob ki Mehendi, 1971;31 Sholay, 1975;32 Dhanwaan, 1981;33 Omkara, 2006;34 Haider, 2014 35); as a comic interlude (e.g., Judaai, 1997;36 Mujhse Shaadi Karogi, 2004;37

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Tom, Dick and Harry, 2006;38 Pyare Mohan, 2006;39 the Golmaal series, 2006, 2008, 201040); as heroism (e.g., Dushman, 1998;41 Aankhen 2002;42 the Krrish series, 2006, 201343); or innocence (e.g., My Name Is Khan, 2010;44 Barfi, 2012;45 Koi . . . ​Mil Gaya, 200346); as an object of pity and dependence (e.g., Dosti, 1964;47 Khamoshi: The Musical, 1996;48 Fanaa, 200649); and as social maladjustment (e.g., Gora Aur Kala, 1972;50 Ram Tera Desh, 198451). In the context of a nonnormative repre­sen­ta­tion of disability in Bollywood, several discussions focus on films like Koshish (1972),52 Sparsh (1980),53 Black (2005),54 and Taare Zameen Par (2007)55 as films that cannot be squarely placed in any of the preceding (mis)repre­sen­ta­tional blocks.56 However, none of ­these films explore the sexuality of the disabled body as its central theme as the rhe­toric of ableism desexualizes disabled bodies by making them appear as asexual. As Elman indicates, borrowing from Rosemarie Garland Thomson, the gendered and sexual dimensions of ableism deny in­de­pen­dence and sexual agency to disabled bodies as “disability is a product of cultural rules about what bodies should be or do.”57 Thus, we get a rather grim picture when we explore Bollywood’s repre­sen­ta­tional politics for queerness, disability, and sexuality of the disabled body. In this context, Margarita, with a Straw becomes a noteworthy film as it is arguably one of the first Bollywood films dealing with the disabled body as a w ­ hole being, including a sexual being, by emphasizing the disabled w ­ omen’s autonomy, bodily and other­wise. The next section situates the movie within the neoliberal urban modern context in India that gives rise to the idea of the New ­Woman and argues for employing this lens to understand the film’s characters and repre­sen­ta­tional politics.

Margarita, with a Straw: The “West,” the Hindu Right, Neoliberalism, and Bollywood’s New ­Woman In the context of the conservative po­liti­cal and judicial backlash against homo­ sexuality in India, the September 2014 release of Margarita, with a Straw gains special significance ­because the film won both popu­lar and critical acclaim. Despite the l­egal reaffirmation of criminality of homo­sexuality by the Indian Supreme Court in December 2013, which provides the context within which the film was released, the film’s explicit homosexual context did not draw in right-­w ing protests as did Fire and Girlfriend. Following Ghosh,58 I argue that a pos­si­ble reason for this is that by the time of the film’s release in 2014, feminist and LGBTQ activism had already established a thriving sociopo­liti­cal dialogue around alternate sexualities within the Indian mediascape and society at large. Even though t­ here was still tremendous discomfort and po­liti­cal licensing around homo­sexuality, the topic had lost some of its shock value, at least for the urban, middle-­class audiences who ­were the primary audiences for this film in India. Hence, we can claim that the December 2013 court decision might have led more urban, middle-­class viewers to go to the theater and watch the film, as debates about alternative sexualities w ­ ere already a part of the urban, middle-­class public discourse by that time and the Supreme Court judgment might have triggered it once more.

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Moreover, the transnational setting of the film and the fact that within the film’s universe, the central protagonist, Laila, had to travel to the United States to explore her alternative sexuality, might have reaffirmed the Hindu right-­wing claims that homo­sexuality is “not Indian”—­t hat it is a Western import, a residual vice of British colonialism. As Subir Kole states, following Paola Bacchetta, “One of the pillars of Hindu nationalism rests on ‘queerphobia’ in which queer gender and sexualities are constructed outside the Hindu nation (and hence must be exiled!) through a misogynist conception of gender and heterosexist notion of sexual normativity.”59 In case of both Fire and Girlfriend, which faced conservative protests, the fact that the lesbian sexual relationships had developed within the “Indian soil” might have had made them seem more “Indian.”60 In contrast, in Margarita, with a Straw, it seemed like ableist and homophobic ideologies and practices exist only in India and queerness and disability are embraced in the U.S. public culture. This, of course, is an inaccurate repre­sen­ta­tion. As Elman points out in her review: The film subtly affirms Western exceptionalism by geo­graph­i­cally positioning ableism and inaccessibility in India and representing New York City as a haven for the disabled. While the film shows Laila being carried up the stairs to her college classes at Delhi University when the lift is broken, one ­wouldn’t know from Margarita, with a Straw that disability activists engaged in a years-­long strug­gle for accessible cabs, or that disability life writing pieces, such as John Hockenberry’s Moving Violations, chronicle the pervasive inaccessibility of so called “public” transit in New York City. NYU and The Big Apple seem like a land of plentitude—­magically ­free of ableist prejudice, broken elevators, poorly kept sidewalks, or cabs that d ­ on’t stop for wheelchair-­users. Moreover, although Khanum and Laila meet at a protest against police brutality, as non-­white queer disabled ­women, they do not encounter a single instance of racism and homophobia in “The West.” Meanwhile, Khanum’s coming out story, which details her Bangladeshi/Pakistani f­ amily’s intolerance, subtly positions homophobia as an ongoing prob­lem of unenlightened non-­Western attitudes.61

Thus, Margarita, with a Straw’s portrayal of the West as a more liberal and accessible/modern space where it is relatively safe and easier to explore nonnormative sexualities and access public spaces as against the more conservative Orient, in this case, India, might have unwittingly reified the Orientalist-­imperialist binary of the progressive West/regressive East. The movie thus pays scant attention to homophobia, racial politics, and ableism in the West. This is especially impor­tant ­because social justice–­based protests against ­t hese multiple forms of discrimination often do not communicate with each other or even mutually exclude each other; for example, consider how the agenda of Indian feminism has historically excluded disability,62 or the white disability movement in the United States has often excluded race, gender, and material-­historical conditions that produce disability in the form of social class.63 Nirmala Erevelles, by focusing on the body of the black slave, argues that it was the supposed inadequacy of black bodies that made them profitable ­under cap­i­tal­ist slavery; thus, she claims that both racialized and disabled bodies

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are caught in a dialectic of being si­mul­ta­neously commodified and refused by capitalism. Erevelles adds that the economic profitability generated by black bodies that w ­ ere forced into submission through debilitating injuries and impairment demonstrates how the “productive desire that is constitutive of some bodies is enabled through the consumption of the seared, divided, ripped-­apart, mutilated flesh of other bodies.”64 Thus, for Erevelles, “black bodies [became] disabled and disabled bodies [became] black.”65 Hence it is impossible to disentangle race, disability, class, and capitalism from one another. Unfortunately, Margarita, with a Straw pays no attention to this entwinement of race, disability, class, and capitalism, even though the central protagonists are brown ­women from the Global South. On a dif­fer­ent note, it is impor­tant to consider that the film portrays the central protagonist, Laila, as a modern young Indian ­woman who is uninhibited, despite her disability. It chronicles the tale of this rebellious young ­woman with ce­re­bral palsy, who travels from Delhi to New York City to study, falls in love, and embarks on a journey of self-­discovery. Laila is a regular, spirited college student, except for her impaired speech and motor skills. The treatment of her character within the film coincides neatly with the notion of India’s neoliberal New ­Woman, as envisaged by Bollywood. Neoliberal economic reform as a form of free-­market capitalism was introduced in India in 1991 with the opening up of the Indian economy to the world market. Among other t­ hings, this meant privatization of hitherto publicly owned enterprises and deregulation of state control, undertaking austerity mea­sures, and encouraging ­free trade. It brought with it decreased government spending to boost the role of private capital’s control over the economy, the polity, and society at large. This also meant an erosion of state-­provided basic ser­v ices like health care, education, sanitation, and housing for every­one. Moreover, several places across the world that have experienced the rise of neoliberal regimes have witnessed a concomitant rise in right-­w ing sociopo­liti­cal and religious ideologies and movements that often push for conservative economic and po­l iti­cal legislations and seek to serve as guardians of public culture and morality. As Rupal Oza argues in The Making of Neoliberal India, this wide-­ranging global political-­economic reform also altered gendered subjectivities, and popu­lar cultural forms and films and tele­v i­sion became key locales where ­t hese new subjectivities ­were aired, engaged with, and contested.66 In the popu­lar imagination of this globalizing nation with porous bound­aries for the movement of capital, l­abor, and images in the interest of late capitalism, ­these altered gendered subjectivities birthed the notion of India’s New ­Woman. This figure is seen as a contrast to the ­imagined figure of the docile, homebound traditional Indian ­woman who is ­limited by patriarchal domesticity. In contrast, the New W ­ oman is supposed to be bold, modern, global in her outlook, urban, En­glish educated, a paid professional, middle/upper class, confident, sexually brazen, and one who makes the bound­a ries between the “virtuous heroine” and the “evil vamp” fluid, thus often generating moral panic around her body, bearing, and life choices.67 Despite being all of t­ hese, as Oza points out, she is supposed to be “Indian by being anchored in ‘core’

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values.”68 This New W ­ oman thus soon became the icon of globalizing India on whose body ­t hese wide-­ranging sociopo­liti­cal and economic changes ­were being played out. Laila and her lesbian partner, Khanum, represent this notion of the New ­Woman in several ways, both in terms of the possibilities that neoliberal globalism offered them and in terms of the class-­and language-­based (and caste-­, gender-­, and ethnicity-­based) exclusions that it brings with it.69 Laila is a denizen of Delhi, India’s capital city and one of its core urban centers. She lives in an arguably upper-­middle-­class home along with her parents and younger b ­ rother. Even though the film makes no mention of Laila’s f­ ather’s occupation, we see him ­going to work (her ­mother is a ­house­wife and the ­family’s primary caregiver), and a close reading of the po­liti­cal economy of the film’s diegetic universe clearly highlights their upper-­middle-­class status. Laila has a power wheel-­ chair, and the ­family owns an accessible camper van and a large and well-­decorated ­house in Delhi. Laila is fluent in En­glish and has the cultural capital to be a part of the information economy that helped her apply to the creative writing program at New York University, and her ­mother could afford to stay with Laila for months in New York. I argue that all of ­t hese details establish Laila’s upper-­middle-­class status. Laila is bold and sexually adventurous, and she falls in love multiple times during the film even as she does not equate having sex with love. Despite her disability, she is portrayed as an in­de­pen­dent soul who is not afraid of facing life. Khanum, Laila’s visually impaired lesbian lover, also is a brazen, sassy w ­ oman who has a Bangladeshi f­ ather and a Pakistani ­mother and has lived in seven countries. She is portrayed as a transnational social justice activist. Laila and Khanum first meet at a protest decrying police brutality against black bodies in New York, which Khanum joins, despite being blind. Having discovered her lesbian sexual identity and “coming out” to her parents at the age of fourteen, Khanum too is unconventional and prototypical of the New W ­ oman in many ways. In this context, it is also impor­tant to note the transnational production of the film, which was shot both in the United States and in India, using crew from both countries. It received support from the Sundance Institute in the United States. The director, Shonali Bose, too has been a denizen of New York for her gradu­ate studies and has strong transnational connections. In many ways this film can be considered to be a part of the cinematic order of the “New Bollywood” that is linked to the restructuring of the Bollywood film form as a response to the demands of the global marketplace with which it has been more fundamentally integrated since the liberalization of the Indian economy. This “new cinema” of Bollywood, as Sangita Gopal calls it,70 differs from its pre­de­ces­sor in significant ways in its industrial practices and aesthetic forms, and it has been linked to the “streamlining, corporatization and vertical integration that began post-­liberalization in the 1990s.”71 This cinematic form and content have strong diasporic and transnational connections and are marketed primarily to urban audiences in India and to diasporic Indians around the world. Just like the production context, the star text of the central protagonist, Kalki Koechlin (who plays Laila), is also pertinent to the discussion of this postliberal-

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ization era New ­Woman in Bollywood. Kalki is an Indian-­born French actress and screenwriter who is renowned for her heterodox body of work and her choice of roles and filmic genres in Bollywood. She has been critically acclaimed for her per­ for­mances in indie films, plays, web series, and commercially successful Bollywood blockbusters and has earned the tag of the “nonconformist,” and one of the new “new wave actors”72 for her unconventional roles and out­spoken personality, especially against gender discrimination and colorism in India. Thus, her audacious, spunky public persona and se­lection of proj­ects align her neatly with the New ­Woman trope in Bollywood that is central to our discussion. However, in understanding the New W ­ oman, as Sushmita Chatterjee puts it, “The ‘new’ seems to exist as a par­tic­u­lar and unique transaction between local traditions and the global spread of populations that make limiting conceptions of ­woman, nation, or ­family, anomalies in a world propelled by expanding market needs and demands.”73 Thus, while carving out the characters of the two central female protagonists, Laila and Khanum, in contradiction to the image of the domesticated and submissive Indian ­woman, the film still uses popu­lar tropes of the lesbian-­activist, the liberal/modern/accessible Occident, where the passionate love affair of the two lesbians flourishes but dies once they are back in the conservative Orient. Also, ­t hese characters’ class position and the global consumption practices they engage in remind us that w ­ omen from the Global South who do not have access to similar support structures and cultural and economic capital may not ever become the global New ­Woman. Thus, the contradictions and the exclusions within the image and the body of the New ­Woman get crystallized firmly through the film. I now turn to a discussion of the exploration of the sexuality of this New ­Woman’s disabled body as it can be seen through the film.

The Disabled Body and Its Sexuality The lit­er­a­ture on disability highlights the sociocultural and material-­historical construction of the disabled body and mind, based on able-­normative, heteronormative and patriarchal ideologies. The lit­er­a­ture emphasizes that it is not the corporeal disability but the discourse around that disability that is debilitating. As Susan Wendell argues, “Neither impairment nor disability can be defined purely in biomedical terms, b ­ ecause social arrangements and expectations make essential contributions to impairment and disability, and to their absence. . . . ​The distinction between the biological real­ity of a disability and the social construction of a disability cannot be made sharply, ­because the biological and the social are interactive in creating disability.”74 Thus, according to Wendell, disability is socially constructed by our failure to create ability for ­t hose who do not fit into our normative conceptions of the ideal body/mind. Ableist princi­ples of access to space, time, public ser­v ices, l­abor, development, and sexuality mean that ­t hese are only ­imagined and designed for the fit, able-­bodied (male) citizen. Anita Ghai also conceptualizes disability as a “social, cultural and po­liti­cal phenomenon.”75 Both

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Erevelles and Jasbir Puar argue that it is imperative to attend to the material conditions that produce disability and which specifically debilitate certain ­people over ­others.76 Gayle Salamon argues that we are not just born into a physical body but assume a body, both physically and meta­phor­ical­ly.77 Salamon challenges the corporeality of the (sexed) body as a given. The disability and queer politics of Margarita, with a Straw offers interruptions and re­sis­tances to ­t hese hegemonic rhe­torics of ableist heteronormativity that the lit­er­a­ture identifies. We see how Laila “assumes” her “disabled” body as she also internalizes able-­normative standards of beauty and sexual attractiveness and experiences the tensions around sexuality that this pro­cess of assuming and internalization generates. She is shown to have doubts about her body and appearance and requires assurance from Khanum, who in at least in three instances in the film affirms that Laila is “very beautiful.” Laila edits her wheelchair out of her picture on Facebook. However, nowhere is this self-­doubt shown as overpowering her life decisions, especially when she accepts an offer from NYU and moves to New York City. Laila “assumes” and claims her right to her own body and refuses to let p ­ eople judge her creative abilities due to her physical disability. This is evident in a scene in which Laila, who pens lyr­ics for her college band at Delhi University, is visibly upset as the host for a “­Battle of the Bands” that her college band wins, alludes to the fact that the band “had to win” b ­ ecause its lyr­ics ­were written by a “disabled musician.” The fiery Laila shows the ­middle fin­ger onstage as a reaction when the host asks her to share with the audience how her journey is dif­fer­ent from that of the “normal” kids. ­Later, Laila’s ­mother also tells Laila’s caregiver in New York that ce­re­bral palsy is only a bodily impairment; it does not affect the brain or intelligence. Laila is shown to be an excellent chess player too. Thus, the film never reduces Laila or Khanum to objects of pity. It avoids the two common ste­reo­t ypical tropes of representing the journeys of disabled p ­ eople—­using inspiration porn or pity porn. Laila and Khanum are shown as ­going about their lives without trying to ­either inspire audiences or generate pity from them. However, the film (and its crew) still has to deal with the fact that it has used able-­bodied actors to play disabled characters, something that disability rights activists have protested against vehemently.78 Robert McRuer argues that compulsory heteronormativity and compulsory able-­bodiedness are intertwined ideologies, and hence disability and queerness upset t­ hese hegemonic constructions of the bodily identity.79 In Margarita, with a Straw, Laila’s exploration of her sexuality and her marginalized body shows us how she challenges ­t hese ideologies. Laila is constantly reminded by p ­ eople and situations that her body is not like every­one else’s—­she is dif­fer­ent, and her body is a marginal body. At the beginning of the film, we see her cropping out her wheelchair in a picture on Facebook, and then masturbating to internet porn and ­later buying a vibrator—­a ll part of her pro­cess of reclaiming her body and autonomy. When she starts falling for Nima, the able-­bodied lead singer of her college band, and breaks up with her first boyfriend, Dhruv, who is also disabled, Dhruv tells her bitterly that “dating normal p ­ eople w ­ on’t make her normal” and accuses her

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of liking Nima b ­ ecause he is able-­bodied. Laila, of course, is angry at this ableist-­ sexist insinuation. As Elman indicates, “Laila’s diverse sexual experiences—­ranging from masturbation, to casual sex with men, to a committed lesbian relationship—­ are crucial to her autonomy.”80 Also, t­ hese experiences tend to redefine accessibility by reconsidering the physical and ideological barriers that have resulted in the “imposition of asexuality” and a denial of an access to sexual culture and thus to sexual citizenship to disabled lives.81 Moreover, Margarita, with a Straw refreshingly, does not employ any of the ste­ reo­t ypical tropes of the disabled as “dependent, morally depraved, superhumanly heroic, asexual, and/or pitiful”;82 neither Laila nor Khanum’s character generates sexual pity, nor are they hypersexualized. Laila, like the New W ­ oman, explores her sexuality in multiple ways and is both confident and doubtful about ­t hese explorations. Likewise, Laila’s relationship with Khanum is not depicted as the end goal of the film; instead, the film circumvents the heteronormative logic of the “happily ever ­after” by ending on a note where Laila loses her ­mother to cancer and moves apart from Khanum but is still depicted as happy. In the closing scene, she dresses up and “goes on a date” with herself (sitting in a restaurant facing a mirror where she sees herself in place of a “date” and smiles at herself) and ­orders a “margarita, with a straw”—­t he drink she tasted for the first time (also the very first time she drinks) with Khanum in New York—­and raises a toast to herself. In this way, the film refuses to offer a normative narrative closure. As Elman suggests, “Offering a rare portrait of disability and bisexuality, the film also manages not to glorify romantic love (or monogamy) as essential to happiness or as a panacea for ableism.”83 Nor does it show Laila as “tragically lonely and isolated,”84 another ste­reo­ typical repre­sen­ta­tion of disabled p ­ eople. Moreover, the margarita comes to represent Laila as the New W ­ oman—­sassy, bold, and not scared to explore all that life has to offer. Also, the presence of the margarita in Laila’s life, even ­after Khanum leaves, indicates the everlasting importance of Laila’s emotional relationship with Khanum. However, the margarita ­will always come with a straw for Laila, who is unable to drink it from the glass directly due to her disability—­indicating that her disability is her real­ity, but also suggesting that this real­ity need not mar the other realities, visceral or other­wise, of her life. As Elman suggests, the straw and margarita also symbolize crip access to plea­sure and self-­love.85 Furthermore, this nondefinitive ending in which, despite experiencing major setbacks, Laila is shown to be moving on, but possibly without a set goal, highlights the multiple possibilities in queer life rather than having a linear progression. Kathryn Bond Stockton’s framework of “growing sideways”86 and Alison Kafer’s notion of the “crip time”87 both challenge the usual sense of “growing up” and moving at a certain pace in a linear trajectory ­toward a full-­statured body, matrimony, reproduction, and the abandoning of childish ways. ­These concepts do not just expand the notion of a rushed, ableist temporality and physical and ­mental development but explode it to reimagine “our notions of what can and should

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happen in time, or recognizing the expectations of ‘how long ­things take.’ ”88 Kafer adds that it is “not only an accommodation to t­ hose who need ‘more’ time but also, and perhaps especially, a challenge to normative and normalizing expectations of pace and scheduling. Rather than bend disabled bodies and minds to meet the clock, crip time bends the clock to meet disabled bodies and minds.”89 We can interpret Laila’s disposition and the unconventional ending of Margarita, with a Straw using this framework of lateral growth and crip time. Laila, a child who is “dif­fer­ent” in many ways due to her ce­re­bral palsy, grows “sideways” to become a “dif­fer­ent” adult—­one who is disabled and bisexual, and queer in multiple senses of the term. The film, instead of ending on a conventionally “happy” note, seeing Laila settled as an adult in a predictable monogamous relationship, ends on a “happy” note with a difference—­Laila is single but relishes her singlehood at that moment just as she relished her relationships in the past. She constructs her own time, and she chooses her pace and manner of intellectual and emotional development and exploration of her sexuality. The film also moves through t­ hese dif­fer­ent phases of Laila’s life and depicts the strong homosocial bonds Laila forges with her friends and f­amily, especially the very special relationship she has with her m ­ other (played by Revathy), whose character is shown to be bold yet gentle, and strong yet domesticated. The film opens with a close shot of Laila’s m ­ other’s hand, with bangles on her wrists (a traditional marker of marriage and domesticity in India), performing a h ­ ouse­hold chore. The very next scene shows her driving a big camper van with her husband sitting beside her and her ­children sitting ­behind. Then she is shown as supporting Laila physically as she puts the ramp in place to help Laila’s wheelchair alight from the van. The character of Laila’s ­mother explicates the contradictions experienced by a traditional Indian w ­ oman who is heavi­ly influenced by heteronormative ideas yet rants about patriarchal domesticity. She also has to come to terms with her child’s bisexual identity in a society that regards homo­sexuality as a crime and as abnormal. She must choose between seeing Laila as a child who needs her and accepting that Laila is her own person. This relationship between the ­mother and ­daughter is not without its strains as it becomes evident on multiple occasions (e.g., when Laila’s m ­ other discovers that Laila is watching porn, that she has sold off her heirloom gold chain to buy an iPad or when Laila comes out to her ­mother). Yet, ultimately she accepts Laila for who she is, though in each case Laila asserts her in­de­pen­dence. This relationship thus embodies the crucial need of queer and disabled w ­ omen to assert their agency against parental protectiveness,90 even as it depicts the many strains and contradictions of neoliberal woman­hood of the New W ­ oman.

Conclusion Margarita, with a Straw deals with the ignored and censored aspect of sexual plea­sure and disability. It also shows us that for queer and disabled ­people, their queerness and disability need not be the only real­ity of their lives. The film repre-

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sents the imagination of the Indian New ­Woman, whose corporeality, comportment, choices, and life trajectory have to be understood as a critical intersection of middle-­class, neoliberal cele­bration of difference amid conservative Hindu right-­ wing politics. It depicts the many challenges faced and support structures received by a disabled, queer teenager as she comes of age and strug­gles to explore her bisexual identity. Even as the film makes an uncompromising argument in f­avor of sexual rights of disabled bodies and for ac­cep­tance of nonheteronormative sexuality, it reinstates hierarchies of class-­based consumption practices and reifies the notion of the “liberal West,” where one can explore accessible spaces and achieve sexual liberation as against the more conservative Orient, in this case, India. Overall, this sexually bold, transnational, affluent New ­Woman in Margarita, with a Straw embodies the discourse on transgressive desires and bodies that allow for drastic breaks from normativity as well as intransigent closures.

notes 1. ​Jayana Jain, “Bit of Barfi, Sip of Margarita: Disability and Sexuality in Hindi Films,” ANTYAJA: Indian Journal of W ­ omen and Social Change 3, no. 1 (2018): 107–118. 2. ​Shohini Ghosh, “False Appearances and Mistaken Identities: The Phobic and the Erotic in Bombay Cinema’s Queer Vision,” in The Phobic and the Erotic: The Politics of Sexualities in Con­temporary India, ed. B. Bose and S. Bhattacharya (Kolkata: Seagull, 2007), 433. 3. ​Atanu Mohapatra, “Portrayal of Disability in Hindi Cinema: A Study of Emerging Trends of Differently-­Abled,” Asian Journal of Multidimensional Research 1, no. 7 (2012): 124–132; Swagata Chatterjee, “Aesthetics of Disability: The Growing Interest in Disability in Popu­lar Hindi Cinema,” postscriptum: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Literary Studies 1 (2016): 11–21. 4. ​ Margarita, with a Straw, directed by Shonali Bose and Nilesh Maniyar (2014; Mumbai: Viacom18 Motion Pictures), DVD, 100 min. 5. ​Eleanor Margolis, “Margarita, with a Straw: An Indian Indie Film with a Lot to Say about Disability and Sexuality,” New Statesman Amer­i­ca (2014), https://­w ww​.­newstatesman​.­com​ /­culture​/2­ 014​/­10​/m ­ argarita​-­straw​-i­ ndian​-­indie​-­fi lm​-­lot​-­say​-­about​-d ­ isability​-­a nd​-­sexuality. 6. ​Rupal Oza, The Making of Neoliberal India: Nationalism, Gender and the Paradoxes of Globalization (New York: Routledge, 2006). 7. ​Rajinder Dudrah, “Queer as Desis: Secret Politics of Gender and Sexuality in Bollywood Films in Diasporic Urban Ethnoscapes,” in Global Bollywood: Travels of Hindi Song and Dance, ed. Sangita Gopal and Sujata Moorti (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), 288. 8. ​ Kal Ho Naa Ho, directed by Nikkhil Advani (2003; Mumbai: Yash Raj Films), DVD, 186 min. 9. ​ Dostana, directed by Tarun Mansukhani (2008; Mumbai: Yash Raj Films), DVD, 139 min. 10. ​ Masti, directed by Indra Kumar (2004; Mumbai: Maruti International), DVD, 166 min. 11. ​ Girlfriend, directed by Karan Razdan (2004; Mumbai: T-­Series), DVD, 120 min. 12. ​Men Not Allowed, directed by Shrey Srivastava (2006; Mumbai: Sri Vardan Pictures), DVD, 115 min. 13. ​ Fire, directed by Deepa Mehta (1996; India/Canada: Kaleidoscope Entertainment & Zeitgeist Films), DVD, 108 min. 14. ​Shohini Ghosh, “The Wonderful World of Queer Cinephilia,” BioScope 1, no. 1 (2010): 18. 15. ​Churnjeet Mahn and Diane Watt, “Relighting the Fire: Visualizing the Lesbian in Con­ temporary India,” Journal of Lesbian Studies 18, no. 3 (2014): 223. 16. ​Jigna Desai, “Homo on the Range: Mobile and Global Sexualities,” Social Text 73, no. 20 (2002): 65–89; Ghosh, “The Wonderful World of Queer Cinephilia”; Mahn and Watt, “Relighting the Fire.” 17. ​Desai, “Homo on the Range,” 65. 18. ​Desai, 65.

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19. ​Ghosh, “The Wonderful World of Queer Cinephilia.” 20. ​ Mango Souffle, directed by Mahesh Dattani (2002; Mumbai: Lotus Piktures), DVD, 89 min. 21. ​My ­Brother . . . ​Nikhil, directed by Onir (2005; Mumbai: Four Front Films), DVD, 120 min. 22. ​ Bombay Talkies, directed by Karan Johar, Dibakar Banerjee, Zoya Akhtar, and Anurag Kashyap (2013; Mumbai: Flying Unicorn Entertainment & Viacom18 Motion Pictures), DVD, 128 min. 23. ​ Aligarh, directed by Hansal Mehta (2015; Mumbai: Eros Entertainment & Karma Pictures), DVD, 114 min. 24. ​Kapoor & Sons, directed by Shakun Batra (2016; Mumbai: Dharma Productions), DVD, 140 min. 25. ​Ghosh, “False Appearances and Mistaken Identities.” 26. ​Rohit Dasgupta, “The Visual Repre­sen­ta­tion of Queer Bollywood: Mistaken Identities and Misreadings in Dostana,” Journal of Arts Writing by Students 1, no. 1 (2015): 91–101. 27. ​Ghosh, “The Wonderful World of Queer Cinephilia,” 19. 28. ​On September  6, 2018, in a historic judgment, the Supreme Court of India fi­nally struck down this decision of December 2013 and decriminalized homo­sexuality. The move was welcomed not only by the LGBTQIA+ community but also by large sections of Indian society, even as the Hindu right continues to refuse to acknowledge homo­sexuality as “Indian.” 29. ​Julie Passanante Elman, Chronic Youth: Disability, Sexuality, and U.S. Media Cultures of Rehabilitation (New York: New York University Press, 2014). 30. ​ Jeevan Naiya, directed by Franz Osten (1936; Mumbai: Bombay Talkies), DVD, 140 min. 31. ​ Mehboob ki Mehendi, directed by H. S. Rawail (1971; Mumbai: United Producers), DVD, 151 min. 32. ​ Sholay, directed by Ramesh Sippy (1975; Mumbai: United Producers, Sippy Films), DVD, 204 min. 33. ​ Dhanwaan, directed by Surendra Mohan (1981; Mumbai: Filmnagar), DVD, 152 min. 34. ​ Omkara, directed by Vishal Bhardwaj (2006; Mumbai: Shemaroo Entertainment), DVD, 155 min. 35. ​ Haider, directed by Vishal Bhardwaj (2014; Mumbai: VB Pictures), DVD, 162 min. 36. ​ Judaai, directed by Raj Kanwar (1997; S. K. Film Enterprises & Eros Entertainment), DVD, 167 min. 37. ​ Mujhse Shaadi Karogi, directed by David Dhawan (2004; Mumbai: Nadiawala Grand­ sons), DVD, 163 min. 38. ​ Tom, Dick and Harry, directed by Deepak Tijori (2006; Mumbai: Oracle Entertainment), DVD, 137 min. 39. ​ Pyare Mohan, directed by Indra Kumar (2006; Mumbai: Maruti International), DVD, 133 min. 40. ​The Golmaal series, directed by Rohit Shetty (2006, 2008, 2010; Mumbai: Shree Ashtavinayak Cine Vision Ltd.), DVD, 150 min, 125 min, 155 min. 41. ​ Dushman, directed by Tanuja Chandra (1998; Mumbai: NH Studioz & Vishesh Films), DVD, 145 min. 42. ​ Aankhen, directed by Vipul Amrutlal Shah (2002; Mumbai: V R Films), DVD, 165 min. 43. ​The Krrish series, directed by Rakesh Roshan (2006, 2013; Mumbai: Filmkraft Productions Pvt. Ltd.), DVD, 175 min, 152 min. 44. ​ My Name Is Khan, directed by Karan Johar (2010; Mumbai: Fox Searchlight Pictures & Dharma Productions), DVD, 165 min. 45. ​ Barfi, directed by Anurag Basu (2012; Mumbai: Ishana Movies & UTV Motion Pictures), DVD, 150 min. 46. ​ Koi . . . ​Mil Gaya, directed by Rakesh Roshan (2003; Mumbai: Filmkraft Productions Pvt. Ltd.), DVD, 166 min. 47. ​ Dosti, directed by Satyen Bose (1964; Mumbai: Rajshri Productions), DVD, 163 min.

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48. ​ K hamoshi: The Musical, directed by Sanjay Leela Bansali (1996; Mumbai: SLB Films), DVD, 160 min. 49. ​ Fanaa, directed by Kunal Kohli (2006; Mumbai: Yash Raj Films), DVD, 169 min. 50. ​ Gora Aur Kala, directed by Naresh Kumar (1972; Mumbai: Shankar Movies), DVD, 128 min. 51. ​ R am Tera Desh, directed by Swaroop Kumar (1984; Mumbai: N H Studioz), DVD, 140 min. 52. ​ Koshish, directed by Gulzar (1972; Mumbai: Digital Entertainment, Leo International), DVD, 125 min. 53. ​ Sparsh, directed by Sai Paranjpae (1980; Mumbai: Basu Bhattacharya), DVD, 145 min. 54. ​ Black, directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali (2005; Mumbai: Applause Entertainment & SLB Films), DVD, 122 min. 55. ​ Taare Zameen Par, directed by Aamir Khan (2007; Mumbai: Aamir Khan Productions), DVD, 164 min. 56. ​Shreelata Prasad, Geeta Kashyap and M. Rabindranath, “Anatomizing the Screen Presence of Disabled Characters in Hindi Feature Films,” Journal of Content, Community & Communication 7, no. 4 (2018): 43–51; Chatterjee, “Aesthetics of Disability”; Mohapatra, “Portrayal of Disability in Hindi Cinema”; K. Sawhney, “Tracing the Portrayal of Disability in Indian Cinema,” accessed June 20, 2019, https://­stanford​.e­ du​/­~kartiks2​/­disabilityInBollywood​.­pdf. 57. ​Julie Passanante Elman, “Embodying Agency: A Review of Semicolon; The Adventures of Ostomy Girl and Margarita with a Straw,” Disability Studies Quarterly 37, no. 1 (2017): 3. 58. ​Ghosh, “The Wonderful World of Queer Cinephilia.” 59. ​Subir K. Kole, “Globalizing Queer? AIDS, Homophobia and the Politics of Sexual Identity in India,” Globalization and Health 3, no. 8 (2007): 16. 60. ​The Hindu right orchestrated the protests against Fire and Girlfriend. The rhe­toric of belonging to the “soil” holds a major place in this Hindu right wing’s imagination of what “Indian culture” is and in its brand of regionalism. One significant movement based on narrow neoliberal identity politics, launched by the Hindu right-­wing party, Shiv Sena, along with the Hindu right-­w ing paramilitary organ­ization, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), was the “Aamchi Mumbai/Our Mumbai” movement. This used the rhe­toric of the “Sons of the Soil” movements and claimed that only Maharashtrians should be allowed to work in India’s financial capital, Mumbai. The movement specifically targeted mi­grant workers from north India, who, they claimed, w ­ ere stealing the jobs that should rightfully go the Maharashtrians. This is an instance of cultural and economic fascism that has strong similarities with the Trump administration’s rhe­toric on immigrants in the United States, as also the current ethnonationalist BJP (Bhartiya Janata Party) government’s fascist rhe­toric in India. 61. ​Elman, “Embodying Agency,” 4. 62. ​Anita Ghai, “Disabled ­Women: An Excluded Agenda of Indian Feminism,” Hypatia 17, no. 3 (2002): 49–66. 63. ​Nirmala Erevelles, Disability and Difference in Global Contexts: Enabling a Transformative Body Politic (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); Jasbir Puar, The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017). 64. ​Erevelles, Disability and Difference in Global Contexts, 28. 65. ​Erevelles, 40. 66. ​Rupal Oza, The Making of Neoliberal India: Nationalism, Gender and the Paradoxes of Globalization (New York: Routledge, 2006). 67. ​Oza; Rajeswari Sunder Rajan. Real and ­Imagined ­Women: Gender, Culture and Postcolonialism (London: Routledge, 1993); Anupama Arora,. “Nobody Puts Rani in a Corner: Making of the New Indian W ­ oman in Queen (2014),” South Asian Popu­lar Culture 17, no. 2 (2019): 145–157. 68. ​Oza, The Making of Neoliberal India, 22. 69. ​It is impor­tant to note ­here that caste is not discussed in the film at all, even though it is intimately connected with class-­based and gendered practices of institutional exclusion and discrimination in India and among diasporic Indians.

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70. ​Sangita Gopal, Conjugations: Marriage and Form in New Bollywood Cinema (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011). 71. ​Meheli Sen, Haunting Bollywood: Gender, Genre, and the Super­natural in Hindi Commercial Cinema (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2017), 20. 72. ​ Vinayak Chakravorty, “The new ‘new wave’,” India ­Today (2014), https://­ w ww​ .­i ndiatoday​.­i n​/­movies​/ ­bollywood ​/­story​/­i rrfan​-­nimrit​-­k aur​-­r icha​-­chaddha​-­rajkummarrao​ -­huma​-­qureshi​-­v inayak​-­chakravorty​-­196065​-­2014​-­06​-­07. 73. ​Sushmita Chatterjee, “ ‘En­glish Vinglish’ and Bollywood: What Is ‘New’ about the ‘New ­Woman’?,” Gender, Place & Culture 23, no. 8 (2016): 1179. 74. ​Susan Wendell, The Rejected Body (New York: Routledge, 1996), 57. 75. ​Anita Ghai, Rethinking Disability in India (New Delhi: Routledge, 2015), xxvi. 76. ​Erevelles, Disability and Difference in Global Contexts; Puar, The Right to Maim. 77. ​Gayle Salamon, Assuming a Body: Transgender and Rhe­torics of Materiality (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010). 78. ​For a discussion of this point, see S. E. Smith, “It’s Complicated: Disability, and Repre­ sen­ta­tion in Margarita, with a Straw,” bitchmedia, September 20, 2016, https://­w ww​.b ­ itchmedia​ .­org​/a­ rticle​/m ­ argarita​-­straw​-­disability​-n ­ ondisabled​-­actors\; Jorain Ng, “Heroes, Villains and Victims: Images of Disability in Movies,” Vox Nostra: A Voice of Our Own, https://­disabled​peo​ples​ association​.­wordpress​.­com​/2­ 014​/­10​/­31​/d ­ isability​-­in​-m ­ ovies​/­. For director Shonali Bose’s justifications for using able-­bodied actors in the film for representing disabled characters, see Sophia Stein, “Margarita with a Straw—­Yes, Please,” Cultural Weekly, June  14, 2016, https://­w ww​ .­culturalweekly​.­com​/­margarita​-­straw​-­yes​-p ­ lease​/­. 79. ​Robert McRuer, Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability (New York: New York University Press, 2006). 80. ​Elman, “Embodying Agency,” 3. 81. ​Tobin Siebers, Disability Theory (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011). 82. ​Wendell, The Rejected Body, 61. 83. ​Elman, “Embodying Agency,” 3. 84. ​Elman, 5. 85. ​Elman, 5. 86. ​Kathryn Bond Stockton, The Queer Child, Or Growing Sideways in the Twentieth ­Century (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009). 87. ​Alison Kafer, Feminist, Queer, Crip (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013). 88. ​Kafer, 27. 89. ​Kafer, 27. 90. ​Elman, “Embodying Agency,” 3.

chapter 7

Q

Plus-­Size Femininity the multiple figurations of bhumi pednekar Ajay Gehlawat

The c­ areer of Hindi film actress Bhumi Pednekar challenges the typical Bollywood scenario in multiple ways. For her first film, Dum Laga ke Haisha (2015; hereafter Dum),1 for which she received a Filmfare Award for Best Female Debut, Pednekar gained approximately thirty kilograms (roughly sixty-­six pounds) to play the character of Sandhya, an intelligent, overweight young w ­ oman whose marriage to Prem (Ayushmann Khurrana) forms the basis of the narrative. While Prem is initially disgusted by her obesity, Sandhya refuses to succumb to attempts by Prem and his female f­ amily members to body-­shame her and, instead, defends her plus-­ size figure. In additional deviations from normative Bollywood patterns, rather than hewing to a conventional “fat-­to-­fit” narrative, Sandhya refuses to shed her excess weight and initiates divorce proceedings rather than suffer the indignities leveled against her by Prem and his ­family. The film similarly deviates from conventional narratives by concluding with Prem fi­nally overcoming his initial disgust and falling in love with Sandhya as she is: an unabashedly intelligent, out­spoken, and plus-­size young ­woman who also enjoys dancing in public and engaging in sex. ­After completing Dum, Pednekar subsequently shed the excess weight she gained for this role to play Jaya in Toilet: Ek Prem Katha (2017; hereafter Toilet).2 H ­ ere Pednekar’s character is a small-­town topper who marries the son of a pandit (Akshay Kumar), only to leave his h ­ ouse ­after discovering he has no toilet. As in Dum, rather than succumb to the limitations of small-­town life and its provincial mentality, Pednekar’s character is willing to leave her betrothed and helps mobilize the ­women in the small town to stand up for their own rights. This chapter examines the dynamics informing Pednekar’s groundbreaking roles as a distinctly new type of heroine in Dum and Toilet, as well as in her subsequent film, Shubh Mangal Saavdhan (2017),3 in which she is again paired with Khurrana as the c­ ouple deals with his erectile dysfunction. Si­mul­ta­neously, this chapter examines the unique intervention Pednekar had made within the Bollywood ecumene, in which w ­ omen are typically framed as “Western” in both outlook and looks or, 107

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conversely, relegated to quietly bearing the indignity of their suffering u ­ ntil “saved” by the hero, or “saving” themselves through adherence to regimens largely informed by neoliberal discourses emphasizing physical fitness and a body image and outlook conforming to Western norms. Pednekar challenges such conventional logics through both the types of characters she plays on-­screen and, most vividly in Dum, the off-­screen preparation she has undertaken for ­t hese roles. In the pro­ cess, I argue, Pednekar displays a “plus-­size femininity,” in which her characters exercise in­de­pen­dent thinking while refusing to conform to conventional repre­ sen­ta­tions associated with such independent-­minded figures.4

Giving It All Y ­ ou’ve Got: Dum Laga ke Haisha Pednekar’s per­for­mance as the plus-­size Sandhya in Dum is indeed “an impor­tant landmark in Hindi cinema,” particularly “insofar as the destigmatization of the fat female body is concerned.”5 Deviating from the normative and increasingly “size 0” female body on display in con­temporary popu­lar Hindi cinema, Pednekar’s Sandhya si­mul­ta­neously disavows the formulaic “fat-­to-­fit” narrative one frequently witnesses in both Hindi and Hollywood films dealing with overweight characters.6 Sandhya, breaking from this pattern, remains fat and receives love on her own terms. Additionally, Pednekar violates Bollywood norms by making her debut as an overweight character—­that is, by gaining rather than losing weight for her breakout role. It is hard to remember the last time any Hindi film actress did so, particularly in the twenty-­first c­ entury.7 In Dum Sandhya, though overweight, is unabashed, dancing freely at her more or less arranged marriage to Prem, u ­ ntil being chastened by her relatives. Similarly, on their wedding night, Prem is presented as the timid soul, wordlessly curling up in his corner of the bed while Sandhya seems puzzled by his be­hav­ior. Refusing to be shunned, she tries seducing him on the second night, having bought and changed into a pink nightie and asking him to play an “En­glish” film (in an attempt to arouse him). She makes a space for him on the bed next to her and asks him to turn off the lights, then tries cozying up next to him, even as he remains distant, resisting her overtures. Fi­nally, Sandhya leans over and kisses Prem and, one assumes, they engage in a sexual encounter. Yet even as Sandhya is a confident, driven, and vibrant young ­woman who remains unembarrassed of her figure or her looks, she can also be demure, even shy at times, and vulnerable. ­Here, too, one sees a departure from the typical Bollywood formula, as Sandhya is anything but a one-­dimensional character. In a similar vein, while she, like Prem, comes from a small town, she is rarely provincial in her outlook. Unlike her husband, who is a high school dropout, Sandhya is completing a teaching degree and is clearly more educated than Prem, another sign of a new conjugal configuration in which w ­ omen increasingly take the initiative to empower themselves. In some ways, and in a further deviation from the historical, patriarchal model, Sandhya helps Prem become an in­de­pen­dent man, rather than the inverse. Similarly, while being respectful, Sandhya does not hesitate to

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respond to her female in-­laws’ taunts, refusing to back down or become intimidated, particularly when they ironically attempt to frame her intelligence as a negative attribute. When Prem’s ­mother calls her fat, she replies, “And what big film star is your son?” And when Prem describes sleeping with her as a hellish experience, she slaps him and leaves. Even upon returning to her parents’ ­house, she dismisses her own ­mother’s attempts to “talk sense into her,” that is, to make her accept her place (as a subservient w ­ oman) in the patriarchal order, instead retaining a young female l­ awyer and initiating divorce proceedings while she continues studying for her exams. In all of ­t hese ways, Sandhya is a truly modern ­woman, one who refuses to submit to the male order or let dominant standards of beauty stifle her, even as she disallows the drama of her separation from her new husband to interfere with her professional aspirations.8 In the film’s second half, in another instance of her balancing provincial mores with a more modern outlook, Sandhya returns to Prem’s h ­ ouse­hold ­after the judge hearing her divorce petition o ­ rders them to live together for six months in an attempt to resolve their differences. While she returns to Prem, she si­mul­ta­neously tells him, privately, that she is only g­ oing through the motions of such “reconciliation,” which she labels a “farce,” and w ­ ill leave him in six months. Yet despite clearly being the more mature of the two, calmly and coolly proceeding with her plan of action even while deferring to the (patriarchal) ­family order, she is also shown crying by herself, quietly, at night. In other words, Sandhya is not framed negatively for remaining true to her individuality and individual desires, nor as deceptive for merely pretending to accede to the wishes of her in-­laws and her parents. Rather, the film portrays her in a sympathetic light, illuminating her private strug­gle to resist the pressures put upon her by both families. In keeping with such subtlety, Sandhya and Prem subsequently manage to patch up their differences a­ fter paradoxically agreeing to let their relationship end. They then agree, with a bit of encouragement from Prem’s widowed aunt, to run a local husband-­and-­wife piggyback race, which serves as the film’s conclusion. While this ending, and the subsequent end credits song and dance sequence featuring the newly conjoined c­ ouple, is more “Bollywoodesque,” the film nevertheless retains its difference from typical Bollywood fare in its under­lying content and logic. Love may triumph but does so while eschewing the typical “fat-­to-­fit” narrative arc (in which, e.g., Sandhya’s character would dramatically lose weight and/or other­w ise “remake” herself in accordance with dominant norms); if anything, the final piggyback race accentuates this deviation by emphasizing her weight. In the pro­cess, Dum also proposes a new conjugal model of collaboration, with Prem and Sandhya working as a team to win, paradoxically departing from the typical patriarchal logic of Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge in which the man does all the “heavy lifting” and the w ­ oman remains a passive vessel. ­Here, it is Sandhya who encourages Prem to run and win (with her literally and figuratively having his back); illuminating the secondary importance of winning the race itself, Prem continues r­ unning home with Sandhya even a­ fter crossing the finish line, only letting her dismount at his doorstep, where they proceed to kiss on the lips and embrace.9

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The ensuing song and dance sequence during the end credits similarly deviates from typical Bollywood fare, particularly regarding Pednekar’s per­for­mance (and appearance). While such sequences often feature characters performing “out of character” and in a more sexualized manner than they may have within the film proper, Sandhya in many ways has her cake and eats it, too, remaining overweight and (still) performing a joyful, culminating Bollywood song and dance, replete with several colorful costume changes, without it becoming a farce. This point is crucial and indeed pre­sents a telling instance of “the fat female body introduc[ing] a new aesthetic of romance.”10 By retaining her weight and engaging in a joyful and nonfarcical song and dance sequence, Sandhya’s character “go[es] a long way in deconstructing some of the dominant assumptions that structure culturally sanctioned stigmatizing practices.”11 Key among ­t hese is the assumed “look” that Hindi film actresses performing such “item numbers” must have (read: size 0), along with the attendant (and positively framed) “transformation” of the female protagonist (due to her capitulation to hegemonic beauty and body standards) from “ugly duckling” to beautiful swan. Pednekar artfully engages in a balancing act wherein new bodily dynamics and norms are created and redeployed within conventional Bollywood forms. In the pro­cess, by destigmatizing the fat female body, Dum engages in a subversive reworking of both the typical Bollywood narrative and the corporeal space it affords its (plus-­size) heroine.12

Flushing Ste­reo­types: Toilet, a Love Story Having shed the excess weight she gained for Dum, Pednekar next played Jaya, a small-­town topper, in Toilet.13 In keeping with the character she played in her first film, the first time we see Pednekar in her second film, she demonstrates an aggressive assurance and willingness to act on her convictions, in defiance of gender norms in the film’s village setting, impulsively flinging a coconut at a man on a tractor who is harassing other w ­ omen. Her aim is good, and the man is so astounded by her action and subsequent gaali (rebuke) that, ­a fter crashing into a ditch, he turns tail and runs. From the outset, then, Jaya is presented as a strong, fearless ­woman. This is equally the case in her initial encounters with Keshav, both on a train (where she first berates him for not locking the bathroom door and then for not washing his hands) and afterward, both when he delivers her bicycle and when he uses her image without her permission to promote his cycle shop. Jaya is unafraid to speak her mind and stand her ground, yet, unlike typically assertive Bollywood heroines, such as Kareena Kapoor, she is not a fair-­skinned, westernized urbanite but rather a dark-­skinned, small-­town topper who lives with her parents, even as she refuses the facile dichotomy of “modern versus desi,” collapsing the two seamlessly in her identity. Such a conflation of previously disparate ele­ments illuminates how Pednekar’s characters engage with ele­ments of Bollywood’s “new ­woman,” even as they reconfigure t­ hese ele­ments. In a similar vein, Jaya refuses to merely lay the blame on the men and the under­ lying patriarchy governing the village but also indicts the w ­ omen for their active

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complicity in this oppressive setup. Like a modern-­day Lysistrata, she is willing to divorce her husband (and forgo conjugal relations) in order to achieve her goal. In ­doing so, she inspires the ­women to follow suit, as we see in a montage sequence near the end of the film, in which the village w ­ omen collectively throw off the yoke oppressing them by throwing their lotas at their husbands, the metonymic object of their oppression transformed into a power­f ul symbol of protest. Yet, as in Dum, Pednekar’s character avoids being relegated to facile binarisms, as she stands by her convictions even as she retains her affection for Keshav (who, in turn, remains attracted to her precisely ­because of, rather than in spite of, this anomalous conflation of character traits). As in Dum, such a complex character violates “formulaic reiteration[s]” of femininity within the Bollywood universe.14 Jaya, in an echo of Sandhya’s course, moves back to her parents’ ­house ­after Keshav is unable to procure a sustainable toilet for her use. And while one could argue that Toilet hews more closely to a conventional Bollywood narrative (i.e.: happy heteronormative resolution) and also has Pednekar’s character conform more to conventional body norms, her character sharply deviates from convention in being, as she puts it, a desi girl from head to toe but completely modern in her thinking. In other words, Pednekar’s characters display a new blend of cultural ele­ments, combining a modernity in outlook linked to the West with a more Indian look, eschewing the superficial and hyperbolic attributes typically associated in Bollywood with such a “modern” attitude, for example, fair skin, affluence, or a penchant for partying. Pednekar’s character, in other words, deviates from con­temporary Bollywood norms both in her class status and in her distinctly desi identity. In many ways Jaya is a feminized throwback to the famous song from Shree 420 (1955) and its under­lying sentiment,15 one quite dif­fer­ent from that embodied, for example, by Raj Kapoor’s grand­daughter, Kareena Kapoor, who even in her more hatke turns as prostitutes (as in Chameli [2003]16 or Talaash [2012]17), brings a glamorous Bollywood look to the roles. Further, even as one could argue that Toilet hews to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s campaign propaganda regarding the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (aka Clean India Proj­ect), it does, largely through Pednekar’s character, bring about a resolution through an ­actual change in the (lower-­class, desi) narrative world. Additionally, this change—­t he introduction of toilets in the village for use by w ­ omen—is not l­imited to the private realm or the connubial quarters but makes its impact felt in the larger social world. In the pro­cess the film ironically provides a subtle critique of the type of chauvinistic Hindutva ideology that not so subtly informs much of Modi’s agenda, such as the Brahminical code of “purity.”18 Indeed, what Pednekar’s characters—in both Toilet and Dum—­help expose (and indict) is the patriarchal (Hindu) culture with all its regressive attitudes and beliefs, particularly with regard to w ­ omen and marriage. In Dum, Pednekar marries into a f­ amily in which the female members of her betrothed’s khandan are the first to uphold and enforce atavistic notions of femininity and, in their view, what constitutes appropriate be­hav­ior from a ­woman. Similarly, in Toilet, Keshav’s f­ amily first insists on marrying him to a cow, an act with which he complies, and his ­father, a pandit, insists, in keeping with Brahminical superstition, that only a ­woman with

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two left thumbs can be his bride (her additional digit, in his view, warding off the evil inherent in his son’s inauspicious astrological chart). Jaya, in a testament to the elasticity of her character, plays along with such outmoded beliefs, donning a second prosthetic thumb to fool Keshav’s ­father even as, ­later, she is the first to openly disparage and contest them, leaving both her new husband and his khandan to return to her parents’ ­house u ­ ntil ­matters (i.e., the backward nature of Keshav’s ­house­hold and its beliefs) are corrected. In other words, she is the agent of change and, significantly, rather than being punished for it, she is rewarded for her tenacity and willingness to stand up to the irrationalities of such provincial, patriarchal Hindu logic. It is also worth noting that Pednekar’s characters, even as they e­ ither threaten or at least initially proceed with divorce, do not walk away from such conflicts but remain and fight u ­ ntil they are resolved. ­Here, too, the films themselves invest in her characters and their strug­gles rather than writing them off and framing her as “expendable.” Her strug­gle is conflated with the plot’s forward motion, marking a rather significant change from the generally male-­driven narratives that populate popu­lar Hindi cinema. Similarly, it is worth noting that Pednekar’s characters—­and the films they appear in—­achieve such a transference of agency without her being characterized negatively, for example, as a w ­ oman who “does not know her place” and only needs to be “taken in hand”; rather, it is precisely such patriarchal logics that are themselves challenged, critiqued, and overturned. In the pro­cess, and largely due to Pednekar’s position in the driver’s seat, “concessions are no longer made to older yardsticks” in t­ hese films, w ­ hether t­ hose concern conventional notions of female beauty or a ­woman’s role in a ­family or society.19 Even eschewing her extreme weight gain in Dum, Pednekar, with her darker skin and less globalized characters, actively works to displace both the “traditional beauty standards of Hindi cinema”20 and their attendant sociocultural framing, in which light/white skin and westernization are not only frequently conflated but synonymized with ideal modern femininity in Bollywood. At the same time, as noted previously, Pednekar’s characters avoid being relegated to the implied inverse set of character traits associated with such a lack. It is precisely in this way that the roles she plays directly challenge and provide appealing alternatives to the light-­skinned, westernized, size 0 female types who arguably dominate ­today’s Bollywood. Though Jaya is a topper and clearly more intelligent (and decidedly younger) than Keshav, she still finds herself attracted to him and willingly becomes his bride even as she avoids succumbing to the patriarchal logic to which he subscribes. Similarly, when faced with the impossibility of having a toilet while remaining his bride, she is willing to pursue divorce proceedings but only as a way of paradoxically ensuring that her larger goal is attained. ­Here, too, one sees a striking paradigm shift within the Bollywood ecumene, in which love is generally held to be the greatest ideal. Instead, Jaya is willing to sacrifice love, in both its ideal and its more carnal forms, to ensure her regular use of a toilet. In a cinematic universe in which strong-­w illed female protagonists generally tend to be quick to leave b ­ ehind the village and its implied backward nature for the westernized

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metropolis, Pednekar stays in the village to fight for her right to shit (at home), hence articulating not only a new poetics of desi femininity but also a new conjugal model and ensuing c­ ouple form.21

Keeping It Up: Shubh Mangal Saavdhan Along with fighting for their rights outside the bedroom, Pednekar’s characters stand up for their sexual freedom. However, in her follow-up to Toilet, Shubh Mangal Saavdhan, Pednekar avoids the type of facile “liberated” female sexuality frequently on display in con­temporary Bollywood, in which one tends to see the prioritization of repre­sen­ta­t ions of sexuality rather than expressions of female desire. Pednekar plays Sugandha (aka Sugu), a middle-­class Delhi ­woman who becomes involved with Mudit (aka Mudi), played by Dum costar Khurrana. While Mudi immediately lets Sugu down by forgoing flirtation in f­ avor of sending an online proposal to her parents, Sugu vows to “find love in this arrangement” and proceeds directly to his office, where she asks him if he is a wimp. Sugu then berates Mudi for not taking the initiative directly and hiding ­behind an appeal to her parents. Nevertheless, she suggests they engage in a video conference call with their parents and, a­ fter dispensing with the formalities and their respective f­ amily members, the two continue to video chat privately, and Sugu asks Mudi why he wants to marry her. H ­ ere and in several subsequent scenes, one sees Sugu’s direct, up-­ front, and modern personality, even as it is frequently conjoined with a sense of propriety. Sugu similarly reflects this blend of tradition and modernity—­a recurring sign of the new ­woman—in her clothing, more often than not donning saris and salwar suits rather than the tight jeans and halter tops sported by other recent Delhi heroines, such as Anushka Sharma in Band Baaja Baaraat (2010).22 While Sugu’s clothing may be demure and desi, however, her actions belie her modest appearance. Upon dropping her off one night, Mudi kisses Sugu, ­a fter which she breathlessly enters her room and proceeds to text, “I kissed him,” to a friend. When Mudi subsequently knocks and enters, claiming his motorcycle ­will not start, the two proceed to kiss some more, and rather than demurring, Sugu merely notes that they need to be quiet ­because ­t hese are government flats. Yet Mudi keeps delaying, first asking for a stick of gum, then excusing himself to go to the bathroom while Sugu waits on the bed, growing increasingly impatient. When Mudi fi­nally reemerges, he wordlessly puts on his shirt and leaves. ­After discovering what his prob­lem is (erectile dysfunction), Sugu again displays a direct and modern approach, asking him if they should try again; when he demurs, she attempts to encourage him, saying, “Practice makes perfect.” In such scenes one sees sex treated “with an ease scarcely seen in Hindi cinema.”23 Yet, again, Pednekar’s character blends such modernity with ele­ments of tradition. While they speak frankly about Mudi’s erectile dysfunction and Sugu, growing increasingly frustrated by both his prob­lem and his inability to deal with it, tells him to text her when he comes up with a solution; she also touches his parents’ feet on her way out, covering her head with her dupatta. In such a way, Sugu

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blends tradition and modernity but, more impor­tant, refuses to take the blame for Mudi’s sexual prob­lem, duly ascribing it to him. In a similar vein, when her m ­ other attempts to speak to her about the impending wedding night, using the story of Ali Baba and the cave as an allegory for what w ­ ill take place, Sugu interjects, telling her ­mother that Ali Baba needs ­t hese lessons, not the cave, and pushes her out of her room. In a subsequent scene, when Sugu’s female friend shows her a porno film on her laptop, suggesting she emulate the actress’s be­hav­ior to “fix” the prob­ lem, Sugu, who watches the film wide-­eyed, with her hand covering her mouth, is unable to emulate the actress’s be­hav­ior, becoming shamefaced when she tries to repeat the actress’s lines one after­noon with Mudi. In the ensuing attempts to “fix” ’ Mudi’s prob­lem, it is Pednekar’s character who, as in Dum, gives Khurrana’s character valuable life lessons, ­gently pointing out his immaturity and urging him not to let his “gent’s prob­lem” get in the way of their happiness. As in Band Baaja Baaraat and Dum, one sees the female protagonist helping her male counterpart become a better man (and a better lover) and when, in the midst of the ensuing marriage ceremonies, Mudi suddenly pulls Sugu away to a bedroom and reemerges sporting a big grin (which all the wedding guests interpret as a sign of sexual success), it is Sugu who ­gently and good-­naturedly informs him that “it ­didn’t happen.” Though they do proceed with the marriage, the “climax we are all waiting for,” Sugu intones in a concluding voice-­over, did not come on their wedding night, nor during their honeymoon in Goa, nor a­ fter returning. Yet one day (ironically, in the m ­ iddle of a f­ amily puja), Mudi suddenly gets the urge, and the c­ ouple goes up to their bedroom and fi­nally proceeds to have sex as Sugu laughs in delight. In dealing with such subject ­matter—­arguably a first for Hindi cinema—­Sugu’s “agency, desires and sexuality” are indeed portrayed by Pednekar “with a sensitivity and assertiveness” that is itself rather unique and, again, indicative of a new conjugal model.24 As noted previously, it is rare in the Bollywood ecumene for a heroine to engage so directly in sexual affairs while si­mul­ta­neously avoiding the facile reduction to mere temptress or vamp. Similarly, rather than engaging in item numbers as many other con­temporary Bollywood actresses do, in which displays of sexuality predominate, Pednekar’s character reveals a subtlety in addressing her sexual relationship with her costar, a combination of directness and demureness rarely on display in Bollywood. It is precisely such a paradoxical combination—of subtlety and frank sexuality—­t hat Pednekar reveals in her ensuing per­for­mance in a short film by Zoya Akhtar, with which I conclude.

Conclusion, or Bhumi Pednekar’s Lust Story Akhtar’s segment of the recent anthology Lust Stories (2018)25 begins with a shot of a c­ ouple having intense sex with the w ­ oman (Pednekar) on top. Upon finishing, Pednekar dresses (in Indian clothes) while the man showers. Pednekar’s character then proceeds to clean the flat, wiping the floor with a wet rag while the man gets dressed in the background (in Western clothes); it becomes clear she is the

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maid. A cut takes us to Pednekar preparing food in the kitchen, which she brings to the adjoining room and places before the man, who merely looks at his phone without acknowledging her. Pednekar then goes to make the bed where she and the man just had sex but pauses for a moment, sitting, then lying down, still seemingly lost in postcoital reverie. In a following shot she opens the door of the flat to the man and his parents and continues cleaning while they sit idly and chat. A prospective wife and her ­family arrive, and Pednekar gazes at them from the next room, listening quietly to their conversation. The film displaces ­t hese conversations, however, remaining focused on Pednekar in the kitchen, preparing chai for the guests. ­After serving the parents, Pednekar takes her tray, with its two remaining cups, in search of the man and his prospective fiancée. When she discovers them speaking quietly in En­glish in an adjoining bedroom, she again eavesdrops, watching as the man caresses his prospective fiancée’s hair. Upon being noticed, Pednekar enters and the man dismissively says, “Waha rak doh” (Leave it ­t here). ­After ­doing so, Pednekar returns to the kitchen, where she subsequently hears the families congratulating one another. The man’s m ­ other then comes into the kitchen, informing Pednekar that her son’s wedding has been arranged and offering her a celebratory sweet, which Pednekar silently accepts, chewing on it slowly before she leaves. As she waits outside for the elevator, another w ­ oman, also waiting, offers her a sweet as well, saying, “Looks like ­you’ve had a good day,” to which Pednekar wordlessly smiles before entering the lift and waiting for its doors to close. In this twenty-­minute film Pednekar hardly says anything, yet she conveys much through her facial expressions and subtle body language. Standing before the kitchen win­dow, like an Indianized version of a character from a film by the Belgian director Chantal Akerman, she gazes out as the camera gazes at her unadorned face with its blank expression, defying us to infer her thoughts. As Swetha Ramakrishnan has observed, Akhtar’s film is “a study in how to make a ­whole film around the psyche of one character, without it coming off as boring.”26 As in her first three feature-­length films, Pednekar demonstrates an uncanny ability to inhabit the character she is embodying—in this case, a ­woman from a lower socioeconomic background working for (and sleeping with) an upper-­middle-­class man. The film’s graphic opening shot is made all the more power­ful in the silence that ensues once Pednekar and her employer finish their sex act. In her wordless movements and ­silent gazes, Pednekar manages to express both her longing and her resignation. As with Shubh Mangal Saavdhan, this short film is groundbreaking for its candid portrayal of sex, but even more laudatory is how Pednekar manages to infuse so much into a character given so few lines while avoiding a clichéd depiction or objectification. Again, Pednekar displays a rare subtlety, particularly given the film’s subject ­matter and the general propensity within the larger Bollywood industry to ­either hyperbolize or elide such intimate moments. From her portrayal of an overweight young bride, a role for which she gained thirty kilograms, to a young maid engaging in graphic sex with her employer before silently serving him and his betrothed tea, Pednekar’s burgeoning ­career vividly illuminates a mastery of nuance as well as a propensity for choosing roles other young actresses may avoid or insist on

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glamorizing. It is precisely in refusing to adhere to the dominant Bollywood playbook that Bhumi Pednekar paradoxically serves as a particularly compelling instance of Bollywood’s new w ­ oman.

notes 1. ​ Dum Laga ke Haisha, directed by Sharat Katariya (2015; Bombay: Yash Raj Films), DVD, 110 min. 2. ​ Toilet: Ek Prem Katha, directed by Shree Narayan Singh (2017; Bombay: Viacom18 Motion Pictures), DVD, 155 min. 3. ​ Shubh Mangal Saavdhan, directed by R. S. Prasanna (2017; Bombay: Eros International), DVD, 119 min. 4. ​I am using “plus-­size” not only as a descriptor for Pednekar’s character in Dum but, more broadly, to refer to her outsize roles vis-­à-­v is normative gender constructions within Bollywood, which, as we ­shall see, Pednekar consistently exceeds. 5. ​Shailendra Kumar Singh, “Destigmatization of the Fat Female Body in Size Zero and Dum Laga ke Haisha,” Fat Studies 7, no. 3 (2018): 4. It is worth noting that Singh’s essay is similarly one of the only studies to take up fat politics in a Bollywood context. 6. ​Singh, 5. One witnesses several examples of such an emaciated female body image in con­ temporary Bollywood, including, most notoriously, by Kareena Kapoor who (in)famously lost weight for Tashan (2008), in which she flaunts her “size 0” body in the item number “Chhaliya Chhaliya.” Dum also deviates from typical Bollywood fare, articulating a more hatke, or offbeat, and realist, ethos. 7. ​While Hindi film actresses ­were previously often plump and/or “voluptuous,” since the advent of the twenty-­fi rst ­century one sees an increasing adherence to Western body and beauty standards in Bollywood, encapsulated by both “size 0” figures and light/white skin. Even Vidya Balan, who gained twelve kilograms (twenty-­six pounds) to play Silk Smitha in The Dirty Picture (2011), did so only ­a fter first making half a dozen films in which she maintained a more normative, thin figure. Similarly, Smitha is more clearly “voluptuous,” with the weight gain made to conform to e­ arlier female body norms, than Sandhya, who is decidedly overweight. 8. ​Given that the film is set in 1995, a period during which Indian cinema was becoming increasingly liberalized/globalized, as one famously sees in that year’s blockbuster Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, one can also make a provocative parallel between that film’s female protagonist, Simran (Kajol), who remains beholden to the patriarchal order, despite traveling in Eu­rope, and Sandhya, who repudiates it, both figuratively and literally, despite remaining in a more provincial setting. 9. ​­Here, as in other recent Bollywood films, one sees how a neoliberal discourse of “partnership” supplants previous conceptions of amorous relationships. 10. ​Singh, “Destigmatization,” 9. 11. ​Singh, 9–10. 12. ​It is precisely in this way that Dum deviates from, and reworks, the typical Bollywood film structure, creating more of a hatke cinema aesthetic and, in the pro­cess, formulating a new/emergent role for the female character. 13. ​While one could see this subsequent weight loss as indicating the limits of the cele­bration of the plus-­size body, I argue that it reflects Pednekar’s refusal to be pigeonholed within any one par­tic­u ­lar role or body type, as is all too often the case with plus-­size actors, w ­ hether in Hollywood or Bollywood. 14. ​Singh, “Destigmatization,” 5. 15. ​ Shree 420, directed by Raj Kapoor (1955; Bombay: R. K. Films), DVD, 168 min. The song, “Mera Joota Hai Japani,” describes how Raj Kapoor’s character wears foreign clothing but ultimately retains an Indian heart. 16. ​ Chameli, directed by Sudhir Mishra (2003; Bombay: Pritish Nandy Communications), DVD, 108 min. 17. ​ Talaash, directed by Reema Kagti (2012; Bombay: Excel Entertainment), DVD, 140 min.

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18. ​For more regarding this point, see Pallavi Rao’s essay “Soch aur Shauch: Reading Brahminism and Patriarchy in Toilet: Ek Prem Katha,” Studies in South Asian Film and Media 9, no. 2 (2019): 79–96. 19. ​Singh, “Destigmatization,” 11. 20. ​Singh, 11. 21. ​Sangita Gopal, Conjugations: Marriage and Form in New Bollywood Cinema (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011). 22. ​Band Baaja Baaraat, directed by Maneesh Sharma (2010; Bombay: Yash Raj Films), DVD, 140 min. 23. ​Asmita Bakshi, “Made of Honour,” India ­Today, November 27, 2017, 11. 24. ​Bakshi, 11. 25. ​ Lust Stories, directed by Zoya Akhtar, Dibakar Banerjee, Karan Johar, and Anurag Kashyap et al. (2018; Bombay: RSVP & Flying Unicorn Entertainment), Netflix, 120 min. 26. ​Swetha Ramakrishnan, “Lust Stories Movie Review,” Firstpost, June 15, 2018.

chapter 8

Q

The Many Bodies of Vidya Balan the dirty picture, kahaani, and tumhari sulu Puja Sen

In March 2012, Vidya Balan was touted by India ­Today as Bollywood’s “fourth Khan,”1 a reference to the male superstars at the pinnacle of the Hindi film industry—­Salman Khan, Shah Rukh Khan, and Aamir Khan. This came ­after the release of her film Kahaani,2 an urban crime thriller, in which she plays a pregnant w ­ oman in search of her missing husband. The article lauded Balan for being “unapologetic about being plump” and declared that “not many top actresses in image-­conscious Bollywood would be game to wear a faux baby bump in an offbeat entertainer.” It is a good example of the industry’s fixation with her body. Even as Balan has been recognized for her seemingly effortless per­for­mances, her expressive range of emotions, and the depths she brings to her characters, more often than not, it is the discourse around her body that is highlighted to explain what sets her apart from other female actors. Balan was at the top of her game in 2012. For five years straight, she had been delivering one box office hit ­after another, a track rec­ord that few celebrities can boast of. This was in a moment in which the market was not yet fully convinced of the idea that w ­ omen actors could carry a film on their own. She was considered an outlier among Bollywood stars, both for the “women-­centric” proj­ects she was being offered and for the brand of star persona she projected.3 The roles ranged from a scheming seductress (Ishqiya),4 to the m ­ other of a twelve-­year-­old with a rare ge­ne­tic condition (Paa),5 to the ­sister of the murdered model in a high-­profile case (No One Killed Jessica).6 For a young actor in her late twenties, to play a m ­ other and ­sister—­deglamorized roles that female stars typically avoid so as to preserve their status as sex symbols for as long as pos­si­ble—­was seen as a bold choice. However, it was the tremendous success of her film The Dirty Picture,7 released just before Kahaani, in which she played the late erotic actress Silk Smitha, that shot her to superstardom. Balan herself has often described the film as a milestone in her c­ areer.8 Her per­for­mance won her critical acclaim, mass popularity, and the industry’s most prestigious awards. But it was her willingness to put on weight 118

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for the role and showcase a body with flab that received the most mainstream attention. Balan, despite her prodigious acting talent, is in a position where she has had to be constantly answerable for her body, in a way her male colleagues have never been. Scrutiny from the industry has yielded both praise and scorn. She has been derided for her lack of fashion sense off-­screen and praised for the physical commitment she brings to her roles on-­screen.9 In this essay I argue that Balan’s star image is coded by the shifting aesthetic regimes governing the bodies of w ­ omen at the turn of the twenty-­first ­century. From representing the counterpoint to the size 0 craze of the early aughts to becoming the poster girl of the anti-­body-­shaming discourse, Balan embodies the tensions between the beauty ideals of the film industry—­and the exacting standards it prescribes for its female celebrities—­and the real bodies of ­women.

Body M ­ atters and the New ­Woman The display of Vidya Balan’s body across three movies in par­tic­u­lar suggests both new cultural shifts as well as continuities with older modes of representing w ­ omen’s bodies. The Dirty Picture, in revisiting the moral sexual codes of the 1980s film industry, highlights the new millennial consciousness of sexual freedom that emphasizes ­women’s right to their own commodification. In Kahaani, a pregnant Balan is both everywoman and the embodiment of a divine goddess, returning us to older constellations of the woman-­as-­nation trope. And Tumhari Sulu—­where sexuality and eroticism are expressed not primarily through the body but through the voice—­revisits the old modernity/tradition binary that plays out against the bodies of ­women.10 Balan’s entry into the industry coincided with the growth of multiplexes in the late 1990s. The scholar Nandana Bose argues that the rise of an “off-­beat (hatke) star” such as Balan must be understood in this context.11 Transformative changes in modes of production and distribution gave birth to a “type of cinephilia that created favourable conditions for narrative, technical, aesthetic and thematic experimentation.” The opening up of the country’s economy in that de­cade saw the loosening of state control over the media industry, the expansion of satellite and cable tele­v i­sion, and therefore radically new forms of cultural programming in both cinema and tele­vi­sion. Purnima Mankekar suggests that in this period “the Indian public sphere witnessed a proliferation of repre­sen­ta­tion of erotics.”12 The new programs gave emphasis to “the politics of ­family, sexuality and intimacy” instead of preoccupations with nation building and development.13 As Rupal Oza suggests, ideas of the “new ­woman” fused anx­i­eties of preserving traditional morals with the potential and possibilities of modernity in an opened-up market.14 “In contrast to the more docile and homely figure of the Bharatiya Nari (traditional Indian w ­ oman),” she writes, “this new w ­ oman was aggressive, confident, urban, and she displayed a sexual identity that had previously been associated with ‘vamps’ in Bollywood cinema. This new ­woman quickly

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became iconic of liberalized India.” The economic reforms thus heralded attitudinal shifts ­toward sex and sexuality. Repre­sen­ta­tions of the new ­woman of this era had to navigate a terrain in which she “had to be modern but not so modern as to transgress into ‘Westernized’ modernity.” The new ­woman of the 1990s, then, embodied India’s global aspirations while maintaining links with the nation, and what was ­imagined to be unique to it. The question of what is new, however, is an old one. Partha Chatterjee, in “The Nationalist Resolution of the ­Women’s Question,” writing about India’s nineteenth-­ century encounter with colonial rule, writes that the new ­woman in the context of the British Raj was subjected to the “new patriarchy.” He argues that the way men and ­women respond to modernity and westernization is conditioned by their gender. All expressions of liberation need to be assessed against the new po­liti­cal and economic conditions of the time. As Sushmita Chatterjee states, “New ­woman or other forms of new-­ness does not necessarily come packaged with revolutionary, anti status-­quo politics.”15 Indeed, e­ very iteration of the new w ­ oman reflects the contradictions of the age, its anx­i­eties about ­women’s bodies and, concomitantly, their social and sexual freedom. According to Tupur Chatterjee, Balan’s body signifies Indianness in comparison to the more “global bodies” of Kareena Kapoor, Katrina Kaif, and Aishwarya Rai.16 “For female celebrities,” Chatterjee writes, “the body becomes a crucial site for performing femininity . . . ​characterized by a slim and hairless body, long hair, clear skin, dressed in fash­ion­able, expensive and trendy clothing.” The size 0 figure, inaugurated by Kapoor in 2007 for her role in Tashan, in which she lost weight to acquire a “bikini body,” was the subject of national conversation. It has since been critiqued and merged into questions of health, diets, and exercise for the global Indian. In recent years, Balan has become a fierce critic of this normalization of the skinny body as a standard of health and beauty. “When p ­ eople tell me why d ­ on’t you start exercising, I want to say fuck you!” she told Filmfare in 2019. “How do you know I h ­ aven’t been exercising? Do you know how hard I exercise? Do you know that my hormonal prob­lem has made it impossible for me to lose weight for years in between? . . . ​­People would insinuate that you must be eating unhealthy or that y­ ou’re lazy. And ­t hese t­ hings stick with you.”17 The conflation of health and what a “proper body” should look like is a recognizable phenomenon in most parts of the world. Amy Erdman Farrell, for instance, argues that the word “fat” in the context of Amer­i­ca is neither neutral nor insignificant, but a “social as well as a physical prob­lem,” in which “the social stigma of fatness—­and the fantasy of freeing oneself of that stigma—­coincides with or even takes priority over issues of health.” She points to a long history through which modern anx­i­eties about fatness came to be associated with increasing consumerism and “prevailing ideas about race, civilization and evolution.”18 The prevalence of vari­ous forms of diet programs and development of modern-­ day health regimens primarily cater to a social class that ascribes moral value to physical appearance. The business of disciplining one’s body, subjecting it to training and rigor, along with the dedicated time and energy it requires, acquires an

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individualist imperative. It becomes a question of willpower. One of the key ele­ ments of the beauty ideal in the film industry is that it necessitates concealing the natu­ral body and the biological transformations it goes through. This is most evident when female actors are scorned for revealing their pregnant or postpregnancy bodies in public. Aishwarya Rai bore the brunt of this in 2012, when she was subject to harsh media contempt for putting on five kilograms in the months ­after she gave birth. In a video titled “Aishwarya Rai’s Shocking Weight Gain” that has been viewed more than 5 million times, the sound is overlaid with an elephant’s trumpets, as the commentator says mockingly, “We think it is time Ash hires a good trainer to sweat it out in the gym. She could also take tips from Kajol who seems to have wonderfully knocked off all that pregnancy fat.”19 Mark Greif, in his essay “Against Exercise,” writes, “Patriarchy made biology a negative spectacle, a filth that had to be hidden. The ethos of exercise makes it a positive spectacle, a competitive fascination that must be revealed.”20 Balan defies this convention on-­screen: the characters she plays are permitted to sweat, have rolls of fat, and generally display the corporeality of the ­human body. Off-­screen, however, it is her referencing of her own body, disclosing the shame and anger she feels about being overweight, that contributes to her relatability. She makes vis­i­ble what is supposed to be hidden and a private shame. “­There is so much anger in me,” she told Anupama Chopra in an interview in 2017 ­after the release of Begum Jaan. “I was a fat girl. And that brings with it a lot of anger b ­ ecause you are constantly being judged. And then you grow up, first as a girl and then as a fat girl . . . ​ and the judgement is that much more public.”21 A survey conducted by Fortis Healthcare with more than a thousand ­women in India’s big cities found that 90 ­percent of w ­ omen recognized body shaming as a common be­hav­ior. An equal percentage of ­women believed that films and tele­v i­sion denigrate p ­ eople who do not conform to expected standards, and 76 ­percent felt that media portrayals of beauty negatively affected the self-­esteem of regular w ­ omen.22 Indeed, anxiety about weight is always loaded with cultural meaning. What is in­ter­est­ing about Balan’s star text is that discussion about her natu­ral body—in contrast to the chiseled, zero-­fat bodies of her female colleagues—is associated with tradition, and therefore sometimes located in an aesthetic ideal of some Indian past. In an article titled “Vidya Balan Giving Zero-­Size Heroines a Run for their Money” in the Economic Times, the journalist C. P. Surendran writes, “She is sexy in a way that reinforces the old idea of buxom, plumpish Indian attractiveness, which, with our blistering exposure to western aesthetic ideals, is now a m ­ atter of nostalgia.”23 Why it should be a m ­ atter of nostalgia is unclear, as the bodies of real ­women still come in all shapes and sizes, and not submitting to the prevailing ideal does not cancel out our possibilities of plea­sure, desire, or sexuality. What Balan’s presence seems to have done is de­moc­ra­tize the narrow range of female body types that heroines are expected to have and that we are accustomed to seeing in postliberalization popu­lar films. She has helped reconstitute what is projected as mainstream desirability. More pertinently, Balan is able to deflect attention away from the body and make you hear her voice, and regard her interiority.

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The Dirty Picture In a pivotal scene in The Dirty Picture, Silk Smitha volunteers to whip herself. She ends up at a shooting for a song sequence. The assistant director cannot find the “extra” who had agreed to perform the role. “How can I find a girl who ­w ill flay her own skin?” asks his colleague. ­After Silk steps forward, she commits to the role. She gyrates to ­music, rubs the whip over her body, bites it, and flagellates herself. It is a visually arresting scene—­arguably the only one—in a film about the film industry and how it represents ­women and their bodies. In her canonical essay, Laura Mulvey notes, “In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, plea­sure in looking has been split between male/active and female/passive. . . . ​In their traditional exhibitionist role ­women are si­mul­ta­neously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact.”24 It is, to use Mulvey’s term, pure scopophilia. Silk is aware of herself as erotic spectacle and evokes her complicity in this arrangement. She stares back at the camera; her movements are exaggeratedly sexual and her expressions seductive. Silk accepts the fact that if she cannot be a chaste heroine, then she ­will play the licentious counterpoint, a ­woman who exists purely to stoke male fantasy. She is the stock figure that once existed in Indian cinema: the vamp. The vamp was posited as the sexualized other. As many scholars, including Ranjani Mazumdar, have noted, the vamp’s body indicated “westernized” sexual license. Pitted against her was the heroine of chaste traditional values. “The vamp was the outsider, distinct from the iconic ­woman of the nation,” as Mazumdar writes.25 She was associated with a nightclub, cabaret, or casino, usually for the length of a song. The Dirty Picture documents the passing out of this type. It flips the old convention in which the vamp occupied the sidelines and puts her center stage. Throughout the 1980s—­t he period in which The Dirty Picture is set—­t he film industry saw debates around the ­woman’s body and its potential to corrupt the audience’s morality. The Indecent Repre­sen­ta­tion of ­Women (Prohibition) Act in 1986 made punishable by law any “depiction in any manner of the figure of a ­woman, her form or body or any part thereof,” that might have “the effect of being indecent or of being derogatory or denigrating w ­ omen or is likely to deprave, corrupt or injure the public morality or morals of any person.”26 The Act spurred a debate within w ­ omen’s rights groups about the potential images have to cause harm and w ­ hether t­ here is a need for censoring deleterious images. Th ­ ese discussions focused mostly on sexist repre­sen­ta­tions of w ­ omen or the display of female sexuality. Shohini Ghosh has argued that “despite the ideological divergence, both the Hindu Right and the w ­ omen’s groups have frequently targeted the same repre­sen­ta­tions and demanded similar censorious mea­sures.” According to Ghosh, the answer to offensive images or speech should be countered with “more repre­sen­ta­tion and speech” in the public sphere.27 The clip in which Silk whips herself never actually makes it to the theater. The director, furious at what he sees as vulgarity, burns the reel. He is the antagonist in the film, representing what he sees as aesthetic seriousness, a counterpoint to

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the entertainment-­driven industry. He is met with Silk’s full embrace of the role and her part in it. She means to succeed at any cost, using her body for sexual ­favor if necessary. In the pro­cess, she regards herself as delivering a ser­vice to the masses. ­There is only one t­ hing that ­matters in this world, as she tells him in a famous line from the film: “Entertainment, entertainment, entertainment.” The excised clip is symbolic for another reason. Silk thinks by being a willing, conscious subject of male fantasy and its gaze, she can stake some control. By exaggerating the excesses of subliminal codes on sex and sexuality, she reveals the double standards of patriarchy. The whip, however, as Paromita Vohra suggests, is not in her hand.28 She is ultimately participating in a rigged game on terms set by men. Even though she brings a gendered intelligence to her actions, we know that history is not on her side. Indeed, according to the narrative thrust of the film, she does not describe the self, but the “times,” as Jyotika Virdi has said about the figure of the idealized ­woman in Indian cinema.29 The film does not attempt to show the complex interior life of a w ­ oman who was both reviled and desired. Its aim is to hold up a mirror to the double standards of its producers and consumers. She is not shown to have a range of ambitions or desires, other than the w ­ ill to succeed. Film scholarship has looked extensively at how anx­i­eties about the nation and nationalism has been tied closely to the repre­sen­ta­tion of w ­ omen. This is usually expressed in the binary of home and the world, with ­women purportedly representing the stable, domestic values of the former, and men the possibilities and dangers of the latter. Even though the film was lauded for its refusal to show Silk as pure victim, it relies on this old binary. In this way it is still a cautionary tale. Having ventured into the domain of men, Silk is shut out of the home. She is alone, without community or any sustaining friendships. Her g­ rand new apartment is sterile and without activity. In one scene she is shown to be so disconcerted by the silence that she runs out of the driveway screaming “Is ­t here anyone t­ here?” From this moment in the film her decline is swift and sudden. This is not a moral decline, or punishment for being too ambitious, but is meant to reflect the tragic consequences of a historical shift that took place in industry standards. ­There was no longer the need for the westernized other in films. This is the trajectory that The Dirty Picture traces. The veteran actor, played by Naseerudin Shah, articulates it: “We w ­ ill make the heroine do what Silk used to do”. The song and dance sequence, ­earlier the domain of the vamp, was the “disruption” in narrative arcs of the film, where open displays of sexuality w ­ ere permitted. By the late nineties, “the item girl was no longer an actress who was struggling to break into the ‘A’ list,” according to Akshaya Kumar. “In fact, A-­list actresses consistently sought and performed ‘item numbers.’ ”30 Indeed, by the time The Dirty Picture was released, the item song had reached its acme, spurring a life of its own, with popu­lar songs garnering millions of hits on YouTube and repeated plays over radio and TV channels. For example, in 2010, Katrina Kaif in Sheila Ki Jawaani and Malaika Arora in Munni Badnam hui became spectacularly popu­lar for their per­for­mances. They both displayed size 0 figures and w ­ ere lauded for their sexiness, even spurring competitive “Munni

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versus Sheila” debates. An Indian Express article titled “Munni vs Sheila: The Way of the ‘Item Bomb’ ” stated, “Top heroines have shed their inhibitions to get groovy and sensuous.”31 In the millennial imagination, the modern w ­ oman must own her sexiness, display her body with confidence, and freely choose her commodification. Silk exemplifies this sensibility and even within the logic of the film, as the ­woman journalist says about her, is understood to be ahead of her time.

Kahaani A heavi­ly pregnant Vidya Bagchi arrives in Kolkata from London in the opening sequence of Kahaani. She winds through the city in the trademark yellow taxi, passing famous landmarks as she makes her way to the police station. Vidya has come to find her missing husband. The city is marked by an excess of visual and auditory stimuli: it is teeming with ­people and bustling with energy, as it prepares for the festival of Durga Puja. It is the backdrop against which the story unfolds. In 2012, the film was heralded for its unusual story line, its loving depiction of the city and its ­people, and the choice it made for featuring a female protagonist in an urban thriller. Balan, right a­ fter the success of The Dirty Picture, was its star attraction. In an interview the director, Sujoy Ghosh, said t­ here ­were two motivations for him in making the film. The first was to work with Vidya Balan. As he explained, “It was just gut, I wanted to work with her from early days, when I saw her in a ­music video.” The other reason, he said, was to depict the changes that happen to ­women when they become ­mothers: “I have found that the same girl who ­doesn’t know anything ­will teach herself every­thing to protect her f­ amily and child. ­W hether she is a six-­foot ­woman or a demure, pe­tite girl, her ­mental strength is huge, it’s like a button has been pushed. And I wanted to explore that strength and see what would happen if you placed a to-be ­mother in an alien environment where she ­doesn’t know anything, the place, the language, the ­people. And Kolkata is less cosmopolitan than Mumbai or Delhi.”32 This essentialist understanding about motherhood is deployed in the movie as well. Vidya’s pregnancy provides the appropriate cover for her investigations. One of the chief investigators, A Khan, played by Nawazuddin Siddiqui, says, “No one is afraid of a pregnant w ­ oman, ­t here is no doubt about that. Especially one whose husband has run away.” Yet, although Balan plays the pregnancy convincingly, she brings a depth and interiority to her character that supersedes any clichéd framing of the power (or helplessness) of woman-­as-­mother. Besides, as it turns out, in a final plot twist, she is not pregnant at all, but had strapped on a prosthetic belly. Balan plays Vidya in a natu­ral and remarkably controlled way. She is able to communicate both disquiet and alertness, street smarts as well as an inwardness. Vidya is a Tamil educated upper-­class ­woman who prefers practicality and comfort in dressing over style and glamour. She dresses in long maternity clothes, ties her hair in a loose braid, wears a watch, carries a backpack, and wears next to no makeup. Her body sweats, she waddles ­because of her pregnancy, and her move-

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ments sometimes express exhaustion and tiredness—­a range of expressions female leads are typically not required to demonstrate. Vidya’s pregnancy, in some ways, is almost incidental to her character arc. It is when the narrative has to signpost her gender that it is brought back into play. The first time she meets the investigator Khan, he is smoking. She smiles and tells him politely “I am a pregnant w ­ oman sir, you should not be smoking in front of me”. His response is insolent. He tells her, “We have just met, you should not tell me what to do.” In the course of the conversation he shouts at her, rebukes her, and fi­nally tries to openly intimidate her by instructing her to return to London and leave the case alone. Undeterred, she looks him directly in the eye and repeats his words back at him. The face-­off is in­ter­est­ing b ­ ecause it foregrounds Vidya as a ­woman who exhibits calm u ­ nder duress, not intimidated by male authority. She does another unusual ­t hing that female characters are not often seen ­doing in films: ­t here is a suggestion that she reads. Throughout the film Vidya carries around a copy of The Joke, a novel by the Czech-­origin French writer Milan Kundera. The most prominent film that featured a heroine with a book for the full length of a song sequence was in Aradhna (1969). Sharmila Tagore demurely pretends to read Alistair MacLean’s When Eight Bells Toll on the train, as Rajesh Khanna tries to get her attention during the song “Sapnon ki Rani.” This tradition of ­women reading books to ignore men was carried forward in Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, where Kajol in her distress at Shah Rukh Khan’s incessant advances is seen carry­ing a book upside down, and in Dil Chahta Hai, where Preity Zinta reads on the metro while Amir Khan sings about the mysteries of love. In Kahaani, Balan is not actually seen reading the book, nor is it made a prominent feature in the visual display of her characterization. It is a sign of a private act, invoking Vidya’s personal intellectual proclivities. The characterization indicates a deeper female subjectivity than we are used to seeing—­bubbly and energetic heroines whose attentions are usually or­ga­nized around the hero—we know that ­there is a mind at play. Vidya is quiet and reflective, and she barely smiles. In fact, this interiority might be what is more striking in the characterization of the type of ­woman she hints at, perhaps more than the supposedly revolutionary act of displaying a pregnant body. Balan manages to shift attention away from her body and makes you regard her personhood. Unlike in The Dirty Picture, the protagonist is not a spectacle to be looked at, but she is the vantage point through which both the story and the city unfold. Her cosmopolitism is the framework through which we interpret Kolkata’s chaotic urban life, ramshackle bureaucracy, and parochial attitudes. She is a global Indian—­a software engineer based in London—­who carries herself with purpose and confidence, and keeps a cool head. The character of the expatriate Indian, “once exposed as a counter-­model, it became in the past twenty years the symbol of the Indian achiever, a kind of über Indian able to assert his ethnic and national identity in a globalized world.”33 It signifies the new neoliberal aspirations of the ­middle class.

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Vidya’s relationship with her husband, depicted through flashbacks, is constructed as modern and liberal, a counterpoint to the arranged marriage system prevalent in India. The police officer, when he sees a photo­graph of them—in which a smiling Vidya has pulled her husband close to take the selfie—­smiles and asks, “Love marriage?” Indeed, her modernity is associated with the fact that she has freely chosen her relationship and married into a dif­fer­ent community: she is a Tamil person married to a Bengali, and their marriage is seemingly built on mutual re­spect and equality. This modernity is also used initially to show her distance from what is constituted as tradition. In the course of her investigation she catches sight of three ­women wearing white saris with red borders. When she asks Rana why they have worn this clothing, he tells her w ­ omen wear it on auspicious days. This leads to a flashback in their London home. Eating popcorn from a bowl resting on her pregnant belly, she asks her husband why she should wear a sari. He says, “It’s tradition yaar. Every­one wears it on the last day of Durga Puja.” “Every­one?” she quips, “even the men?” He jokes he w ­ ill bring her back a sari from Kolkata and that even she would look g­ reat in it. She playfully pulls his ears and says, “Mr Vidya Bagchi, d ­ on’t bore me. And get the stupid idea of making me wear a sari out of your head”. The sari is set up as a symbol of traditionalism, something Vidya is not keen on. Interestingly, Balan’s off-­screen persona is associated with her penchant to wear saris, highlighting her “ethnic” aesthetic. The realism Balan brings to the role, however, is unexpectedly undercut in the final apotheosization of the character as divine avenger. The mother-­as-­nation trope is brought back into play as it turns out Vidya is delivering justice on behalf of victims of a terrorist attack that had occurred two years prior. In the final scene, we learn that Vidya’s husband is Arup Basu, an Intelligence Bureau agent who died in the terrorist attack. Dressed in a white sari with a red border—­t he same one she had ­earlier been dismissive of—­she assaults the man ­behind her husband’s death with her hairpin and shoots him with his own gun, before disappearing into a crowd of ­women, all wearing the same sari. In the visual framing—­hair loose, red bindi, wide eyes—­Vidya is transfigured into divine avenger, M ­ other Durga herself. The voice-­over says: “­Today ­a fter two years, the families of ­t hose who died in the metro tragedy have been answered. Sometimes Gods too make m ­ istakes. The Gods made Asuras [demons], gave them power; but when they began to misuse ­these powers, the Gods created M ­ other Durga to destroy the demons. It is said that the power of all m ­ others was combined to create M ­ other Durga. E ­ very year, she comes, destroys all evil, and returns; all so that we can live without fear and in peace.” It is in­ter­est­ing that instead of externalizing the threat to the nation, the film shows the ­enemy to be within. Jyotika Virdi has argued, “Varying po­liti­cal contingencies animate the ­woman as sign: she is a stand-in for the nation at one historical moment, and for the religious community in another.” In Kahaani, Balan turns out to be both. From being a wry cosmopolitan outsider looking in on Kolkata, she becomes the embodiment of one of its most cherished religious traditions. From rejecting the sari as a sign

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of conservative tradition, and indeed not being able to figure out how to wear it in an ­earlier scene, she becomes everywoman as she merges with a sea of sari-­clad ­women.

Tumhari Sulu Following the success of Kahaani in 2012, bracketing her five-­year ­career high, Balan had a spate of failed per­for­mances. That year, the horrific gang rape of Jyoti Pandey, a twenty-­t hree-­year-­old who was coming home from watching a movie at the mall in one South Delhi’s posh localities, touched a nerve and led to days of protests in the capital by men and w ­ omen alike, as well as eventual changes to law, including the definition of rape. The national conversation on w ­ omen, sex, and sexuality underwent an epistemic shift, instigating mainstream discussions on the vari­ous unfreedoms of urban w ­ omen on an unpre­ce­dented scale. In this landscape, ­t here are more scripts centered around female characters, and more female stars that are able to carry the story on their shoulders, such as Kangana Ranaut in Queen and Alia Bhatt in Highway. The ideal of marriage is increasingly not just questioned in movies like ­these; it is often rejected. More commonplace and unhesitant depictions of premarital sex and live-in relationships—­for instance, in Shuddh Desi Romance (2013) and Tamasha (2015)—­signal that ­t hese are no longer perceived as a threat to Indian culture. Yet, at the same time, the social order is witnessing a major transformation with an erosion of secular values. In 2014, the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Hindu nationalist party, swept to power with an overwhelming mandate; it was reelected with an even stronger majority in 2019. ­Under this po­liti­cal dispensation, cultural programming has seen a reemergence of questions of nationalism and the advocacy of a muscular Hindu state. A spate of propagandist films such as Uri,34 PM Narendra Modi,35 Thackeray,36 and The Accidental Prime Minister37 are testament to this. Ideas of womanhood tethered to this vision are anodyne and blunted of any radical potential. In the 2019 film Mission Mangal,38 Balan, who plays one of the lead scientists at the Indian Space Research Organisation is shown as bringing her resourcefulness and industriousness as a ­mother to scientific experiments at her workplace. While ­t here are many other leading female actors in the film, their positions are subordinate to Akshay Kumar, who has emerged as the poster boy for the Modi administration. In this new churning, Balan is no longer an outlier or the go-to person for offbeat, unconventional roles. Tumhari Sulu (2017) marks an in­ter­est­ing pivot for her, in which the starting point of the narrative is a stable married life. Balan’s depiction of a conventional middle-­class ­woman with ­simple quotidian desires—as if to champion the norm and revealing another facet of her relatability—­won her praise from the industry ­after a dry spell. A film with less tragic themes than The Dirty Picture and Kahaani, Tumhari Sulu is a w ­ holesome comedy that derives its humor from what is set up as a clash between worlds in a cosmopolitan city. Sulu is a cheerful, house-­proud w ­ oman who becomes the unlikely radio jockey for a late-­n ight erotic show. She wears a bindi and mangalsutra, symbols that

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signal the married status of ­women. Sulu is not threatened by the modernity represented by the w ­ omen she sees around her, who speak En­glish with ease, work, and wear Western clothes. The humor is supposed to arise from the contrast between seeing a plump, domesticated ­woman—­a “sari-­wali bhaabi,” as she is called in the movie—­and hearing a suggestive, sexy voice. Despite the condescension at the heart of this framing, Balan posits a sexuality that is not fixated on the body but instead uses other emotive registers—­playfulness, laughter, and intimacy. Sulu shares an easy companionship with her husband, and sex is depicted as simply another aspect of their life in the midst of life’s pressures. The film highlights a comfort in the familiar and the mundane. Sulu’s fantasies are not sexual, subversive, or ­grand. She merely aspires to join the forces of urban, consumerist, modern, working w ­ omen. When her neighbors, two flight attendants, return home, Sulu attempts to have a conversation with them and watches them from the doorway with envy. Inside the ­house, she pulls out a bag and strikes a pose with it in front of a mirror, playacting at being a working w ­ oman. When she l­ ater gets the job at the radio station, she is depicted gliding through her home with the bag, her arm outstretched like that of a superhero, and her dupatta flowing b ­ ehind her like a cape. Her aspiration for work does not constitute a rejection of the domestic burden that falls on ­women within the f­amily but merely posits a challenge in managing it all. She has to be a superwoman. Like previous iterations of the new ­woman, she must do this without neglecting her duties as m ­ other and wife. The radio program producer, Maria, is amused by Sulu’s lack of self-­consciousness and her naive enthusiasm. When she is being auditioned for her voice, Sulu keeps breaking into laughter. “Do you understand sexy?” Maria asks Sulu. “Helen type?” Sullu asks, recalling the original vamp figure. “I can do Hema Malini or Sridevi,” referring to the leading heroines of the 1970s and 1980s. Maria’s response is to tell her to do it in her own voice. Once Sulu discovers the power of her sexy voice, she prank calls the local home store owner and throatily asks for a broom. The man, whose imagination is excited, makes the trek to personally deliver it. Sulu is childishly thrilled to see the effect her voice is having on men, including her husband, Ashok. The discovery of her own sensual side, even the power to titillate men, does not have a transformative effect on Sulu; it does not expand the range of her desires. At no point is t­ here the threat of an a­ ctual sexual transgression. She negotiates this world without giving up in essence what is seen as her stable, traditional ­family values, her Indianness. She speaks to her on-­air callers while shelling peas and cutting vegetables. The conversations themselves are fairly sanitized, keeping at bay the kind of erotic potential that might threaten bound­a ries or push her outside the pale of homeliness. Instead, they are turned into reflections on individual loneliness in the city. Following the success of the film, Balan was signed on for an a­ ctual radio show called Dhun Badal ke to Dekho. It is a space in which she discusses new modalities of relationships and topics such as fat-­shaming and abortion. Although her body continues to be subject to unwarranted scrutiny in the media ecosystem, she now

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uses the language of empowerment, asserting its right to exist in its fullness both on-­screen and off-­screen. And yet, while Balan has been central in expanding the range of w ­ omen’s stories being told, she has increasingly moved away from her e­ arlier hatke stardom to becoming the face of middle-­class aspirations. She is now the brand endorser for many schemes and loans such as affordable housing and sanitation. A film producer told the Economic Times, “Brands that choose her are looking for way more than just a celebrity face. They want someone who is dependable, articulate, well-­informed and is relatable as a face of India.”39 And although “relatability” is indeed her brand, she has used that very expectation to deliver unexpected surprises.

Notes 1. ​Mail ­Today Bureau, “Vidya Balan as the Fourth Khan,” India ­Today, March 11, 2012, https://­w ww​.­i ndiatoday​.­i n​/­i ndia​/­north​/­story​/­v idya​-­balan​-­a s​-­t he​-­fourth​-­k han​-­bollywood​ -­95554​-2­ 012​-­03​-­11. 2. ​ Kahaani, directed by Sujoy Ghosh (2012; Mumbai: Boundscript), DVD, 128 min. 3. ​Nandana Bose, “Bollywood’s Fourth Khan: Deconstructing the ‘Hatke’ Stardom of Vidya Balan in Popu­lar Hindi Cinema,” Celebrity Studies, May 2014, 394–409. 4. ​ Ishqiya, directed by Abhishek Chaubey (2010; Mumbai: Shemaroo Entertainment), DVD, 150 min. 5. ​Paa, directed by R. Balki (2009; Mumbai: ABCL), DVD, 140 min. 6. ​ No One Killed Jessica, directed by Raj Kumar Gupta (2011; Mumbai: UTV Spotboy Motion Pictures), DVD, 136 min. 7. ​ The Dirty Picture, directed by Milan Luthria (2011; Mumbai: Balaji Motion Pictures), DVD, 144 min. 8. ​I ANS, “Vidya Balan: The Dirty Picture Changed My Life Forever,” Indian Express, December 2, 2018, https://­indianexpress​.­com​/­article​/­entertainment​/ ­bollywood​/­v idya​-­balan​ -­t he​-­dirty​-­picture​-­changed​-­my​-­life​-f­ orever​-­5475260​/.­ 9. ​“12 Times Vidya Balan’s Fashion Game Was a Disaster,” Cosmopolitan, March 31, 2017, https://­w ww​.­cosmopolitan​.­i n​/­c elebrity​/­news​/­g 1943​/­1 2​-­t imes​-­v idya​-­balans​-­fashion​-­game​ -­was​-­disaster#slide​-­7. 10. ​ Tumhari Sulu, directed by Suresh Triveni (2017; India: Ellipsis Entertainment), DVD, 150 min. 11. ​Bose, “Bollywood’s Fourth Khan”, 394–409. 12. ​Purnima Mankekar, “Dangerous Desires: Tele­v i­sion and Erotics in Late Twentieth-­ Century India,” Journal of Asian Studies 63, no. 2 (May 2004): 403–431. Mankekar argues that this eroticism was not introduced by the opening up of the economy and transnational media, but contributed to the “(re)eroticization of the public sphere.” 13. ​Rupal Oza, The Making of Neoliberal India: Nationalism, Gender and the Paradoxes of Globalization (New York: Routledge, 2006), 45. Oza quotes Mankekar to show how this shift ­towards the repre­sen­ta­tions of intimacy and sexuality raised moral concerns about “Indian culture.” 14. ​Oza, The Making of Neoliberal India, 22. 15. ​Sushmita Chatterjee, “ ‘En­glish Vinglish’ and Bollywood: What Is ‘New’ about the ‘New ­Woman,’?” Gender, Place & Culture 23, no. 8 (2016): 11. 16. ​Tupur Chatterjee, “Size Zero Begums and Dirty Pictures: The Con­temporary Female Star in Bollywood,” Synoptique 3, no. 4 (2014): 23. 17. ​Raghuvendra Singh, “Exclusive: Vidya Balan on Success, Relationships, Turning 40 & Body Shaming,” Filmfare, February 4, 2019, https://­w ww​.­fi lmfare​.­com​/­interviews​/­exclusive​ -­v idya​-b ­ alan​-o ­ n​-s­ uccess​-r­ elationships​-­turning​-­40​-­body​-­shaming​-­32352​-­2​.­html. 18. ​Amy Erdman Farrell, Fat Shame: Stigma and the Fat Body in American Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 4.

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19. ​Desi-­mad: Bollywood’s most controversial news, “Aishwarya Rai’s Shocking Weight Gain,” May 3, 2012, https://­w ww​.­youtube​.­com​/­watch​?­v​= ­5Zmn3YqjQNY. 20. ​Mark Greif, “Against Exercise,” in Against Every­thing (New York: Pantheon Books, 2016), 39. 21. ​Film companion, “Vidya Balan Interview with Anupama Chopra| Begum Jaan | FC Unfiltered,” April 10, 2017, https://­w ww​.y­ outube​.­com​/w ­ atch​?­v​=­DV7Vl3dZ9S8&t​= ­694s. 22. ​Arpesh Mishra, “50% W ­ omen Body Shamed at Least Once in Life: Report,” Indiacsr, April 6, 2019, https://­indiacsr​.­in​/­50​-­women​-­body​-­shamed​-­at​-­least​-­once​-­in​-­life​-­report​/­. 23. ​C .P. Surendran, “Vidya Balan Giving Size-­Z ero Heroines a Run for Their Money,” Economic Times, February 7, 2010, https://­economictimes​.­i ndiatimes​.­com​/­i ndustry​/­media​ /­entertainment​/­v idya​-­balan​-­g iving​-­zero​-­size​-­heroines​-­a​-­r un​-­for​-­t heir​-­money​/­a rticleshow​ /­5544108​.­cms. 24. ​Laura Mulvey, “Visual Plea­sure and Narrative Cinema,” Screen 16, no. 3 (Autumn 1975): 11. 25. ​Ranjani Mazumdar, Bombay Cinema: An Archive of the City (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), 86. 26. ​“The Indecent Repre­sen­ta­tion of ­Women (Prohibition) Act, 1986,” India Code, https://­ www​.­i ndiacode​.­nic​.­in​/­handle​/­123456789​/­1768​?­v iew​_­t ype​= ­browse&sam​_­handle​= ­123456789​ /­1362. 27. ​Shohini Ghosh, “The Troubled Existence of Sex and Sexuality: Feminists Engage with Censorship,” in Gender and Censorship, ed. Brinda Bose (New Delhi: ­Women Unlimited, 2006), 256. 28. ​Paromita Vohra, “Bringing Sexy Back, Well, Almost,” Mid-­d ay, December 11, 2011, https://­w ww​.­mid​-­day​.­com​/­articles​/­bringing​-­sexy​-­back​-­well​-­a lmost​/­145617. 29. ​Jyotika Virdi. The Cinematic ImagiNation: Indian Popu­lar Films as Social History (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003). 30. ​Akshaya Kumar, “Item Number/Item Girl,” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 40, no. 2 (2017): 338. 31. ​Dipti Nagpal D’Souza, “Munni vs Sheila: The Way of the ‘Item Bomb,’ ” Indian Express, December 26, 2010, http://­archive​.­indianexpress​.­com​/­news​/­munni​-­vs​-­sheila​-­t he​-­way​-­of​-­t he​ -­item​-­bomb​/­729468​/­1. 32. ​Shilpa Jamkhandikar, “A Minute with: Sujoy Ghosh,” ­Reuters, February  9, 2012, https://­c a​.­reuters​.­com​/­a rticle​/ ­bollywood​-­sujoy​/­a​-­m inute​-­w ith​-­sujoy​-­g hosh​-­idINDEE​8170​ FL20120209. 33. ​Ingrid Therwath, “ ‘Shining Indians’: Diaspora and Exemplarity in Bollywood,” South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, no. 4 (2010), https://­doi​.­org​/1­ 0​.­4000​/­samaj​.­3000. 34. ​ Uri: The Surgical Strike, directed by Aditya Dhar (2019; Mumbai: RSVP Movies), DVD, 138 min. 35. ​ PM Narendra Modi, directed by Omung Kumar (2019; Mumbai: Legend Global Studio), DVD, 134 min. 36. ​ Thackeray, directed by Abhijit Panse (2019; Mumbai: Viacom 18 Motion Pictures), DVD, 139 min. 37. ​ The Accidental Prime Minister, directed by Vijay Ratnakar Gutte (2019; Delhi: Rudra Productions), DVD, 110 min. 38. ​ Mission Mangal, directed by Jagan Shakti (2019; Mumbai: Cape of Good Films), DVD, 130 min. 39. ​ET Bureau, “Face of Advertising: Vidya Balan Has Signed Nine New Brands in the Past 10 Months,” Economic Times, July 2, 2018, https://­economictimes​.­indiatimes​.­com​/m ­ agazines​ /­p anache​/­f ace​-­of​-­a dvertising​-­v idya​-­b alan​-­h as​-­signed​-­n ine​-­new​-­brands​-­i n​-­t he​-­p ast​-­10​ -­months​/­articleshow​/­64821513​.c­ ms​?­from​=­mdr.

chapter 9

Q

Out of India educating the new ­woman in queen, en­glish vinglish, and badrinath ki dulhania Anjali Ram

For Birbal Jha, the director of British Lingua, the untimely death of Bollywood star Sridevi, at the age of fifty-­four, was personal. He or­ga­nized a condolence meeting and was quoted in the Financial Times, saying, “We are saddened by the demise of the fine actress whose comeback venture had served as a catalyst for our endeavours.”1 Jha was referring to the film En­glish Vinglish (2012) and how its triumphant narrative of a w ­ oman who enrolls in ESL classes was inspirational to his students.2 His private educational franchise, British Lingua’s mission is to provide “En­glish and soft skills training in India” and driven by the motto “En­g lish for all.” Jha claims that by learning En­glish he was able to pull himself up from the streets of Patna to become a successful entrepreneur.3 His story is one of aspiration, enterprise, and individual grit that propels British Lingua’s claim that by equipping oneself with “the bounties of En­glish skills” one can gain “a definite edge in t­oday’s job market.” 4 Such statements are consistent with the post-1990s transformation of the Indian state from a protectionist to a liberalized, globally connected economy. Individual achievement and self-­regulation framed within a f­ ree market logic have become a power­f ul rhetorical scaffold for educational policies and institutions.5 In turn, Bollywood has increasingly reflected such discourses of individuation, aspiration, and transnational connectivity in its narratives, or what Paromita Chakravarti terms as “fantasies of transformation.”6 Even the terms “Hindi” and “Bombay” cinema, which ­were regularly used through the twentieth ­century, have been supplanted by the more globally recognizable moniker “Bollywood” in the last three de­cades or so.7 While the term “Bollywood” was not newly minted in postliberalized India, its increased popularization is clearly related to the Mumbai-­ based Hindi-­language cinema’s global ascendancy as a recognizable brand. Aswin Punathambekar and Anandam Kavoori argue that this “new” Hindi cinema emerged as a corporatized, “culture industry” to serve “as a mediating institution 133

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par excellence for a state that seeks to reproduce itself ­under the sign of globalization.”8 Further, the transition of the Indian state from a protectionist economy to a market-­driven one has ushered in constructions of the citizen subject who must be self-­reliant, self-­regulating, and enterprising. Within this changing cultural context, the “new w ­ oman” in India is projected according to Rupal Oza as “confident, assertive, in control, and particularly modern,” in sharp contrast to images of “oppressed, burdened, and backward Indian w ­ omen.”9 Moving beyond the local, the new w ­ oman unapologetically pursues a quest for personal meaning making and aspires to become worldly and cosmopolitan. The three films examined in this chapter, En­glish Vinglish (2012), Queen (2014), and Badrinath ki Dulhania (2017), act as journey narratives that portray their vernacular female protagonists as g­ oing out of India to be educated in order to realize their new cosmopolitan selves.10 ­These ­women’s global expeditions act as spaces of self-­discovery that allow for growth and reinvention. In En­glish, Sashi covertly enrolls in ESL classes in a bold bid to reeducate herself and prove that she is not just a wife and ­mother. In Queen, Rani defiantly visits Paris alone as she copes with the humiliation of being rejected by her fiancé on their wedding eve. In Badrinath, Vaidehi abandons her groom on their wedding day and moves to Singapore to realize her c­ areer aspirations of becoming a flight attendant. An exhaustive textual analy­sis of each of the three films is beyond the scope of this chapter. Instead, I focus on the morphology of the new ­woman as she is ­shaped in relation to discourses of aspiration, enterprise, cosmopolitanism, and neoliberalism.11 I argue that in all three films, empowerment is premised on the new ­woman’s aspiration to rise above her vernacular positionality, leave home to be educated, and acquire cosmopolitan sensibilities that allow her to successfully participate in the global neoliberal economy that values self-­reliance, enterprise, and marketable skills. To explain how the figure of the new ­woman appears across ­these film texts, I first chart the spatialization and mobilization of the three protagonists as they develop into symbols of new womanhood. ­Here, I rely on the Sheldon Pollock’s formulation that cosmopolitanism and vernacularism can be seen more as “action rather than idea, as something p ­ eople do rather than something they declare.”12 Taking this more situated understanding of cosmopolitanism as opposed to an idealized view, I explore how the success of the new ­woman is manifested by her ability to navigate the bound­aries between vernacularism and cosmopolitanism. I then draw upon Oza’s study of neoliberalism and gender, Gauri Pathak’s concept of “presentability,” and Nandini Gooptu’s analy­sis of the enterprising self in con­temporary India to consider how ­t hese films employ idioms derived from and for the marketplace in their compositions of the new w ­ oman 13 persona.

Spatialization and Mobility of the New ­Woman The new w ­ oman as presented in En­glish, Queen, and Badrinath experiences her self-­actualization in the global cities of New York, Paris, and Singapore, respec-

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tively. The cosmopolitan spaces of the Global North function as sites for her to grow and transcend her localized self to become a cosmopolitanized subject.14 Such portrayals stand in contrast to many of the pre-1990s depictions of the West in Hindi cinema, where a “strategic ‘Occidentalism’ ” was deployed.15 Born primarily out of anticolonial, dewesternizing efforts, a series of correspondences between home, tradition, and gender provided a nationalist ideology that presented the West as dangerous and degenerate.16 Alternatively, the Global North also made its appearance as a fantasy backdrop where Western spaces served to add “spectacle, gloss and an air of cosmopolitanism.”17 Thus, while the West was condemned as being immoral, it si­mul­ta­neously functioned as a dreamscape to demonstrate the glamour of romantic love. Such twin repre­sen­ta­tions, one of distance and the other of desire, formed a recurrent and ambivalent pattern in Hindi cinema through the last ­century. The diasporic films of the late 1990s marked a significant shift, with a noticeable emphasis, according to Tejaswani Ganti, on “class, youthful romance, and the Indian diaspora.”18 The au­then­tic Indian as represented in this era was now mobile and could be “as ‘Indian’ in New York, London, or Sydney as in Bombay, Calcutta, or Delhi.”19 Then in a double move from the ­middle of the aughts onward, ­t here has been a return of films set in rural and peri-­urban spaces. The vernacular and the local have now been reinvented as cool, with parochial heroes who have exaggerated local accents and/or mannerisms such as Chulbul Pandey of the Dabangg (2010) and Inspector Bajirao in Singham (2011). Ganti asserts that the very gentrification of the globalized 1990s films allowed now for the rural, the working class, and the local to be legitimized and transformed as sources of “novelty and nostalgia.”20 At the same time, hit films such Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011) have scripted characters as “cosmopolitan elites who seamlessly cross borders and travel the world effortlessly” as they individuate and separate from parental and social expectations.21 I read the education and transformation of the new ­woman against ­t hese two seemingly contradictory discourses—­one that foregrounds the local and the vernacular, and the other that promotes the cosmopolitan, professional Indian who leads a mobile life of affluence. In the three films analyzed h ­ ere, we encounter the new w ­ omen protagonists first as vernacularized—­Sashi from En­glish through her inability to speak En­glish, Rani from Queen with her parochial speech patterns and naive sensibility, and Vaidehi from Badrinath, who is professionally immobilized by a small-­town mentality with its aggressive patriarchy. However, ­t hese ­women are “exposed to other cultures on a daily basis without crossing borders” and are part of a transnational world through media consumption, global brands, and cross-­national interactions.22 While their everyday lives maybe transnationalized, Sashi, Rani, and Vaidehi do not possess the cosmopolitan competencies to successfully navigate their route from the local to the global. In En­glish, Sashi’s s­ ister, Manu, lives in New York, and through her, Sashi is aware of and inserted into global circuitries. An unexpected midnight phone call from Manu announcing the impending wedding of her d ­ aughter, Meera, sets

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Sashi’s “out-­of-­India” journey into motion. Sashi, as the maternal aunt, is required to assist her ­sister as she copes with wedding planning. The preceding scenes have already depicted Sashi’s lack of En­glish fluency, which contrasts sharply with the linguistic and social confidence displayed by her husband and her young c­ hildren. Her linguistic deficit is a source of much derision by her ­family and leaves her socially timid and psychologically apprehensive. The transatlantic call from her ­sister urging her to come to New York is a reminder that “the warp of” her stability was always “shot through with the woof of ­human motion.”23 This world of movement and motion now demands that she acquire linguistic and social competence if she is to navigate it successfully. Queen opens with an invocation of spatiality as Rani, the protagonist, is surrounded by her f­ amily and friends celebrating her prenuptial mehndi (henna) ceremony. With medium shots and backward tracking, the audience is drawn from the narrow outer doorway to the busy interior of the ­house. As the camera’s gaze draws back, the scenes are increasingly populated with characters bustling about as they prepare for the impending wedding of Rani to Vijay, newly arrived from London. Rani sits ensconced within this thickly peopled familial orbit, comfortable and complacent as she is showered with attention and love. The density of the scene conveys her rooted, vernacular positionality in Rajouri Garden, a West Delhi middle-­class suburb of largely Punjabi ethnicity. Into this very local and insular world, the accompanying song, “London Thumukda,” boldly and playfully announces that Rani w ­ ill soon fly like a kite and speak En­glish incessantly. She is, as the lyr­ics continue, “our very own Queen Victoria” and like Big Ben w ­ ill soon have the ­whole of London rocking and rolling to her dance beats. This song functions as what Arjun Appadurai refers to as “prolegomena to the desire for acquisition and movement.” Local she maybe, but like Shashi of En­glish, she is transnationalized through mediascapes that allow for the construction of “­imagined worlds” composed of “chimerical, aesthetic, even fantastic objects.”24 When her fiancé, Vijay brutally breaks off the wedding, Rani regroups by announcing that she ­will embark on her prebooked honeymoon trip to Paris on her own. Rani’s fantasy of “foreign travel,” as she refers to it, is representative of how post-1990s Western travel in India has become, as Anna Kurian states, a significant “sign of upward mobility.”25 Only by routing Rani from her Rajouri rootedness to the Western metropole can she be transformed into the new w ­ oman. In Badrinath, Vaidehi, the principal female character, is located in Kota, a midsize city in Rajasthan. Less metropolitan and more provincial, Kota, unlike Mumbai or Delhi, has the dubious distinction of being the hub of the shadow education economy, with its numerous tutoring centers for aspiring students.26 Another evocative spatial meta­phor in Kota is the Seven Won­ders Park that h ­ ouses miniaturized stone replicas of select world “won­ders” from the Taj Mahal to the Statue of Liberty. Between the grim realities of an exploitive commercial coaching industry and the hyperreal won­der garden, Vaidehi, the new Indian w ­ oman is firmly situated within the ideologies of a market-­driven educational system that promises to deliver trained citizen subjects for the new world order. In a telling scene, midway

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through the film, Vaidehi is being interviewed for a potential flight attendant job. When asked why she wants to be an “air hostess,” she starts by saying that it has been her dream, only to be abruptly interrupted by one of the recruiters.27 He declares that being an air hostess is not some glamorous fantasy of global travel but a “very serious job” that requires much “hard work.” In response to his derisive tone, Vaidehi retorts that she is “from Kota,” where she has already toured the world by ­going to the Seven Won­ders Park, and so does not have any interest in duniya dekhna (seeing the world). Rather, she declares that she is looking to create a ­future for herself and is prepared to work as hard as needed. Vaidehi’s comments indicate her awareness of being already inserted in a transnational space of global flows. Despite coming from a struggling, middle-­class, traditional f­amily with a ner­vous ­father anxious to arrange her marriage and a ­mother who barely speaks, Vaidehi voices the aspirations of India’s so called demographic dividend, its vast and increasing youth population.28 As a middle-­class, “new” young ­woman, she articulates a discourse of aspiration and a desire to optimize herself to succeed in the new economy. In Badrinath, the West appears in the form of Singapore, a world city that is known for its liberalized economy combined with an authoritarian government. Director Shashank Khaitan stated that he chose Singapore as the setting for the film ­because of its “mix of a unique multicultural society interwoven into a dynamic city that pulsates with modern vibrancy—­something that works well with the characters of Badri and Vaidehi as they embark on a journey of self-­ discovery.”29 Khaitan’s comments reflect the idealization of the i­magined Global North as being a space where every­one, even a small-­town young w ­ oman from Kota, can find fulfillment and success. In his study of globalization and Indian youth identities, psychologist Sunil Bhatia refers to the “exposed Indian.” The Indian millennial youths whom he interviews refer to globalization as the “entry of new brands” to India, the “exposure to new ideas,” and the ability to “imagine, that . . . ​lot of t­ hings are pos­si­ble.”30 Like Bhatia’s interviewees, Vaidehi is experiencing “mediascapes” with endless flows of images and information that have transformed her vernacular consciousness to imagine and aspire to a more cosmopolitan identity.31 As an aspiring cosmopolitan, she resents being taken for a pos­si­ble tourist. Tourism, as Ulf Hannerz points out, is a “spectator sport” and contrasts with the desire to participate by the cosmopolitan.32 For Vaidehi, the Global North is not a glamorous dreamscape to temporarily gaze at and then return home. Rather, traveling out of India as a ­career flight attendant is a chance to garner skills and capacities to transform herself into an individualized agent who can harness the potential of the new India. The three films discussed h ­ ere represent a significant departure in Bollywood from how the Global West/North is i­ magined in relation to gender. The Western metropole is not a dark site of moral threat, nor is it simply used as a backdrop to provide fantastical scenes for romantic transgressions. For the three ­woman protagonists, the global cities of New York, Paris, Amsterdam, and Singapore represent opportunity for self-­g rowth, self-­care, and self-­f ulfillment, where as local ­women they can acquire the cosmopolitan skills and sensibilities appropriate to a

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globalized nation. They travel relatively effortlessly, as all three films gloss over the racialized frictions of transnational travel. In a world where regressive nationalisms demand the closing of borders and the denial of entry of the “other,” the new ­woman of Bollywood travels smoothly. Sashi may be hesitant about traveling alone to the United States with her l­ imited En­glish capacity, but “magical agents” appear, as V. Propp would put it, to help her navigate her journey safely.33 When she is challenged about her English-­speaking deficit at the American embassy, an Indian visa officer defends her. L ­ ater on in her journey, a fellow traveler calms her anx­i­ eties a­ fter her confusion at the immigration c­ ounter. In her first solo experience in New York City, a stranger consoles her when she is humiliated by her inability to communicate her food order. Similarly, in Queen, Rani’s Eu­ro­pean tour is marred initially when she forgets her passport at her ­hotel and then a ­little ­later by an attempted mugging by a homeless man in Paris. Subsequently, in Amsterdam, she is horrified to learn that she has to share a room with three men at the local YMCA due to a booking shortage at the height of the tourist season. In all t­ hese instances, friends and allies spontaneously appear to help her navigate the strangeness and potentially dangerous circumstances. In Badrinath, Vaidehi, who leaves home in search of a c­ areer, is transported to Mumbai and then to Singapore with effortless and seamless mobility. By ensuring that all three female protagonists enjoy a global itinerary that is f­ ree of friction, Bollywood reproduces the fiction of a borderless world. The West and North are where our protagonists go to shed the constraints of their vernacularism and emerge as cosmopolitan new ­women who are, to use Christiane Brosius’s term, “wanted citizens” in a shining India of upward possibilities.34

Presenting the New ­Woman When we first meet Sashi, Rani, and Vaidehi, they are in varying stages of developing into the new Indian w ­ oman. The films’ plots engineer their pro­g ress of becoming new w ­ omen by sending them out of India to be educated and to raise their consciousness. Oza points out how, as the Indian economy morphed from state control to market deregulation in the 1990s, advertising messages expressed a “sense of having been ‘­behind’ other countries . . . ​and having fi­nally ‘caught up.’ ” The new ­woman began to be viewed as “an icon of modernity” who was symbolically intertwined with the new India. This discourse “implies that the liberalization of the economy opens up spaces and possibilities for Indian ­women to express themselves and satisfy their aspirations in ways not previously pos­si­ble.”35 Sashi, Rani, and Vaidehi are “­behind” in dif­fer­ent ways and yearn to “catch up.” Traveling outside of India to the global city allows them to experience the possibilities of self-­expression and aspiration achievement that are promised in globalized India. In their encounters with the Global North, the ­women meet their character foils, who directly or indirectly highlight what they lack and what they must learn to become new ­women. In En­glish, Sashi’s ­sister, Manu, is a successful working ­woman raising two d ­ aughters by herself. In a tender moment as the two s­ isters reminisce

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about their shared beginnings in a “Hindi medium” school and their lack of En­glish skills, Sashi wistfully exclaims how proud she is of Manu. Unlike Sashi, Manu is in­de­pen­dent, cosmopolitan, and assertive. In Queen, when Rani initially arrives in Paris, she is overcome with dismay by the real­ity of being by herself in a culturally alien world. ­There she meets Vijaylaxmi, or Vijay, the biracial single ­mother who works at the ­hotel as a ­house­keeper/attendant. In Amsterdam, Rani meets Roxette, the stage name for Ruksar, who works in the city’s legalized sex economy. They are portrayed as good ­mothers and good ­daughters who are pragmatic survivors. Unlike Rani, they are confident and comfortable with their choices and boldly assert their agency in the multicultural metropolis. Character foils are not as obvious in Badrinath, but even so, side characters like Sergeant Laxmi Shankar, a ­woman police office in Singapore, provide a portrait of a confident, composed professional of Indian origin in a cosmopolitan city. Her self-­assurance and sense of purpose are what Vaidehi aspires to in her own life and w ­ ere the impetus that drove her to flee the confines of home. Th ­ ese character foils indicate what Sashi, Rani, and Vaidehi must learn to get “caught up” with presenting themselves as new ­women in modern India. The idea of “presentability” as an impor­tant prerequisite in modern India is incisively demonstrated by Pathak in her study on the body and neoliberal subjecthood. Her explanation of how the term “presentability” is used as an aspirational category in reference to the aestheticizing and comportment of the body is useful to understand both transformations and aspirations of Sashi, Rani, and Vaidehi.36

Becoming Internationally Intelligible Positioned in an upper-­middle-­class ­family, Sashi’s lack of En­g lish competency makes her an outsider in her own world. Her husband and ­children delight in making fun of her mispronunciations. Her ­daughter is mortified when Sashi asks to conduct a parent-­teacher conference in Hindi. At the immigration ­counter, she strug­gles to string her responses in an accurate syntax and in her ensuing embarrassment must rely on a slip of paper with prewritten answers. At her ­sister’s home in New York, she listens silently as every­one e­ lse patters on in En­glish, insensitive to her inability to comprehend. Sashi is unable to pre­sent herself as an active agent; instead, she is spoken about and spoken for. Despite portraying her character with sensitivity and sympathy, the film reinforces what Alastair Pennycook refers to as a laissez-­faire liberalism with regard to the dominance of En­glish. He argues that the “benefits of En­glish as a global language” are touted as being ideologically neutral ­because of its so-­called international intelligibility. Such a liberalist view acknowledges other languages. However, the rhe­toric is couched within “a socially and po­liti­cal naivety” that celebrates universalism in the form of En­glish while maintaining the par­tic­u ­lar diversities of “other” languages.37 By educating Sashi in the internationally intelligible lingua franca, her “presentability” is quite literally on display as she gives a successful wedding toast in En­g lish. Following her per­for­mance as a universal communicator, she is recuperated by her “diversity” as she speaks to a fellow ESL student

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and an admirer, Laurent, in Hindi. Sashi is still rooted in her local identity, but she is not ­behind anymore and has “caught up” to the modern world. With her newly found linguistic competence and feminist consciousness, she moves assertively through language and cultural worlds.

The Pa­ri­sian Make­over In Queen, Rani’s education comes in the form of a make­over. Her ingenue-­esque personality that had initially enamored her fiancé, Vijay, now irks him. Having experienced life in London, he finds Rani’s small-­world simplicity unappealing. He callously calls off their wedding at the last minute. The prob­lem he declares is that she is still the same, while he has changed. For him, “it is all about travel, business, meetings,” and “it ­w ill be tough for her” to adjust to his new worldly lifestyle. Patronizingly, he mansplains that he is ­doing this for her so that she can find a more suitable “local” suitor and be happy. Rani’s solo Eu­ro­pean trip is, then, her journey of transformation from being a guileless hometown girl to a cosmopolitanized new ­woman. Rushi Sharma and Manushi Nath, the costume designers for Queen, explain Rani’s sartorial transformation: “Her ill-­fitting, printed blue kurta epitomised her clumsy, fearful r­ unning in Paris, which transitioned to free-­flowing, sunlit, gauzy and transparent-­like Rani. And fi­nally the peaches and lace dress in which Queen walks away from Vijay to her freedom. Her hair, her bag, her footwear, all of ­t hese subtly transforms [sic] Vikas’ Rani to Queen.”38 The designers’ comments recall Pathak’s research in which, for her participants, presentability was “inextricably linked to an ability to wear Western wear.” Indian garments w ­ ere “still presentable” if the “way they ­were worn had to express updated sensibilities.” The choice of Paris is of course no accident to situate this refashioning of Rani, for only in this cosmopolitan city with its associations with high design can Rani be educated into becoming worldly. Moving from formless to form-­fitting clothes is an apt meta­phor that symbolizes her getting “caught up” to the globalized Indian imaginary where “being presentable is thus about a loose but critical mixture of grooming, taste, and bearing that links acceptable Indianness to the world.”39 Rani’s education is not l­imited to body stylization but also includes learning how to channel her inner, enterprising self. Challenged by an arrogant chef in Amsterdam, Rani enlists the help of her newfound friends to make and sell Indian food at an outdoor festival. Despite working in a kitchen with l­ imited ingredients for Indian cuisine, Rani successfully improvises. She makes golgappas, a tangy, spicy Indian snack. By choosing a ­recipe that is typically outside the menus of mainstream Indian restaurants abroad and is iconic of North Indian street food, Rani bridges the vernacular-­cosmopolitan boundary. She successfully cosmopolitanizes this very local, indigenous snack, demonstrating her initiative, willingness to take risks, and ability to market herself in the big wide world. Rani’s triumph is evidence of her new sense of personhood as an enterprising subject and is consistent with Gooptu’s argument regarding how the “idea of enterprise” is increasingly being invoked in con­temporary India. Rani’s empowerment is worked out within the logic of the marketplace. Her journey out of India enables her to transform

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into a presentable, enterprising citizen reinforcing “the dominant imagination” in India ­today of being an aspirational, entrepreneurial society that is globally competitive.40

Dedication and Passion Required Unlike Sashi and Rani, Vaidehi is already positioned as one of India’s new young ­women at the beginning of the film Badrinath. She is bold, ambitious, and entrepreneurial. But the constraints of her small-­town orbit and her careworn middle-­ class parents inhabit her journey of self-­d iscovery. Her character is reflective of Gooptu’s comments that con­temporary narratives are of “new Indians, whose dreams, passions, and desires fuel and propel all e­ lse, and whose power­f ul, newly liberated, capacity to aspire is in itself an asset.” 41 The turning point of the plot occurs when Vaidehi abandons Badri, her groom, on their wedding day. She joins the Frankfinn institute for flight attendant training in Mumbai and subsequently gets a job as a trainee flight attendant for SilkAir in Singapore. In addition to the obvious brand placements in the film, Frankfinn appointed Alia Bhatt, the actor who plays Vaidehi, as its brand ambassador. In press statements, Bhatt commented on “the passion and dedication” of the Frankfinn instructors, and Frankfinn’s chairman, K. S. Kohli, exclaimed how Bhatt is “bold and beautiful,” symbolizing “confidence, poise and passion required to accomplish personal ambitions.” 42 Kohli was further quoted as declaring that as Bhatt had faced “myriad obstacles in emerging as an icon,” and had raised the bar with “sheer dedication and passion,” she was “ideally suited to help Frankfinn students in identifying and pursuing their dreams and aspirations.” 43 The repeated mention of dedication and passion by Bhatt and Kohli in their press releases reflects Gooptu’s point that “representative voices from the state, public media, and the private sector” are in unison, affirming “a  faith in the possibility of change and success.” Realizing t­hese dreams and desires is predicated “on mobilizing the power and energy of active subject agents: the do-­ers who are endowed with . . . ​aspirational capital.” 44 In an advertising spot for Frankfinn, the voice-­over narrator tells us that one does not have “to be Alia” to acquire her cosmopolitan “five-­star life style.” One simply has to join the Frankfinn institute to experience “the good life” and to “fly high.” ­These last phrases are uttered by Bhatt, herself attired in a flight attendant’s uniform.45 The comingling of the film text with brand endorsements fuses discourses of individualism, consumerism, and materialism with normative ideas of hard work, dedication, courage, and passion into coherent narrative. The character of Vaidehi and the star persona of Alia Bhatt discursively produce what Bhatia calls “biographic answers” to the systemic prob­lem of gender and class in­equality by echoing Western psy­chol­ogy’s vocabulary of self-­d iscipline, self-­actualization, and self-­ enterprise.46 At the end of Badrinath, Vaidehi returns from Singapore back to small-­ town Jhansi, where the male narrator informs us that she has opened her own flight attendant training institute so that local youths can now dream of flying too. She returns to India, as an experienced cosmopolitan citizen who can participate in and be rewarded by the marketplace.

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Conclusion The stories of the new ­woman in En­glish, Queen, and Badrinath are told through a neoliberal lens, where the local, vernacular subject leaves homes, becomes educated and empowered in the Global North, and reengineers herself to be presentable, aspirational, and caught up to the new Indian economy. Within this new social imaginary the West functions as a sphere of sparkling possibilities and adventurous opportunities where the new ­woman must go to discover herself as an individuated subject. Mobility, according to t­ hese three films, is the gift of a globalized economy and is available and accessible to the new Indian ­woman. ­Here Bollywood seems to articulate Thomas Friedman’s glib vision of a “flat world.” 47 In this meta­phoric “flat world,” individuals and thereby socie­ties and economies can navigate freely and move t­ oward greater economic prosperity due to the twin forces of digital technologies and deregulated markets.48 However, by locating the transformation and education of the new ­woman in the Global North, ­t hese films continue the asymmetrical rhe­toric of its centrality and power. The modernizing impact of education is firmly and clearly still interpreted in relation to the first world. Consequently, such narratives of middle-­class transnational mobility and success limit capacities to imagine more indigenized and decolonized modes of educational empowerment. Each of the three films joins in the con­temporary neoliberal conversations related to the educated Indian as being someone who is self-­made, with knowledges and skills that are translatable and desirable in a neoliberal economy that values individuation and materiality. Education, Aiwha Ong reminds us, “is a social technology” that serves to constitute “knowledgeable subjects.” 49 In all three films, the w ­ omen protagonists are educated in formal and informal ways that allow them to ­free themselves from their rooted, localized lives by ­going “out of India.” Reinvented by their global encounters, they reenter their local worlds as new w ­ omen who are self-­caring, self-­managing, and self-­enterprising. Individualized selfhood for the new w ­ oman, as scripted in t­ hese three films, is the site of transformation and empowerment. Sashi, Rani, and Vaidehi do indeed express their agency, but their articulations all too neatly translate into the lexicon of the neoliberalized marketplace. Sashi, by becoming internationally intelligible with her En­glish fluency, joins the chorus that claims En­glish as a guaranteed tool for anyone wishing to achieve prosperity in India’s new economy. Rani, through her Eu­ro­pean tour and encounters with a diverse cast of locals and transnationals, is now made over to look and act more “presentable.” By “exercising appropriate consumer agency” through travel and redesigning herself in Paris, she now proj­ects a “cosmopolitan Indian self.”50 Vaidehi’s passion, dedication, and risk-­ taking pay off, and she succeeds in making a place for herself as an entrepreneur in India’s ser­v ice economy. Such a focus on the success of the new ­woman figure obscures its ideological under­pinnings, which consolidate the m ­ iddle class and, to borrow Ong’s words, rely on “market knowledge and calculations for a politics of subjection and subject-­making.”51 As new ­women they can and must, the films

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tell us, aspire to be mobile, cosmopolitanized subjects with competencies and skills appropriate to and l­ imited by the ser­v ice needs of the marketplace.

notes 1. ​Press Trust of India, “How Sridevi’s ‘En­glish Vinglish’ Inspired This Spoken En­glish Institute in Patna,” Financial Express, February 26, 2018, https://­w ww​.fi ­ nancialexpress​.­com​/i­ ndia​ -­news​/­how​-­s ridevis​-­e nglish​-­v inglish​-­i nspired​-­t his​-­s poken​-­e nglish​-­i nstitute​-­i n​-­p atna​ /­1079877​/­. 2. ​ En­glish Vinglish, directed by Gauri Shinde (2012; Mumbai: Eros International & Hope Productions, 2015), DVD, 124 min. 3. ​Rajesh Kumar Thakur, “ ‘Drinking Milk of Lioness’: Bihar Boy’s Journey from Remote Village to Top En­glish Trainer,” The New Indian Express​.­com, November 20, 2019, https://­w ww​ .­newindianexpress​.­c om​/­good​-­news​/­2 019​/­nov​/­2 0​/­d rinking​-­m ilk​-­of​-­l ioness​-­bihar​-­b oys​ -­journey​-f­ rom​-r­ emote​-­v illage​-­to​-­top​-­english​-­trainer​-­2064567​.­html. 4. ​Giridhar Jha, “­Free En­glish Courses For Marhadalits in Bihar,” Indiatoday​.­in, May 28, 2012, https://­w ww​.­indiatoday​.­in​/­india​/e­ ast​/s­ tory​/f­ ree​-­english​-­courses​-­for​-­mahadalits​-­in​-­bihar​ -­103660​-­2012​-0 ­ 5​-­28. 5. ​Sushree Panigrahi and Jeet Singh, “Private Higher Education Is Burgeoning in India—­ But Millions ­Can’t Afford It,” Scroll ​.­in, December, 12, 2016, https://­scroll​.­i n​/­a rticle​/­823743​ /­private​-­higher​-­education​-­is​-b ­ urgeoning​-­in​-­india​-­but​-­millions​-­cant​-­a fford​-­it. 6. ​Paromita Chakravarti, “Fantasies of Transformation: Education Neoliberal Self-­Making and Bollywood,” in Enterprise Culture in Neoliberal India: Studies in Youth, Class, Work and Media,” ed. Nandini Gooptu (New York: Routledge/Taylor and Francis, 2013), 44, Kindle. 7. ​See, for example, Ajay Gehlawat, Twenty-­First ­Century Bollywood (New York: Routledge, 2015); Ashish Rajadhyaksha, “The ‘Bollywoodization’ of the Indian Cinema: Cultural Nationalism in a Global Arena,” Inter-­Asia Cultural Studies 4, no. 1 (2003): 25–39; Ruma Sen, “Bollywood in the City: Can the Consumption of Bollywood Cinema Serve as a Site for Intercultural Discovery and Dialogue?,” in Case Studies in Intercultural Dialogue, ed. Nazan Haydari and Prue Holmes (San Francisco: Kendall Hunt, 2015), 117–130. 8. ​Aswin Punathambekar and Anandam Kavoori, “Introduction: Global Bollywood,” in Global Bollywood, ed. Anandam Kavoori and Aswin Punathambekar (New York: New York University Press, 2008), 6. 9. ​Rupal Oza, The Making of Neoliberal India: Nationalism, Gender, and the Paradoxes of Globalization (New York: Routledge, 2012), 29. 10. ​ Badrinath ki Dulhania, directed Shashank Khaitan (2017; Mumbai: Fox Star Studios & Dharma Productions), DVD, 139 min.; Queen, directed by Vikas Bahl (2014; Mumbai: Viacom18 Motion Pictures & Phantom Films, 2015), DVD, 146 min. 11. ​ En­glish Vinglish and Queen have both received scholarly attention. Sukanya Gupta praises Queen for employing progressive tropes to portray gender. In contrast, Shubhra Sharma and Sushmita Chatterjee are skeptical of the progressive potential of ­t hese films. See Sushmita Chatterjee, “ ‘En­g lish Vinglish’ and Bollywood: What Is ‘New’ about the ‘New ­Woman’?,” Gender, Place & Culture 23, no. 8 (February 2016): 1179–1192; Sukanya Gupta, “Kahaani, Gulaab Gang and Queen: Remaking the Queens of Bollywood,” South Asian Popu­ lar Culture 13, no.  2 (2015): 107–123; Shubhra Sharma, “Transnational Publics, Nationalist Ideology and the ‘­Woman Question’ in Hindi Cinema: The Film Queen (2014),” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 41, no. 1 (2017): 106–120. 12. ​Sheldon Pollock, “Cosmopolitan and Vernacular in History,” in Cosmopolitanism, ed.  Dipesh Chakrabarty, Homi  K. Bhabha, Sheldon Pollock, and Carol  A. Breckenridge (­Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 17. 13. ​Oza, The Making of Neoliberal India; Gauri Pathak, “ ‘Presentable’: The Body and Neoliberal Subjecthood in Con­temporary India,” Social Identities 20, no.  4–5 (2014): 314–329; Nandini Gooptu, “Introduction,” in Enterprise Culture in Neoliberal India: Studies in Youth, Class, Work and Media, ed. Nandini Gooptu (New York: Routledge/Taylor and Francis, 2013), 1–24, Kindle.

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14. ​For the purposes of this essay, I use the terms Global North, West, and global city interchangeably. Although Singapore is territorially not located in the “West,” it is considered on a par with eco­nom­ically developed “first world” cities and is typically associated with the glamour of the “developed” West in the popu­lar Indian imaginary. 15. ​Christiane Brosius and Nicolas Yazgi, “ ‘Is ­There No Place Like Home?’ Contesting Cinematographic Constructions of Indian Diasporic Experiences,” Contributions to Indian Sociology 41, no. 3 (2007): 362. 16. ​Scholars have extensively analyzed how the nation figures in Indian cinema. See Sumita Chakravarty, National Identity in Indian Popu­lar Cinema 1947–1987 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993); Jyotika Virdi, The Cinematic Imagination: Indian Popu­lar Films as Social History (Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003). 17. ​Rachel Dwyer, Bollywood’s India: Hindi Cine as a Guide to Con­temporary India (London: Reaktion Books, 2014), 66–67. 18. ​Tejaswani Ganti, Producing Bollywood (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012), 98. 19. ​Ganti, 101; see also Monica Mehta, “Globalizing Bombay Cinema: Reproducing the Indian State and ­Family,” Cultural Dynamics 17, no. 2 (2005): 143. 20. ​Ganti, Producing Bollywood, 164. 21. ​Anjali Ram, Consuming Bollywood: Gender, Globalization and Media in the Indian Diaspora (New York: Peter Lang, 2014), 183. 22. ​Victor Roudometof, “Transnationalism, Cosmopolitanism and Glocalization,” Current Sociology 53, no. 1 (January 2005): 121. 23. ​Arjun Appadurai, “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy,” Theory, Culture, and Society 7, no. 1–2 (June, 1990): 297. 24. ​Appadurai, 299. 25. ​Anna Kurian, “­Going Places: Popu­lar Tourism Writing in India,” in Popu­lar Culture in a Globalised India, ed. Moti K. Gokulsing and Wimal Dissanayake (London: Routledge/Taylor and Francis Group, 2009), 258. 26. ​Srinivasa S. Rao, “Production of an ‘Educational’ City: Shadow Education Economy and Re-­structuring of Kota in India,” in Second International Handbook of Urban Education, ed. William T. Pink and George W. Noblit (Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2017), 417–443. 27. ​I use the term “air hostess” ­here in lieu of the gender-­neutral “flight attendant” ­because it is the term used both in the film and in Frankfinn’s vari­ous promotional materials. 28. ​“Demographic dividend” has become a common term used to describe India’s large and growing youth population. See Deloitte, “India to Make Massive Gains from Its Demographic Dividend,” accessed August  8, 2018, https://­w ww2​.­deloitte​.­com​/­in​/­en​/­pages​/­about​ -­d eloitte​/­a rticles​/­i ndia​-­t o​-­m ake​-­m assive​-­g ains​-­f rom​-­its​-­d emographic​-­d ividend​-­press​ -­release​.­html. 29. ​Exchange4Media Staff, “From Singapore Tourism to Voltas, Brands Go All Out to Promote Badrinath Ki Dulhania,” Exchange4media, March 15, 2017, https://­w ww​.e­ xchange4media​ .­c om​ /­m arketing ​ /­f rom​ -­s ingapore​ -­t ourism​ -­t o​ -­v oltas​ -­b rands​ -­g o​ -­a ll​ -­o ut​ -­t o​ -­p romote​ -­badrinath​-­k i​-­dulhania​_­68048​.­html. 30. ​Sunil Bhatia, Decolonizing Psy­chol­ogy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 91. 31. ​Appadurai, “Disjuncture and Difference.” 32. ​Ulf Hannerz, “Cosmopolitans and Locals in World Culture,” Theory, Culture, and Society 7 (1990): 242. 33. ​V. Propp, The Morphology of the Folk Tale, trans. Laurence Scott (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2003). 34. ​Christiane Brosius, India’s M ­ iddle Class: New Forms of Urban Leisure, Consumption and Prosperity (London: Routledge, 2014), 7. 35. ​Oza, The Making of Neoliberal India, 25–27. 36. ​Pathak, “ ‘Presentable.’ ” 37. ​Alastair Pennycook, “En­g lish, Politics, Ideology: From Colonial Cele­bration to Postcolonial Performativity,” in Ideology, Politics, and Language Policies: Focus on En­g lish, ed. Thomas Ricento (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2000), 110.

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38. ​Priyanka Monga, “Bollywood Style Awards 2015: Queen,” Verve Magazine, March 8, 2015, http://­w ww​.­vervemagazine​.­in​/­fashion​-­and​-­beauty​/­bollywood​-­style​-a­ wards​-2­ 015​-q ­ ueen​ #17040​-­bollywood​-­style​-­awards​-­2015​-­queen​-­1​/­17041. 39. ​Pathak, “ ‘Presentable,’ ” 318. 40. ​Gooptu, “Introduction,” 3. 41. ​Gooptu, 3. 42. ​IANS, “Alia Bhatt to Endorse Air Hostess Training Institute,” India West, June 4, 2018, http://­w ww​.­i ndiawest​.­c om​/­entertainment​/­b ollywood​/­a lia​-­bhatt​-­to​-­endorse​-­a ir​-­hostess​ -­training​-­institute​/­article​_­140916ac​-­6814​-­11e8​-­8c13​-­9bf4bde9ddc3​.­html. 43. ​India Education Diary Bureau Admin, “Frankfinn Aviation Signs Alia Bhatt as Brand Ambassador,” Indiaeducationdiary​.­com, June 28, 2018, https://­indiaeducationdiary​.­in​/­f rank​ finn​-­aviation​-­signs​-­a lia​-­bhatt​-­brand​-­a mbassador​/­. 44. ​Gooptu, “Introduction,” 3. 45. ​“Frankfinn Brand TVC—­Featuring Alia Bhatt,” https://­w ww​.y­ outube​.­com​/­watch​?­v​=­5pj​ -­A9NTJns. 46. ​Bhatia, Decolonizing Psy­chol­ogy, 235. 47. ​Thomas Friedman, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-­First C ­ entury (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006). 48. ​Ram, Consuming Bollywood, 187. 49. ​Aiwha Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 139. 50. ​Pathak, “ ‘Presentable,’ ” 326. 51. ​Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception, 13.

chapter 10

Q

Learning to Love The(ir) World using feminist spaces and cosmopolitan impulses against the heteropatriarchy in queen and en­glish vinglish Prathim-­Maya Dora-­Laskey Once upon a Heteropatriarchy “Indie” (in­de­pen­dent/art ­house) Hindi films Queen (dir. Vikas Bahl, 2014) and En­glish Vinglish (dir. Gauri Shinde, 2013) use neoliberalist frames and tropes of the “new ­woman” as world traveler to deconstruct patriarchal cultural practices in South Asian public spheres. On their release, both films w ­ ere lauded for creating feminist spaces with their use of motifs such as female self-­discovery, travel, and empowerment. Even more radical and satisfying, in my view, is the protagonists’ emergent cosmopolitanism as they attempt and accomplish transnational friendships, using ­t hese cosmopolitan validations to undercut the toxic masculinity, patriarchy, and heterosexism that traditionally undergird nationalism. Both Queen and En­glish Vinglish are located as texts that self-­consciously site themselves as hatke (offbeat, diverse, art h ­ ouse) modes of repre­sen­ta­tion to aesthetically signal that they are dif­fer­ent from more commercially oriented and commercially promoted Bollywood proj­ects. However, despite their self-­conscious positioning (or posturing), both films land as lighthearted interrogations of the neoliberal heteropatriarchal framework within which ­t hese and other Bollywood films work. They are focused on both emergent and aspirational elites, and they examine the position afforded to and occupied by ­women in a rapidly mutating socioeconomic po­liti­cal climate. This overriding sexual and social dynamic is demonstrably heteropatriarchal and is established fairly early through the wedding and marriage tropes that loom large in the initial frames of both films. This framework levies stringent limitations on the female protagonists, Rani (Queen) and Shashi (En­glish Vinglish), who, although they appear to be at the center of a g­ rand wedding and a bustling ­house­hold, respectively, are marginalized in terms of authority and agency.1 146

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In both films, heteropatriarchy is countered principally through the use of feminist tropes of travel and discovery. A ­ fter her London-­returned fiancé breaks up with her, Rani decides to go on her prearranged honeymoon to Paris and Amsterdam by herself in Queen. In En­glish Vinglish, Shashi arrives in New Jersey a month ahead of her niece’s wedding in order to help her widowed ­sister and enrolls in an English-­language class in New York. Although denizens of postliberalization India and able to travel the world without excessive financial hardship, the protagonists—­ Rani in Queen and Shashi in En­glish Vinglish—­navigate their way t­ oward opportunities to exercise their rights to education and employment. We witness Shashi pay for her En­glish lessons through cash she has secreted away through selling laddoos and Rani withdraw money from her savings account to pay for her honeymoon. From a neoliberal standpoint, their investment in economic access leads to rewarding payoffs in personal agency. In this, they appear to revert to the new ­woman ideal, which emerged globally at the turn of the twentieth ­century,2 phenomenally amplifying the presence of ­women in the public sphere—­through developments such as the right to vote, access to higher education, and the ability to occupy public spaces. When Rani and Shashi inhabit the public sphere through international travel, we can read them as fresh significations of the new ­woman ideal.3 Following this trajectory, it becomes clear that travel works as both narrative theme and conceptual trope in moving the protagonists beyond national borders—­ physically and ideologically.4 First, travel allows Rani and Shashi to distance and emancipate themselves from their families.5 Additionally, travel generates subsidiary challenges: the problematics of heterosexual-­marital plots; the performativity of a global language like En­g lish; and the ethos of extending affection to characters outside the fold of their heteropatriarchal families. Rani and Shashi make pro­gress t­ oward a fairly basic feminist agency; however, when they meet the subsidiary challenges by demonstrating a transnational cosmopolitan sensibility, they align themselves with radical feminist challenges to the very framework of patriarchy. In this reading of Queen and En­glish Vinglish, Rani and Shashi outstrip ste­reo­ typical iterations of the “new w ­ oman” ­because they engage with cosmopolitanism. They do so not merely via Cosmopolitan magazine and other outlets of so-­called neoliberal or corporate feminism,6 which espouse ­women’s freedom to travel and “just be themselves,” but rather through the philosophy of cosmopolitanism,7 which emphasizes the interconnectedness undergirding the world. In this crucial way, the somewhat superficial, neoliberal, and corporate conceits of travel as a marker of feminist in­de­pen­dence are enhanced with liberal lashings of internationalist connection and transnational solidarity. The protagonists’ impulses ­toward cross-­cultural cosmopolitanism move the narrative beyond the narrowly nationalistic, with the two new w ­ omen forging connections and relationships outside the traditions of the heteropatriarchal f­ amily and the protocols of the heteropatriarchal state, which typically construct the “outsider” as dif­fer­ent and hence dangerous.

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Through their ac­cep­tance of a variety of “world” characters within an ESL classroom in New York (En­glish Vinglish) or a youth hostel in Amsterdam (Queen), the protagonists demonstrate how sincere and humanistic engagements might look in a world where heteronormative and patriarchal expectations are muted. Although the protagonists’ male partners pre­sent themselves as worldly and successful, they appear to isolate themselves from h ­ uman interaction while abroad and are dependent on heteropatriarchal hierarchy in the domestic or national home. Thus, the audience is given opportunities to contrast the cosmopolitan engagements of the protagonists with the relatively superficial reactions of their male partners. The protagonists demonstrate engagement and empathy in their interactions with “outsiders” in the ESL classroom (En­glish Vinglish) and youth hostel (Queen). This openness to outsiders is emancipatory as it helps the protagonists’ to demonstrate their in­de­pen­dence and agency—­additionally, it is empowering as it enables them to find communal and emotional support outside of their families. Th ­ ese connections—­cross-­cultural, transnational, feminist, and cosmopolitan—­instigate active reconstructions and reimaginations of the protagonists’ notions of identity and community, which ­were previously delimited and interpellated by heteropatriarchal structures.

The Politics of the Personal as a Public Sphere In a key transformational moment in Queen, we see Rani on her first visit to a nightclub. The audience witnesses Rani pro­cessing personal moments of self-­ discovery publicly—­while literally on a stage. Entranced by the pulsating beat of ­music and l­asers and inspired by the seductive abandon of the dancers onstage; Rani responds with a desirous, aspirational, upward glance and begins to participate with her ­whole self. She receives a helpful boost up to the stage, where she dances—­awkwardly, energetically, (almost even) angrily. Despite her endearing awkwardness, she seems mesmerizing and power­ful ­because she appears ­free from the preconditions and expectations of propriety imposed on her by her erstwhile romantic partner. Frequently, even private moments can be fairly public on the Indian subcontinent given emotional proximity to f­ amily and physical proximity to the larger community. The beginning of Queen at a raucous henna ceremony and that of En­glish Vinglish in the frenzied morning routine of a traditional trigenerational ­family play with public positioning before revealing exceedingly private predicaments: Rani has been jilted on the eve of her wedding (Queen); Shashi’s emotional and physical l­ abor is taken for granted by her ­family (En­glish Vinglish). The central weddings in the films—­Rani’s and that of Shashi’s niece—­are themselves exercises in communal performativity. Both marriages are, in addition, love matches, which are considered progressive in comparison with traditional arranged marriages. Yet, both matches have been approved by their families and are being supported (financially and socially) via the heteropatriarchal familial institution, with a ­father (gentle or absent, but still male) as the head of the ­family. In

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this, ­these love matches are somewhat interpellated by heteropatriarchy in that they are deemed acceptable to the ­family, and to the host of heteropatriarchal institutions with patriarchal notions of male superiority and other attendant assumptions and heterosexist custodial practices built into the cele­bration. The internal stream-­of-­consciousness monologue ­r unning through Rani’s mind in the first scene of Queen indicates a litany of systemic heteropatriarchy that includes husband worship, Hindu deity worship, wedding night sex, fears of devirginization, and so on. Similarly, the internal timetable dominating Shashi’s hectic day revolves around ­people other than herself—­she produces four dif­fer­ent kinds of breakfasts for the four dif­fer­ent members of her f­ amily—­a series of ­labors that makes her own cup of tea always already subject to postponement. Both films play up the premise of the politics of the personal and familiar. This is significant especially as the films appear to depict a benign manifestation of heteropatriarchy—­one bereft of blatant wife beaters, dowry demanders, rapists, and so forth. Yet any familiarity with subcontinental mores and milieus ­whether through lived experience or attention to its public spheres posits a constant reminder that patriarchy is problematic and capable of plummeting into vio­lence at any time. We may read the films as emblematizing the hauntology of heteropatriarchy—­ unseen but not entirely absent, pre­sent as possibilities and threats.8 The spectral presence of patriarchal control, while more benign than its more violent manifestations, nevertheless delimits w ­ omen’s agency and aspiration. At a crucial moment in Queen, drunk for the first time in her life, Rani reaches a realization that is ­either familiar or obvious to the audience. In a belching contest with her new Parisienne friend, she confides that in her hometown of Rajori, girls are not allowed to belch. “Actually,” she extemporizes, in Rajori most t­ hings are not allowed for girls (“Ladkiyon ko na, bahut kuch allowed hi nahin hai”). She claims also that she has established herself as a good “girl” ­because she “obeyed” her parents, her teachers, and her erstwhile fiancé, Vijay.9 In her drunk state, we detect an incongruous pairing of both bravado and certainty as she comically challenges her newfound friend—­“name one person, any person,” she demands, “I bet you I have obeyed them.” Such pride in being obedient to all social expectation(s) and their trappings ­under heteropatriarchy is evident in both films. Queen begins at what o ­ ught to be the crowning moment of Rani’s life—­one of the few times heteropatriarchy centers young w ­ omen at the heart of a social cele­bration—­namely, the moment of her passing from the care and custody of her f­ather to that of her husband. This is a journey that has been successfully executed in En­glish Vinglish; Shashi has passed so seamlessly from the care and custody of her ­father to that of her husband that she is unable to speak for herself in a variety of casual and institutional locations, ­whether they be cafés or immigration ­counters. Although she is in charge of the ­house­hold in a way that involves plenty of physical and emotional ­labor through caring for a finicky spouse, demanding ­children, and aging mother-­i n-­law, her attempts at En­glish are continually mocked and her work is never acknowledged, much less appreciated.

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Additionally, the romantic plot is arrested in both films—­Shashi with her French classmate Laurent, and Rani with the Rus­sian backpacker Oleksander demonstrate glimmers of an ineffable dynamic that would typically develop into cinematic-­ romantic attachment, but the filmed narrative leaves both arcs inconclusive. This is a most effective stratagem as it eliminates romance as a default end point, avoids traumatic reiterations of heteronomativity, and instead recenters the narrative on the protagonists.10 The absence of a heterosexual marriage plot allows audiences glimpses of female self-­discovery delineated in ways rarely vis­i­ble outside of safe spaces within feminine and feminist intimacy.11 The feminist trajectory of both films may be summarized as linear and straightforward. We may even borrow the spatial analogy implicit in that summary to extend it to the geographic in­de­pen­dence of Rani and Shashi as they peruse maps and chart their own course in foreign lands. Not that they are happy about it, at least initially. “Mein sub kuch akeli kar rahi hoon” (I do every­t hing alone), Rani wails plaintively. “I cross the road alone, I see the Eiffel Tower alone, I fight with muggers alone.” Their dissatisfaction with their isolation is prob­ably due to their prior satisfaction in landing husbands who ­will mediate the world for them. Rani steadily learns travel skills and discovers that she enjoys plotting her own life experiences unmediated by her male custodians (­father, fiancé, younger ­brother, ­etc.). We learn through flashbacks that dancing in public, paid employment, and so forth ­were forbidden by her erstwhile fiancé, Vijay.12 Similarly, Shashi learns to navigate her way through the New York City subway system and café protocol despite ­earlier missteps and her lack of confidence a­ fter a life of being talked down to by her husband and teen ­daughter. Travel is thus a catalyst, projecting the protagonists ­toward autonomy by physically (re)moving them from the custodial control of male ­family members and from the panoptic surveillance and subjugation of extended ­family. If the initial feminist impulse in ­these films is identified by the spatial and experiential ability to cross streets and continents, the consequent feminist impulse is emotional and psychological—­t he transformation from homebound behenjis to new w ­ omen of the world developing a diverse set of intellectual and emotional experiences in public spaces/spheres. Although we see Rani and Shashi grow through their conflicts between socialization and self-­determination, the concluding frames of both films suggest a return to heteropatriarchal h ­ ouse­holds ­under the f­ ather (Queen) and husband (En­glish Vinglish). However, even as they return to male-­led ­house­holds, we may feel hopeful for the protagonists’ continuing agency as we have witnessed them resourcefully using their l­ imited assets and options to transform themselves. Shashi sells laddoos from her home, and although this is a highly feminized occupation, she is able to pay for En­g lish classes in New York through her secreted earnings. Rani has saved money from working part-­time at her f­ ather’s store and is able to use her college education—­again highly feminized, as it appears to have been at a culinary school—to earn money in Amsterdam by making golgappas, a South Asian street food. The narrative therefore pragmatically works within the l­ imited power available to Indian w ­ omen in the new m ­ iddle class,

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but ­t here is nevertheless an im­mense narrative energy in establishing moments of realistic individuation and emancipation.

Transactions and Transnational Transformations On Shashi’s first day of En­glish (ESL) class, she communicates competently albeit in uneven and imperfect En­glish. She describes herself as a cook (like the Frenchman Laurent—­“I also cooking”) and states that she makes and sells laddoos. She is then introduced by her instructor to that most American and transactional of words, “entrepreneur,” and we watch as the somewhat cumbersome word imbues her with a sense of gravity and confidence. The feminist fantasy of financial emancipation in En­glish Vinglish and Queen evolves primarily from a reconsideration of female roles in heteropatriarchal wedding-­industrial consumerist fantasies. Indian weddings are recorded as economies of transaction in both films. For instance, Shashi’s nieces who are part of the diaspora in the United States constantly joke to the white American groom that he has to give the bride’s f­amily several metric kilos of gold jewelry. (This piece of snark depends on the knowledge that even a cursory acquaintance with Indian customs would indicate that patriarchal dowry practices burden the bride’s ­family rather than the groom’s.) In Queen, one of the ways in which Vijay attempts to make peace is by suggesting that if Rani ­were to return to him, his parents would bear the costs associated with the new wedding and reimburse her parents for the ­earlier wasted wedding costs. In Vijay’s reckoning it would appear that the only casualty of the wedding he has canceled would be monetary rather than emotional. However, this transactional view of the value of their heteropatriarchal ­union is merely preliminary. As is clear when Rani visits friends of the f­ amily in Paris, a w ­ oman’s value increases as part of a coupled/married unit. The aunty figure rationalizes her paltry gift of 11 euros. As she explains to her mother-­in-­law, “It’s not like [Rani’s] married, if she ­were, we would gift her 100 euros, but she’s ­here by herself.” The transactions detailed ­here take place on a transnational stage—­between Shashi’s nieces and the white groom, Indian Rani and her French aunt, and so on. Accompanying ­these key moments are frequent visual per­for­mances of transnational cultural hybridity. If in the opening scenes of En­glish Vinglish we are treated to the sight of the seemingly staid, sari-­clad Shashi grabbing her sari pleats and assaying a “Michael Jackson” dance move, her l­ater uniform of sari plus trench coat is another form of hybrid utilitarianism prompted by travel. Similarly, Rani wears an Indian kurti over blue jeans as a hybrid uniform—­one that is fairly standard among younger Indian ­women who seem to embody the ideals of new womanhood with the utilitarianism of jeans coupled with the sometimes staid, sometimes ornate and localized aesthetic of Indian kurtis. Additionally, most Indian characters in both films speak a hybrid language of En­glish and Hindi (“Hinglish”),13 with insertions of En­glish words like “tough” and “change” within the first few frames of the film. ­These transnational transactions in hybridity extend to non-­Indian characters as well. One of the friends that Rani makes in Amsterdam is a Rus­sian man named

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“Oleksander.” Rani is repeatedly unable to pronounce his name correctly and announces that she w ­ ill henceforth call him “Sikander.” This is sassy but also significant—­“Sikander” is the Indian variant of “Alexander,” dating from the time of Alexander the ­Great’s invasion of India in the fourth ­century BCE and gestures ­toward the idea of a shared world history where we have all been fluidly interconnected for millennia through conquest, trade, and subsequent personal relationships and cultural exchange. This nod ­toward transnational communication and interrelation suggests that as long as the local is being transcended and transacted, when the Indian Rani can be designated as “Queen,” then it is reasonable for the Eu­ro­pean Oleksander to be dubbed “Sikander.” The closing montage in Queen is a cosmopolitan demonstration of the interplay of dif­fer­ent personalities and geographies on Rani’s Facebook timeline. ­There are articulations of support and affection from friends in India, France, Rus­sia, and Japan—­a ll in the highly personal, yet public, digital, and cosmopolitan space Rani curates on her social media. This connectivity of global networks driven by technology is by no means l­imited to Facebook. In En­glish Vinglish, Shashi’s classmates use their mobile phones so that she may participate in class discussions and pre­sen­ta­tions when ­family duties make it impossible for her to attend class. Hence, while some of Rani and Shashi’s be­hav­ior (hybrid clothing, travel, spending money on themselves, drinking, dancing, e­ tc.) may seem to merely feed into the neoliberal agendas of consumption and corporate feminism, their exposure to and experience of othered entities prompts them t­ oward an inclusive cosmopolitan consciousness. In essence, cosmopolitanism has been popularly described as “ac­cep­tance of the stranger,” and using this approach, we see how strangers positively interact in both films, offering assistance and ac­cep­tance at airports, parks, cafés, and so on. While travel makes it pos­si­ble to experience physical proximity to the stranger, ­actual ac­cep­tance requires intentional action. In exploring the ideas of cosmopolitan connection, phi­los­o­pher Martha Nussbaum suggests ac­cep­tance as one of the chief routes. “The locus classicus of group-­directed projective,” she writes in Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law, “is disgust.”14 The disgust Nussbaum identifies is demonstrated by Rani’s ex-­fiancé, Vijay, when he disparages her friendship with Oleksander, Taka, and Tim (who hail from Rus­sia, Japan, and France, respectively, and evince a range of race, appearing to be white, Asian, and black). He sneers: “­These are your friends?” Rani c­ ounters Vijay’s disgust with the ­simple yet power­f ul assertion that “they are just like us.” Queen repeatedly shows the audience that Rani has learned to withhold judgmental opinions. At another point in the film, she meets a sex worker from Pakistan named Rukhsar (who goes by the stage name Roxette in Amsterdam), and although Rani has lived a protected and goody-­goody life (as is clear from her previous comments about having “obeyed” every­one), she engages in sincere conversation while sitting amid the neon-­lit paraphernalia of Rukhsar’s sex work. L ­ ater on, Rukhsar feels emboldened enough to ask Rani, “Are you on Facebook? I ­w ill add you [as a friend].” Perhaps it is not entirely accidental that her expectation that Rani ­w ill “accept” her friend request stems from her intuitive sense of feeling ac­cep­tance from Rani. Similarly, Shashi,

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a middle-­class Indian ­woman, breaches categories of class, caste, and race in her ESL classroom when she sociably engages with fellow students from a range of national and class backgrounds. Furthermore, despite no cinematic evidence that she has had any LGBTQIA+ exposure or education, Shashi is able to move her peers’ discussion of their gay teacher’s breakup ­toward empathy when it seems in danger of devolving into homophobic mocking and disgust—­“thinking can be dif­ fer­ent, but feelings are the same, pain is the same,” she suggests. This sense of solidarity that Rani and Shashi demonstrate with ­t hose whom heteropatriarchy has designated as the other (outsiders to the f­ amily, nation, and heteronormative marital structures) powerfully moves their incipient feminism to a radical cosmopolitan politics of intersectional inclusiveness.

Flipping Semiotic-­Diasporic Discourses When Shashi is invited to give a wedding toast by her American-­born niece, who has been a confidante and collaborator, Shashi’s rise is impeded by her husband, whose hand rests on her shoulder (in a way that may be read as supportive) before he presses her down into her seat (in a way that is more an embarrassed command than a suggestion). The transfer of the moment’s energy is signaled by Shashi, who interrupts him with a polished “May I?” before tugging on his hand to make him sit down, even as she si­mul­ta­neously rises to meet the applause of the assembled crowd. At the climax of the film, Shashi the newly confident w ­ oman, rises upright and surprises her husband and ­daughter by delivering a poignant toast to the newlyweds in En­glish. This scene summary is more power­ful in the context of some other semiotic per­for­mances in both films. Early in En­glish Vinglish, Shashi is mocked by her husband and d ­ aughter for her incorrect pronunciation of “jazz” as “jhahzz,” and l­ ater she herself proceeds to correct the manual worker who packages her laddoos for his incorrect pronunciation of “gift” as “gipt” before catching herself. As the titular “En­glish” makes clear, the film is conscious of the implied power of En­glish even in a postin­de­pen­dence world. Similarly, the titular form of Rani’s name in Queen seems to privilege the En­glish translation and connotations. However, both films gesture powerfully t­ oward other forms of semiotic discourse. If Facebook itself, with its arcana of emojis and buttons, ­etches a semiotics of a cosmopolitan community, language similarly functions as a shibboleth of entry into a global realm. An older, colonial obsession with En­glish is unseated in f­ avor of manifestations of occupying space, being pre­sent, and rising up—­whether it is Rani’s clamber onto the stage or Shashi’s more elegant rise as she stands up for herself. At a semiotic level, the narratives enact the central trope of ascendancy.15 On the flight back to India, Shashi asks the flight attendant in impeccable Indian-­accented En­glish for a Hindi newspaper. This indication that she values her native culture above her recent En­glish competence is a signal that the film does not desire (or dare!) to completely disrupt traditional cultures. Indeed, such an assurance that traditional culture ­w ill not be upended is necessary if the film is

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g­ oing to be deemed suitable for audiences at home and in the diaspora. This nativist theme is vis­i­ble elsewhere in the film as well. While En­glish is ensconced as the language of power, a subversive strain si­mul­ta­neously undercuts the assumption. For instance, t­ here is confrontational parochial posturing when Shashi asks her instructor why correct usage indicates “the United States of Amer­i­ca but not the India.” As a corollary to her new international language and cultural competence, she hastens to reaffirm the ­mother tongue and her native culture as primary.16 This sort of decentering of En­g lish/En­g land is prominent in Queen as well. The first song sequence in that film, the eminently catchy “London Thumakda,” is rife with geographic and cultural markers about London—­t he generic “abroad,” which the film then goes on to decenter. This decentering of the colonial metro­ polis by locating the film in other tourist centers—­Paris and Amsterdam—­ expands the film’s global reach, deliberately placing it outside of colonial traffic between the Indian subcontinent and ­England. Of course, this decentering is not unproblematic—­after all, the French and Dutch have brutal colonial histories of their own—­but the narrativization in Paris and Amsterdam subversively disrupts the colonial hearkening back to E ­ ngland seen in films of the 1990s such as Lamhe (1991) and Dilwale Duhania Le Jayenge (1995) in order to suggest a cosmopolitan rather than colonial connection. In En­glish Vinglish, prior to Shashi’s tenure in her cosmopolitan ESL classroom, t­ here is an acknowl­edgment of a neoliberal worldview in Shashi’s travel to New York City, indicating the self-­importance of being a citizen of a “BRIC” country,17 and the economic ­favor the erstwhile third world traveler grants his first world hosts. This neoliberal theme is articulated by the character of Shashi’s nameless fellow traveler, played by Amitabh Bachchan. The Bachchan character tells the immigration officer, when asked about his purpose for visiting the United States, “I’m h ­ ere to help you—­spend money, help you get over your recession.” Clearly, global flows of capital appear to have no significant frontiers. In a more humanist formulation, the emotional importance (import?) of the cosmopolitan classroom in En­glish Vinglish is validated when Salman, a Pakistani student, proclaims, while looking at (the Indian) Shashi, “En­glish class become [sic] one big ­family, no border prob­lem.” Ultimately, both En­glish Vinglish and Queen picture small triumphs, without becoming triumphalist. They do not—­t hey cannot—­erase heteropatriarchy, but they do insert useful and satisfying strategies and moments that enact alternative discourses that may be heuristically read as feminist in popu­lar public spheres.18 In this, Shashi and Rani, the new ­women in En­glish Vinglish and Queen, mobilize transnational public spheres, but it is the rather old-­fashioned mode of travel that truly moves them. Arguably, this strategy is old-­fashioned theoretically as well, given its neoliberal construction of ­woman as a unified, cisgendered, and heteronormative category. However, I acknowledge that t­ hese analyses are con­temporary and updated for the twenty-­first c­ entury by imbricating new issues—­not merely twenty-­first-­century digital forms but also twenty-­first-­century hy­po­thet­i­cals, such as what would you do when presented with the opportunity to “friend” a sex worker on Facebook or how do you respond when your teacher is an openly gay man?

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Queen and En­g lish Vinglish move spatially and temporally: from intense moments of heteropatriarchy (weddings, per­for­mances of femininity); to defining narratives of deferral (distancing oneself from ­family); to manifestations of feminist choice and empowerment (travel and its attendant challenges); and thence to radical feminist affirmations of cosmopolitan solidarity. In their movement into the wider world, new ­women Rani and Shashi do not evince an obsession with the West; rather, their development lies in crafting cosmopolitan experiences and vocabularies that are more global and include fellow travelers from the Global South (Vijaylaxmi, Taka, and Tim in Queen; Yu Son, Eva, Salman Khan, and ­others in En­glish Vinglish). Moreover, rather than merely checking off feminist markers such as financial in­de­pen­dence, travel, and so on, Shashi and Rani lay claim to the world at large through their engagement, their openness, and their refusal to revert to configurations of heteropatriarchal romance in their relationships. As they craft a feminist space to occupy in the world, their cosmopolitan impulses intervene to thwart heterosexist and patriarchal interpellations and limitations separating them from the nonnational and the nonsanctioned other. Thus, Rani and Shashi determinedly flip (and perhaps meta­phor­ically at least, flip off) the suspect spaces and discourses of heteropatriarchy.

notes 1. ​Heteropatriarchy rather than merely the sum of its lexemic constituents (heterosexism + patriarchy) may be seen as a complex of institutions enabled by and embedded in a host of institutions, including nationalism, capitalism, gendered social roles, male dominance, heterosexism, heterosexual marriage, and so on. For more, see Jason Pierceson, Sexual Minorities and Politics (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016). 2. ​Sally Ledger, The New W ­ oman: Fiction and Feminism at the Fin de Siecle (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), 5. 3. ​In the Indian context, the first instances of the term “new ­woman” is applied to Indian ­women in the in­de­pen­dence movement. See, for instance, Sangeeta Ray’s categorization of the new ­woman “in the liminal space between colonial subjection and an incipient nationalism.” Sangeeta Ray, En-­gendering India: W ­ oman and Nation in Colonial and Postcolonial Narratives (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000), 6. 4. ​Rani and Shashi instigate active reconstructions and reimaginations of identities and communities, demonstrating Arjun Appadurai’s contention that cultural groups become less attached to par­tic­u­lar translocal public spheres over time. Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 2003), 27. 5. ​The idea of international travel, while more accessible to the Indian m ­ iddle classes than it was before the advent of liberalization in the 1990s, is nevertheless not a ubiquitous pastime for most Indian ­women even ­today. Indeed, Rani and Shashi travel abroad through the auspices of weddings—­Rani on the holiday she has booked as part of her honeymoon, and Shashi in order to help with her niece’s wedding. 6. ​“Corporate feminism” is loosely defined as feminism that privileges ­women who are already privileged along lines of class, race, caste, looks, and so on. Equally, the term is applicable to faux feminist gestures that seek to cement capitalism—­t he promotion of consumerism related to per­for­mances of femininity, for instance. “Pink capitalism” is also used as a moniker for this phenomenon. In the West, Sheryl Sandberg, with her philosophy of “leaning in,” and Ivanka Trump, with her eponymously named clothing brand, exemplify this form of feminism. In India, the socialite Shobhaa De might be seen as a repre­sen­ta­tion. 7. ​Pertinent details of cosmopolitanism ­w ill be discussed in a ­later section of this essay. ­Here, I use a heuristic definition from Kwame Anthony Appiah’s Cosmopolitanism, as a

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concept acknowledging how ­people from dif­fer­ent locations (geographic, economic, cultural, religious, po­liti­cal, ­etc.) enter into mutually respectful relationships. Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006). 8. ​The culture of heteropatriarchy is made apparent when Rani’s b ­ rother and Shashi’s son are bewildered by the balance of power, with the implication that they are as yet too young to have been co-­opted into ideological hegemony. 9. ​Rani uses the En­glish words “allowed” and “obey” in this key exchange in fluent hybrid “Hinglish.” Arguably, the most forceful words in her statement, the En­glish words convey a behavioral and linguistic precision that is chilling amid warmer tones of Hindi. 10. ​Overall, both films feed into the global phenomenon of the feminization of popu­lar culture, while also challenging what are sometimes wrongly summarized as postfeminist moments and environments in the Western world, which Angela McRobbie terms “a pro­cess by which feminist gains of the 1970s and 1980s are actively and relentless undermined.” Angela McRobbie, The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture, and Social Change (London: Sage, 2009), 11. In the current milieu, frequently characterized as “postfeminist,” gendered narratives frequently reproduce rather than “challenge old-­fashioned sexism” as alleged by Elana Levine in Cupcakes, Pinterest, and Ladyporn: Feminized Popu­lar Culture in the Early Twenty-­ First ­Century (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2015), 5. 11. ​In talking about Queen, Sukanya Gupta characterizes this as an instance of ‘the Indian ­woman ­free from a validating male presence.” Sukanya Gupta, “Kahaani, Gulaab Gang and Queen: Remaking the Queens of Bollywood,” South Asian Popu­lar Culture 13, no. 2 (2015): 107. I would argue that ­t here are several men who validate the protagonists in Rani’s hostel (and in Shashi’s classroom); it is the absence of a heteronormative romantic plot that distinguishes Queen (and En­glish Vinglish) from more typical Bollywood depictions. 12. ​In her affianced state, Rani was willing to let Vijay play the role of an arbiter of worldly real­ity. For instance, she takes him at his word and allows him to maintain that ­t here is a Chinese restaurant at the top of the Eiffel Tower. 13. ​For more on the use of “Hinglish” in Bollywood films and its contribution to globalization, see Harish Trivedi, “From Bollywood to Hollywood: The Globalization of Hindi Cinema,” in The Postcolonial and the Global, ed. Revathy Krishnaswamy and John C. Hawley (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 2008), 200–210. 14. ​Martha Nussbaum, Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2004), 111. 15. ​This kind of semiotic, wordless speech is especially impor­tant in En­glish Vinglish. Early in the film, at the end of a day both tiring and tiresome in its quotidian repetitiveness and pointless skirmishes, Shashi’s husband initiates sex by reaching for her while saying, “Why waste time talking.” Rather than a romantic gesture, in the context of his repeated refusal to listen to her concerns or acknowledge her point of view, his assumption of sex on demand is a cornerstone in his exercise of heteropatriarchal control and power. 16. ​Sushmita Chatterjee in her essay on En­glish Vinglish correctly notes some of the “exclusions based on class, religion, language, and other identities” in formulations of Shashi as a new ­woman as she reiterates several traditionalist values. Sushmita Chatterjee, “ ‘En­glish Vinglish’ and Bollywood: What Is ‘New’ about the ‘New ­Woman’?” Gender, Place & Culture 23, no. 8 (2016): 1179. 17. ​Currently, the newly developing economies of Brazil, Rus­sia, India, and China are sometimes grouped ­under the acronym BRIC and lauded for leveraging their growing economic power into geopo­liti­cal capital. 18. ​I say heuristic, as even just outside the margins of the cinematic universe, we may see patriarchal defaults and dissonances. For instance, it is disappointing to learn that despite the seemingly strong feminist statements in Queen, its director, Vikas Bahl, has been accused of sexual harassment by multiple ­women.

chapter 11

Q

Single in the City the female flaneur in queen Namrata Rele Sathe

The neoliberal Indian city is a space of contradictions for the ­women who inhabit it. W ­ omen are a common sight in its public life, which offers them employment opportunities, upward social mobility, and relative freedom from traditional diktats of home and ­family. The new spatial and architectural changes (for instance, malls, multiplexes, office complexes, and chain coffee shops) brought in a­ fter India’s turn to neoliberalism have considerably altered public life in the Indian city, in addition to providing ­women relatively safe, enclosed, “public spaces” to walk around in. However, the city can also be unwelcoming to the presence of w ­ omen in its public spaces, and an extreme consequence of this hostility is the increasing number of cases of sexual assault on w ­ omen in the major cities of India in recent years. It is within this socioeconomic context that I explore what it means to walk in urban public spaces as a w ­ oman by grounding my inquiry in a textual analy­sis of the Hindi film Queen (2014).1 Queen is a unique film in the canon of popu­lar Hindi cinema in terms of its focus on female characters, a narrative and cinematic agency not usually available to ­women in Hindi cinema. It tells the story of Rani, a young ­woman who is jilted by her fiancé and decides to go for her honeymoon by herself to get over her sadness. The film is ambiguous about what female emancipation from patriarchy means, an aspect that I ­w ill address subsequently. Yet, it would be a ­mistake to undermine the place of this film as a positive step in the repre­sen­ta­ tion of w ­ omen in mainstream Hindi cinema as it makes a sincere attempt to delve into the interiority of its protagonist and provide relatively complex depictions of Indian middle-­class femininity. The film imagines the self-­transformation of its female protagonist through the meta­phor of transnational travel and traversing the urban space on foot. As the protagonist of Queen travels to distant lands and walks around the streets of international urban landscapes—­Paris and Amsterdam—­she also becomes increasingly aware of the patriarchy that had constrained her in her home environment in India. 157

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Current scholarship on the position of ­women in neoliberal India has discussed the state of urban Indian ­women using varied frameworks, including the emergence of the “New ­Woman” persona, widely available in media repre­sen­ta­tions, that signifies changing gender subjectivities in liberalized India;2 the narrative of safety that determines access of ­women to public space in cities;3 and how the city in Hindi cinema functions as a site within which concerns about the transgression of ­women beyond the patriarchal hearth play out.4 My analy­sis in this essay, in addition to addressing t­ hese concerns, is also undergirded by theoretical recourse to the notion of flânerie, an activity that specifically denotes urban walking. Although the normative definition of the flaneur is gendered and primarily refers to a white upper-­class man of leisure, I regard the figure of the female flaneur (or the flaneuse) as a transgressive persona who can take plea­sure in urban walking, despite its dangers, and find it instructional, self-­t ransforming, reflective, and liberating.

­Women and Urban Mobility In an early scene in Queen, Rani (Kangana Ranaut) is escorted by her ­brother in an auto-­rickshaw to meet her fiancé in an upmarket coffee shop. The scene comes at a crucial point in the narrative: Rani’s fiancé, Vijay (Rajkumar Rao), is about to call off the wedding, a decision that prompts Rani to take the transformational journey of a solo honeymoon to Paris and Amsterdam. Up ­until this point in the film, we have never seen Rani in a public place; we have only seen her in her own home, a space buzzing with the energy of an impending wedding, surrounded by her f­ amily members, relatives, and friends. However, when she ventures out to meet Vijay, she is accompanied by a male member of her f­ amily, a younger b ­ rother who is merely a child. The scene is emblematic of typical Indian “middle-­class morality” and its gender dynamics—it is not safe (or respectable) for Rani to travel alone in the city, especially when she is hours away from her wedding, and she must be accompanied by a man, even if this is not more than a symbolic gesture. This scene acquires an additional layer of meaning once we know where Rani lives: New Delhi, a city that is especially infamous for its high rate of crimes against w ­ omen. Rani’s comparatively narrow field of mobility is once again brought into relief in her conversation with Vijay in the coffee shop. Vijay calmly informs Rani that he is calling off the wedding as he feels she is not a suitable match for him and that his experiences of overseas travel for work have “changed” him. Moreover, he uses mostly En­glish to communicate his abrupt decision to Rani, who responds only in Hindi. Vijay, in this scene, exemplifies male privilege in the context of urban and global mobility—he needs no escort to meet his fiancée, is nonchalant about his international trips, and demonstrates a slight difference in social status in comparison with Rani by using En­glish. The subtext of Vijay’s decision is clear to Rani and the viewer—­Vijay now thinks of her as unsophisticated and unequal to him. The scene, furthermore, juxtaposes Vijay’s freedom, as a man, to travel to interna-

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tional destinations with ease with Rani’s constriction within the private space of the home and ­family. ­These initial moments in the film signify that a ­woman’s relation to the city is contentious as compared with a man’s more taken-­for-­granted navigation of the urban space and that her access to public spaces of a city is usually framed within a discourse of safety. But as Shilpa Phadke, Sameera Khan, and Shilpa Ranade argue in Why Loiter?—­a so­cio­log­i­cal analy­sis of ­women and city spaces—­“safety” is often a euphemism for maintaining the “respectability” of middle-­class ­women by the need to “[demonstrate] linkages to private space even when they are in public space.”5 This would explain why Rani is never, even in other instances in the film, seen by herself in a public space in her home city of Delhi—­she is always accompanied by Vijay, members of her f­ amily, or her friends. Phadke and her coauthors further explain that this elusive idea of “respectability” is closely related to the class (and, I would add, caste) of ­women as middle-­class, upper-­caste Hindu w ­ omen symbolize an “ideal” version of Indian womanhood on whom the “narratives of modernity and honor are si­mul­ta­neously written.”6 Thus, w ­ omen become the embodiment of the honor of the nation itself, and protecting them, a national duty. In Queen, we are repeatedly made aware of how protected and confined Rani’s life is within the l­ imited sphere of her f­ amily and the locality where she lives u ­ ntil she decides to travel abroad. The film opens amid ongoing preparations for Rani’s wedding. We are introduced to Rani, who is shot mostly in close-­ups, the frame crowded with her f­ amily and friends. She appears to be very happy, but she is not an active participant in what goes on around her, instead letting other ­people manage the proceedings. The packed frames in t­hese initial shots underline Rani’s close association with her immediate context of tradition and f­amily, and her ­limited exposure to the outside world. We also hear Rani’s internal monologue by way of a voice-­over narration. The interior monologue, detailing her prewedding nerves, gives the viewer an insight into Rani’s interiority that has not yet been externalized in the film’s narrative. So instead of watching her articulate her thoughts to a friend or her m ­ other, we can hear her think, while the p ­ eople around Rani are oblivious to her musings. We also realize, as the film progresses, that Vijay does not consider Rani an equal partner at all, but often berates her and attempts to modify her be­hav­ior. Instances of Vijay’s controlling be­hav­ior are revealed to us by way of flashbacks interspersed at strategic points within the narrative. The placement of ­t hese flashbacks heightens the contrast between the life Rani has been leading ­until the point she goes on her honeymoon and her journey of growth during her trip. For example, in one scene, Vijay displays his annoyance t­ oward Rani as he teaches her how to drive. Rani is understandably ner­vous as she sits in the driver’s seat while Vijay scolds her and fi­nally asks her to stop, adding that it is a hopeless exercise to teach her. This flashback comes at a point while Rani is in Amsterdam with her group of new friends. Rani, the only sober member in her group, remembers Vijay’s insults as she drives her new friends safely to their hostel from a strip club. In another

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scene, Vijay admonishes Rani for dancing at her friend’s wedding and implies that his ­family would not be happy seeing her dance in public, since it is not how girls from respectable families behave. Rani recalls this moment when she is dancing in a club in Paris, as tears stream down her face. The flashback sequences serve both as a narrative device to show us how significant her transformation is and as a way to delve into Rani’s interiority as she reflects on the change she has under­gone. The manner in which Rani’s relationship with and mobility around her city are i­ magined in Queen is not without real-­life pre­ce­dent. In reaction to the hostility and vio­lence that ­women face in public places in urban areas, upper-­and middle-­ class ­women are articulating a feminist politics of their own, both online and in real life, that engages with the issue of w ­ omen’s safe and unencumbered mobility within urban public spaces. Collective organ­ization of ­women on platforms such as Pinjra Tod (Break the Cage), the Blank Noise Proj­ect, Besharmi Morcha (the Indian equivalent of Slutwalk), and other similar initiatives has gained traction since the much-­mediatized 2012 rape case of a young physiotherapy student in New Delhi and highlight specific concerns of w ­ omen living in urban areas and the restrictions that are placed on their movement around the city. Th ­ ese issues include gender-­based discriminatory rules (such as early curfew timings as compared with ­t hose for men) of college hostels and paying guest accommodations; awareness about “eve-­teasing”7 and sexual harassment of ­women in public spaces; and combating victim-­blaming attitudes of state officials and police when dealing with sexual assault cases. The severity of the prob­lem, though, is never explic­itly referred to in Queen, and Rani’s ­l imited freedom is suggested mainly through her interpersonal relationships. I interpret this emphasis on the interpersonal as the lack of a public life for Rani and, by extension, for the ­women she represents, who might not have the opportunity to live a life separate from the private sphere of their home and f­ amily. Rani’s safety and respectability as a middle-­class, upper-­caste Hindu w ­ oman has been so well charted for her by o ­ thers that as a young w ­ oman in her early twenties a public life is non­ex­is­tent for her. However, when Rani decides to go for a vacation to Paris and Amsterdam, we observe that she gradually becomes more open to participating in the public life of the urban space. I explore how Rani’s practice of flânerie facilitates her emancipation when she goes abroad and how this new relationship between Rani and the urban space is developed in the film.

Rani as a Flaneuse: Urban Walking as Emancipation The normative definition of a flaneur indicates a white, upper-­class, solitary, and creative man. I wondered, then, if it was useful at all to think of a flaneuse, especially in light of the restrictions that are placed on ­women’s movements in public spaces. Is the flaneur necessarily a male figure, and is the female flaneur impossible to imagine, even as a critical exercise? I believe the moment we imagine a flaneuse, we can inquire into why the normative flaneur is white, male, and

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upper-­class, and what limitations other types of identities face when they perform flânerie. Considering this, I examine how Rani defies traditional controls placed on her mobility as a w ­ oman when she walks around the cities of Paris and Amsterdam as a tourist. The character type of the flaneur was born in the literary works of the nineteenth-­ century writer Charles Baudelaire, who represented him as an “observant and solitary man strolling about Paris.”8 Walter Benjamin, in his critical discussions of Baudelaire’s works, defines the flaneur as a man of means who felt at home walking about aimlessly on the streets of Paris and within its arcades.9 The primary occupation of the flaneur was gazing upon the sights of the city, which included commodities and ­women. In literary repre­sen­ta­t ions, the flaneur was also the ­bearer of an empowered gaze that was never returned by the ­women whom he was gazing at. The gaze of the flaneur, thus, “transformed the female presence [in cities] into a textual homage.”10 Anne Friedberg relates the development of commodity culture to the female gaze and the urban presence of ­women in Win­dow Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern, arguing that shopping arcades formed a major part of the urban landscape in the nineteenth ­century and worked to commodify the gaze, that is, deploy gazing in the ser­v ice of commodity culture. The arcades ­were empowering for a certain class of w ­ omen, however, in that they “mobilized the gaze” of the female observer.11 The arcades provided w ­ omen with an opportunity to perform flânerie in enclosed spaces without the accompaniment of men, and without being classified as domestic ­women or street­walkers. The female shopper, thus, also doubled up as the flaneuse, born as a result of this commodity culture. In the case of Queen, transnational travel is a commodity and is affordable to Rani ­because she is a middle-­class ­woman. Thus, it is impor­tant to recognize that Rani is able to go on a journey of self-­t ransformation primarily b ­ ecause she is wealthy enough to purchase travel as a commodity. The film also does not give us any indication that Rani holds a job, and it would be accurate to conclude that her ­father has paid for the tickets.12 Rani’s emancipation, thus, is predicated on her class status and the fact that she is supported by her f­ ather. The film, however, does not problematize this gender hierarchy within Rani’s own ­family, making Vijay the primary target of its indictment of how patriarchy functions in Indian society. Since t­ here is no financial barrier holding Rani back from traveling to Eu­rope, the only boundary she needs to cross is cultural and psychological. Indeed, her parents are mildly reluctant about agreeing to Rani’s decision, and Rani too f­ aces some initial adjustment issues before she can truly enjoy her holiday. On her first day as a tourist in Paris, Rani has difficulty crossing a busy road and communicating with locals b ­ ecause she speaks no French and l­ittle En­glish. Rani is wonderstruck by the sights of Paris, but also intimidated by the cityscape. In a key instance, Rani is framed from a low ­angle, and we see the Eiffel Tower ­behind her as she runs away from it—­t he world-­renowned symbol of love ironically reflecting Rani’s own loneliness and abandonment. Rani’s emotional reactions and her disturbed state of mind are conveyed by framing her in juxtaposition

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with iconic buildings and sights of Paris, a city that connotes romance in the popu­ lar imagination. The character of Vijaylaxmi (played by Lisa Haydon) is presented as a foil to Rani and is instrumental in her emancipation. Vijaylaxmi (whom Rani addresses as “Vijay” in the film for short—­a detail that indicates Vijaylaxmi might be an alternative to the companionship Rani was seeking with Vijay) works as ­house­keeping staff in the ­hotel that Rani has chosen for her stay in Paris. Vijaylaxmi is sexually liberated, lives life on her own terms, and is an unmarried single ­mother to a son. With her, Rani visits and dances with abandon in nightclubs, walks around Paris, and gradually starts shedding her inhibitions. In an in­ter­est­ing inversion of the heterosexist trope of romantic love that dominates Hindi cinema, Rani and Vijaylaxmi visit the Eiffel Tower together. The camera frames both ­women in a midshot, gazing up at the spectacle of a brightly lit tower at night, the moment infused with the romance of female friendship and solidarity. The symbolic value of the Eiffel Tower comes full circle at this point—­a lternatively signifying love, then terror, and then love again—­and the film offers us a visual of love not rooted in heteronormative romance. Rani’s journey t­ oward becoming less conservative continues in Amsterdam, where she shares a hostel room with three men, also travelers. Her initial hesitation about this living arrangement soon dissolves as all four become friends and tour Amsterdam together. ­Here, Rani also indulges in a fleeting romance with an Italian man, the owner of a restaurant, who offers her a chance to participate in a food fair where she can cook and sell the food she has made. Her response to his offer is an innocent, “You give me job? [sic],” at which point the film once again cuts to a flashback of Vijay dismissing Rani’s desire to work and dissuading her from taking up a job. The narrative brings Vijay back into Rani’s life h ­ ere, when he follows her to Amsterdam and demands to speak with her. This meeting serves to contrast Rani’s transformation with Vijay’s static beliefs. When they meet in a street café, Vijay mentions that Rani has become “modern” and sees this as a positive change. However, as viewers we have witnessed Rani’s change and know that he is referring only to her external transformation and cannot yet see the change in her psyche. This scene is followed by the song “Kinare” (Shores), and in its picturization we can see how far Rani has come. Rani abandons Vijay and the café and runs across the streets of Amsterdam to meet her friends at a rock concert. We see her framed in long shots from both the side and the front, and we see the ease with which she navigates the streets of Amsterdam. The framing highlights the comparative emptiness of the physical space around her, as opposed to the crowded frames from the beginning of the film, signifying that Rani’s psychological emancipation is now complete. She also looks markedly dif­fer­ent, having given up her attire of a traditional Indian kurta and jeans and curly hair tied up in a ponytail for straight hair and a flowing pink dress. The way Rani is dressed in this song and the manner in which she is depicted within the city space both emphasize the effect that traveling abroad by herself has had on her.

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Friedberg argues that packaged travel is also a form of the commodification of the gaze. She describes it as a “marketed travelling experience” that offers a “preplanned narrative of space.”13 Friedberg maintains the stance that such experiences can be liberating for ­women, as they allow for their physical mobility and make it pos­si­ble for a w ­ oman to be the holder of the gaze. She argues that travel also fundamentally affects the subjectivity of the tourist and “produces an escape from bound­aries, it legitimizes the transgression of one’s static, stable, or fixed location. The tourist si­mul­ta­neously embodies both a position of presence and absence, of ­here and elsewhere, of avowing one’s curiosity and disavowing one’s daily life.”14 Friedberg’s thesis is parallel to the way in which Queen deploys the meta­phor of travel in its narrative. Rani, although at first diffident, gradually starts to exercise her agency, discover her individuality, increase her self-­esteem, and, by the end of the film, dissemble some of her psychological constraints.

The City as Fantasy in Queen Although the two international cities in Queen facilitate the protagonist’s psychological emancipation, the film concludes at a point wherein we do not see Rani performing her newfound freedom as flânerie in her home city, New Delhi. In the last scene, Rani goes straight to Vijay’s ­house from the airport once she lands in Delhi to return the engagement ring he had given her. We know that Rani is f­ ree from Vijay and his patriarchal views, but we are never made aware of how Rani relates to the public space of the city. This strategic elision suggests that the foreign cities of Paris and Amsterdam are posited as reformative but are essentially fantasy spaces where gender equality exists (in both public and private spaces) as opposed to the home city in which individual transformation is pos­si­ble, but safety and equality in public spaces might be more difficult to depict and achieve. However, Queen does not tell us how unreceptive a city such as New Delhi can be to the public presence of ­women. Moreover, Paris and Amsterdam are shown as one-­dimensional embodiments of Rani’s liberation, and the p ­ eople she encounters in ­t hose cities are quirky, friendly, and never threatening. Any deeper involvement is done away with, as it would reveal the complications of the lived experience of the p ­ eople of the city, which is why Rani’s flânerie goes no further than observation and spectatorial plea­sure. The film, nevertheless, is not completely blind to the fact that the race and gender of its protagonist mark her as dif­fer­ent from the ­people in the cities she visits, and this leads to one traumatic experience. Rani is the victim of an attempted robbery—in a scene that is in equal parts comic and horrifying, she refuses to let go of her purse u ­ ntil her assailant fi­nally gives up and runs away. This incident narratively works to make the audience empathize with Rani, but it also alludes to incidents of vio­lence perpetrated against ­women walking alone in cities, especially at night. The “other” body—­t he body that is neither male nor white nor upper-­class—is an intrinsic part of the cosmopolitan city as tourist or immigrant but is still regarded as a deviation from the norm and, therefore, is con­spic­u­ous.

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The film also makes easy connections between places and their connotations in popu­lar culture in other instances. When Rani meets Vijaylaxmi for the first time, the latter tells Rani that she is half Indian—­her French-­Spanish m ­ other had a fling with her Indian f­ ather when they met in Goa. The tiny state of Goa, located on the western coast of India, is a well-­k nown beach vacation destination and represents a suspension of traditional social mores and a relaxed way of life. It is no coincidence that this is where Vijaylaxmi’s parents met, as Goa is popu­lar among international tourists as well. Similarly, when Rani visits Vijaylaxmi’s friend Rukhsaar (Sabeeka Imam) in Amsterdam, she predictably works as a sex worker, a detail that indicates the city’s international reputation as a destination for sex tourism. In vari­ous instances in the film, the streets of both Paris and Amsterdam are depicted as crowded carnival spaces, where p ­ eople perform (dance, sing, mime) and that walkers navigate without any trou­ble. Thus, the public space in Paris and Amsterdam is not realistically contextualized and is instead represented as a problem-­f ree zone, instrumental only to Rani’s emancipation. In par­tic­u ­lar, Queen also makes a presumptuous association between the cities and the type of w ­ omen we meet in them (bohemian Vijaylaxmi in Paris, sex worker Rukhsaar in Amsterdam), underscoring the film’s implicit preoccupation with urban space and the values it represents, especially pertaining to the w ­ omen who inhabit it.

Conclusion: Neoliberal Cities and Subversive Loitering In her essay “Street Haunting,” V ­ irginia Woolf describes her experience of a walk she takes down the streets of London. Woolf’s writing, in her characteristic stream-­ of-­consciousness style that reflects the flow of a wandering stroll around the city, emerges from her observations of the p ­ eople and sights she comes across on her walk. The walk thus transcends from being a short journey from point A to point B into a philosophical exploration into the limits of the self as it interacts with the ­people and the world around it. Woolf says, “Into each of ­these lives one could penetrate a l­ ittle way, far enough to give oneself the illusion that one is not tethered to a single mind, but can put on briefly for a few minutes the bodies and minds of o ­ thers.”15 Drawing from this basic idea that walking can become a complex physiopsychological pro­cess in which both the body and the mind are transformed, I have explored the implications of what it means to walk in public spaces as a ­woman. My inquiry also included an interpretation of the film Queen and examined how this film portrays the self-­transformation of its protagonist through the motif of transnational travel and urban walking. I situate both urban walking and ­women’s mobility in con­temporary times, wherein Indian cities are slowly being brought u ­ nder the purview of privatization and are losing a thriving urban public culture. This loss of public space in cities has direct consequences not only for the movement of ­women within cities, which is curbed simply due to lack of space, but also for the overarching notion of safety that places the onus of being safe on ­women by attempting to keep them indoors—­whether in homes or malls.

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The loss of public spaces and increasing privatization of cities is part of the neoliberal culture of our times and can be witnessed in most metropolitan cities across the world. Rebecca Solnit situates the role of walking within the con­ temporary times, which she argues are largely spent indoors. Her central critique emerges from the compartmentalization of space and time in a neoliberal age that does not allow for unsupervised and unscheduled wandering. For Solnit, walking is a form of “bodily l­ abor that produces nothing but thoughts, experiences, arrivals.”16 She explains that in a culture that is production-­oriented, walking defies the dominant ethos of our times in which public spaces are being colonized by privatization and our daily routines compel us to spend longer durations of our time indoors. In this context, walking becomes a “subversive detour”17 as both public spaces and leisure time are configured so that walking is regarded as unnecessary. In the specific case of India, the enthusiastic embrace of neoliberalism by policy makers and urban planners has turned cities into what Swapna Banerjee-­Guha calls “incubators of neoliberal strategies.”18 The haphazard execution of development schemes such as building of roads and flyovers, subway systems, malls and office buildings, and elite housing, according to Banerjee-­Guha, has resulted in an “intense conflict due to the imposition of the neoliberal framework, reflecting contestation between global society and segmented localized communities.”19 This implies that the urban space in present-­day India is a setting of stark contrasts: slums and lower-­class housing stand right opposite middle-­and upper-­class apartment buildings; l­ittle tea stalls and fast-­food handcarts park themselves in front of shiny malls; and smartly dressed corporate employees spend long working days in state-­of-­t he-­art office complexes built by extremely poor mi­grant and informal laborers. Writing in the online magazine Kafila, Rijul Kochhar argues that vast uninhabited spaces in cities devoid of a public life allow for “no sense of shared meaning” and lead to the “emergence of a social and civic void.”20 This void, in turn, is filled by pathological be­hav­iors that are motivated by an “injurious sense of domination and subjugation.”21 The traditional, community-­oriented milieu of Indian cities where ­human interaction was encouraged through the mundane and quotidian is traded for a “vast, dead space” that has “no logic of the neighborhood.”22 Kochhar sees this empty space as devoid of humanity and the root of urban vio­ lence that occurs with regularity and is enacted on the body of ­women. It is significant, then, that Queen dramatizes this tension engendered by the pathological underbelly of development initiatives in cities that have made them unsafe by focusing on Rani’s emancipation only through her interaction with international urban spaces. When Rani walks around Paris, she is performing her emancipation from the rigid social and cultural structures that confine her as a middle-­class urban Indian ­woman. This is made even more evident by the fact that the film does not show Rani walk about on the streets during the portions of the film set in New Delhi, thus creating a dichotomy between the unsafe, unwalkable Indian streets and the

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relatively safe and easily accessible streets of the global city. Although this contrast may not actually be true, this is how the film visualizes and represents Rani’s m ­ ental and physical emancipation. I have argued that the journey that Rani takes ­toward her freedom is closely linked to her class status and is, therefore, limiting and individualistic. However, I also read her joyous wandering of city streets as inherently transgressive. Phadke, Khan, and Ranade argue that wandering or, to use their term, “loitering” for ­women in public spaces is doubly transgressive as it “subverts the per­ for­mance of gender roles,”23 where such be­hav­ior might be considered unfeminine. Additionally, walking is “situated outside the global market of packaged consumer products,”24 and it defies the dominant culture of our times that requires time and space to be structured and productive. The plea­sure in watching Queen lies in the fact that it is set in an imaginary realm that is not averse to the un­regu­la­ted wandering of a w ­ oman. ­Because the majority of the film is not set in India, and, in par­tic­u ­lar, the sites of Rani’s per­ for­mance of flânerie are two foreign cities, it might prompt us to ask what might have happened if it w ­ ere based in an Indian city. T ­ oday’s real-­life Indian city is a contested site, wherein marginalized identities need to assert their presence through marches and protests. On January 21, 2017, ­women in Indian cities joined ­women all over the world for the ­Women’s March to draw attention to the issue of safety of w ­ omen in urban spaces. The main issue around which protests in India w ­ ere or­ga­nized was represented by the slogan “I ­Will Go Out,” emphasizing that ­women who go out into public spaces invite scrutiny and moral policing and are, therefore, inherently participating in an activity that is subversive. The city is not an innocuous space that w ­ omen can access without impediment. Given this real­ity, urban walking for ­women transmutes from being an unremarkable, routine act to an act of re­sis­tance.

notes 1. ​ Queen, directed by Vikas Bahl (2014; Mumbai, India: Viacom 18 Motion Pictures & Phantom Films), DVD, 146 min. 2. ​Rupal Oza, The Making of Neoliberal India: Nationalism, Gender and the Paradoxes of Globalization (New York: Routledge, 2006), 22. 3. ​Shilpa Phadke, Sameera Khan, and Shilpa Ranade, Why Loiter? W ­ omen and Risk on Mumbai Streets (New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2011). 4. ​Aarti Wani, Fantasy of Modernity: Romantic Love in Bombay Cinema of the 1950s (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2016). 5. ​Phadke, Khan, and Ranade, Why Loiter?, 24. 6. ​Phadke, Khan, and Ranade, 23. 7. ​Eve-­teasing involves instances of sexual harassment (punishable by law in India) wherein men whistle, pass lewd comments, sing songs, and grope and/or touch w ­ omen in public spaces and city streets. 8. ​Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking (New York: Penguin Books, 2000), 198. 9. ​Walter Benjamin, The Writer of Modern Life: Essays on Charles Baudelaire, ed. Michael W. Jennings, trans. Howard Eiland, Edmund Jephcott, Rodney Livingston, and Harry Zohn (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006). 10. ​Anne Friedberg, Win­dow Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern (Berkley: University of California Press, 1993), 33. 11. ​Friedberg, 36.

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12. ​Though never explic­itly mentioned in the film, it could also be inferred that the honeymoon was a “gift” from the ­father of the bride, possibly part of Rani’s dowry, which is why Rani is able to travel abroad with such ease without any interference from Vijay or his ­family. 13. ​Friedberg, Win­dow Shopping, 59. 14. ​Friedberg, 59. 15. ​­Virginia Woolf, “Street Haunting: A London Adventure,” accessed October 10, 2017, https://­ebooks​.­adelaide​.­edu​.­au​/­w​/­woolf​/­v irginia​/­w91d​/­chapter5​.­html. 16. ​Solnit, Wanderlust, 5. 17. ​Solnit, 12. 18. ​Swapna Banerjee-­Guha, “New Urbanism, Neoliberalism, and Urban Restructuring in Mumbai,” in India’s New Economic Policy: A Critical Analy­sis, ed. Waquar Ahmed, Amitabh Kundu, and Richard Peet (New York: Routledge, 2011), 77. 19. ​Banerjee-­Guha, 77. 20. ​Rijul Kochhar, “Desires of Planning and the Planning of Desires,” Kafila, December 30, 2012, https://­kafila​.­online​/­2012​/­12​/3­ 0​/­desires​-­of​-p ­ lanning​-­and​-t­ he​-­planning​-­of​-­desires​-­vignettes​ -­of​-­a​-r­ ape​-­culture​-­a nd​-­beyond​-­rijul​-­kochhar​/.­ 21. ​Kochhar. 22. ​Kochhar. 23. ​Phadke, Khan, and Ranade, Why Loiter?, 179. 24. ​Phadke, Khane, and Ranade, 186.

chapter 12

Q

Glocal ­Women gender, genre, and per­for­mance in abhishek chaubey’s ishqiya and dedh ishqiya Madhavi Biswas

The first wave of postliberalized Bollywood in the 1990s and the turn of the c­ entury is awash with gym-­toned images of w ­ omen who look strikingly confident in their “modern” global dress codes, urban consumer lifestyles, and steadily increasing mobility. The incredible success of films such as Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! (Who am I to you!; Barjatya 1994) and nonresident Indian (NRI) romances such as Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (The braveheart w ­ ill take the bride; Chopra 1995) and Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham (Sometimes happiness, sometimes sadness; Johar 2001) registered the glamour and appeal of new urban lifestyles ushered in by globalization. Even though commercial Hindi cinema acquired surface polish to compete in the global market, the stringent codes defining female sexuality in Indian films remained largely unchallenged. ­These slick, turn-­of-­the-­century blockbusters, heralded as New Bollywood, codified a certain entrenchment of the familial, patriarchal setup bolstered by the concomitant rise of Hindu nationalism that promoted conservative models of female sexuality. While ­t hese films do register female discontent, it is swiftly subsumed by the romance narratives and their inexorable pro­gress t­ oward a wedding, which is yet another marketable feature of big Bollywood films. The ability to add more nuance to gender in mainstream New Bollywood films came from a group loosely termed hatke directors, who form a subset within New Bollywood. Abhishek Chaubey is part this group that includes directors such as Vishal Bhardwaj, Anurag Kashyap, Vikramaditya Motwane, Dibakar Banerjee, and many ­others who came into prominence in the first de­cade of this millennium. They are distinguished by their ability to experiment with dif­fer­ent cinematic forms and tackle issues usually glossed over by the blockbusters. Hatke cinema, made on less lavish bud­gets, is equally propelled by globalization and the urban phenomenon of proliferating multiplex theaters, global media, and an expanding diaspora that provides more space for exploring female sexual168

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ity. More populist than ­earlier experimental cinema, it has forged a unique place for itself in the market by affirming its links to Bollywood even as it plays with and critiques some of its tropes. Many of ­t hese directors, who speak the language of global cinema, are also self-­proclaimed fans of popu­lar Indian cinema. Their films use a range of indigenous and transnational cinematic genres and techniques that provide them with multiple models for the exploration of female desire. Abhishek Chaubey’s debut film, Ishqiya (Regarding love; 2010),1 and its sequel, Dedh Ishqiya (1½ times love; 2014),2 enthusiastically combine popu­lar global genres such as noir, heist, and road movies with Bollywood “masala,” fantasy, satire, and local realism. Both films are connected through their titles and the larger framing plot of a male duo of small-­time crooks from Bhopal who are an uncle-­nephew team named Iftekar (aka Khalujaan and Babban). They are on the run from Mushtaq, a small-­time don who pursues them relentlessly in both films. In Ishqiya they take refuge in the ­house of a ­w idow, Krishna, and plot a heist with her, falling in love with her in the pro­cess. In the sequel that promotes itself as .5 times better than the original, the male duo woos a rich noblewoman, Begum Para, and her maid, Muniya, but the ­women have their own plans. Both films play with the notion of romance and love, and central to their strategy is the depiction of the three ­women who complicate the romance plots in unanticipated ways that dupe the duo as well as the audience. Th ­ ese three w ­ omen characters are amalgams of local realism and genre construction providing relevant examples of hatke’s impulse to intersect the global with the local and create new ways of articulating female sexual desire through a heady blend of wildly dif­fer­ent genres. Krishna’s character has definite echoes of the femme fatale of film noir, the Bride in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill (2003, 2004), and Korean action dramas. Begum Para and Muniya, on the other hand, seem to emerge straight from the pages of a folktale or a “Muslim social,” while si­mul­ta­neously managing to evoke ele­ments from Ridley Scott’s Thelma and Louise (1991), Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, and Ismat Chugtai’s controversial Urdu short story “Lihaaf” (The quilt; 1942). Furthermore, Krishna, who is a minutely observed study of a north Indian semirural Hindu w ­ oman, and Muniya, a practical, small-­town Muslim w ­ oman who aspires to travel the world, ground the multiple generic prototypes in a con­temporary small-­town India slowly but inexorably transforming ­under the impact of globalization. This “glocal” perspective is key to the exploration of female desire in ­t hese films that showcase ­women who are neither urban nor modern. The sexual promiscuity of t­ hese semirural ­women skews the urban, largely middle-­class model of the New ­Woman of liberalized India that Rupal Oza has identified as having become the site on which the identity of the new, global India is being defined.3 Chaubey’s female figures are closely observed realistic portraits of semiurban ­women and genre ste­reo­t ypes. Krishna, the village ­w idow, is rooted in her north Indian village identity, and yet she functions in the film as a noir femme fatale in luring the nephew-­uncle duo and turning the ­tables against them at the end of the film. Begum Para and Muniya seem like nostalgia figures from a Muslim social or ­Middle Eastern fantasy tales involving a beautiful mistress and

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a wily maid, yet they turn out to be a lesbian ­couple who engineer a poetry contest and a kidnapping hoax in their desperation to escape the stranglehold of debt, per­ sis­tent suitors, and social norms. They cannot simply be judged in terms of their social representativeness. Wearing their religious identities comfortably and without emphasis, they reference multiple other identities that provide a glocal perspective on the discourse of the New ­Woman, thus resisting an easy contextualization within a purely nationalist discourse. ­These ­women’s sexuality cannot be termed “westernized” or elitist and thus easily dismissed as aberrant modernity. They represent a shifting social landscape that is difficult to categorize in the easy predetermined dichotomies of East versus West or national versus the foreign. Apart from their social representativeness, they are also generic constructions of global literary and artistic forms and thus anticipate and address a considerably less homogenized audience that views the ­women’s deviant desires and generic trajectories from multiple perspectives. ­These multiple frames of reference provoke and engage the audience directly, enabling it to both be duped by and yet empathize with the w ­ omen’s strategies of survival and re­sis­tance that are central to the plots. Chaubey’s comedies are products of globalization that benefit from and critique its manifestations. Globalization offers a plethora of choices, and despite its extensively critiqued perpetuation of unequal power relationships, it cannot completely restrict t­ hose choices from being available to the power­f ul and the powerless. Chaubey’s dark comedies reflect the choice of genres available to the directors, and ­t hese choices also multiply dramatically in his narratives. However, they do not merely gratify desire—­they are also disruptive, coercive, and contradictory. In both films they are appropriated by the marginalized who often “perform,” in Judith Butler’s sense of the term, to strategize self-­preservation.4 Butler, building on Foucault’s notions of the pervasiveness as well as the instability of power,5 uses the idea of performativity as intervention, not simply as a retaliatory, singular, or deliberate act but as something that is created and made normative through reiteration. Such intervention incorporates the possibility of individual action or re­sis­tance, but not by existing outside social roles. Consciously reiterating them for parodic purposes or finding a space within that “per­for­mance,” according to her, allows for the possibility of creating fissures within it. Chaubey’s three female characters “perform,” in this sense, the social roles accorded to them and create spaces for themselves within them, but they also propel rather dramatic fissures within t­ hose roles. Krishna and Begum Para, though strikingly dissimilar in terms of their class, community, and temperament, have one ­t hing in common—­t hey have dead husbands. As w ­ idows, they are marginalized socially but are also somewhat dangerously untethered, and both films involve plots that ostensibly deal with romancing them back into the social fold. In the pro­cess, the films also address the issue of sexual choice. “Choice” is a favored term in the vocabulary of globalization, but when dealing with the issue of female sexuality, ­t hese choices are surprisingly ­limited. The romance narrative and the endgame of the romance in both films is

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to resituate the w ­ idows within their secure gender roles as wives and sweethearts. The divergent and the disruptive goals of the w ­ omen revealed in the final twists in the plots play with the gender perceptions of the characters in the film as well as ­t hose of the audience watching the film. Thus, the w ­ omen enter the discourse of the New W ­ oman tangentially by undercutting it and unevenly merging the rural with the global. They are not “realistic” portraits, and yet the threats they face are very real, reminding the audience of the immediacy and danger of their situations. Their actions and the convoluted plots they are involved in are “genre” dominated, and thus the ­women negotiate their sexuality and freedoms very differently. Both films discard romance and melodrama for the thriller/heist genre at the end. Hence, the solutions and the emotions evoked in the audience are a blend of empathy and the exhilaration of participating in a game in which they find themselves rooting for the winners. In both films, the winners are the ­women. The solutions ­t hese two films pre­sent are hardly “realistic,” but they engage the audience differently by providing prototypes of thrilling heists in which the ­women’s sexuality is a per­sis­tent issue and an asset that is reluctantly admired by the audience and the male duo by the end of the films.

Ishqiya In Ishqiya (2010), the duo takes refuge in the small town of Gorakhpur, in the widowed Krishna’s ­house. While the main plot of the film concerns a carefully detailed kidnapping plan hatched by Krishna, Khalujaan, and Babban, the title “Ishqiya” suggests romance, ostensibly referencing the duo’s infatuation with Krishna. The title is turned on its head when the romance morphs into a heist and then reveals itself as a revenge drama plotted by Krishna to get even with her husband. Thus, the title might with equal justification reference Krishna’s fatal love for her husband. The shifts between buddy movie, romance, heist, and revenge narrative challenge the male duo’s and the audience’s perception of both genre and gender. In the film, Krishna has both agency and choice. She has a variety of choices that she creates for herself in terms of her sexual partners and her roles in the vari­ ous twists and turns of the film’s plot that suggest female appropriations of the spaces afforded by globalization. Krishna is not made in the urban mold that fits the image of the con­temporary New W ­ oman. She is a confident, rural w ­ oman completely at ease in her surroundings. She is sexually assertive and manipulative, and it is through her normalization of her sexuality that the film addresses the sexuality of the New W ­ oman. Female sexuality is, obviously, neither new nor urban, but the discourse of the New ­Woman, though riddled with contradictions, provides a new space in which to address her sexuality. The film addresses the contradictory and complex negotiations involved in the discourse by dramatizing the male responses to Krishna’s sexuality and highlighting her obvious intellectual superiority to them. The three men demonstrate their discomfort with Krishna’s sexuality in dif­fer­ent ways and at varying levels.

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Clad in commonplace saris, Krishna offers board, food, and romance to the uncle-­nephew duo, appearing exactly as they wish to see her. She enchants the older Khalujaan with her classical singing and her enthusiasm for old Hindi film songs. With her sexuality contained firmly within the frames of domesticity, she can be desired from a discreet distance by the romantic Khalu. With the earthy Babban, whose initial wariness of her shifts rather quickly to an appreciative description of her as a “desi sutli-­bomb” (local firecracker), she is not coy about her sexuality. In this context of performativity, Krishna might well be the kind of cinema that hatke directors of Chaubey’s ilk are creating, with the more genteel Khalujaan and the cruder Babban doubling up as precisely the two kinds of genteel and populist audiences that hatke directors attempt to combine and woo. Krishna’s personality shift with her seduction of Babban comes as a shock to Khalujaan and the audience. Th ­ ese shifts are highlighted through both her clothes and her actions. In an interview Chaubey called her a “femme fatale in a polyester sari,”6 underscoring her visual presence in the film. The image of Krishna sucking Babban’s thumb sensuously in her distinctly nonglamorous clothes dismisses Old Bollywood’s sartorial and sexual binaries that contrasted the “innocent heroine” in her ethnic clothes with the “sexualized vamp” in her “westernized” outfits. Moreover, Khalujaan’s Hindi film–­influenced dream of romancing the decorous ­widow as a coy burka-­clad ­woman ­gently swaying to his melodious song is undercut by the real­ity of Krishna dressing “up” or “down” for her per­for­mances that enhance her choices. Khalujaan’s dream shatters when he witnesses Krishna in Babban’s arms. The loud, con­temporary Hindi film song to which Krishna dances in her postcoital enthusiasm is in stark contrast to the melodious romantic songs “Badi Dheere Jali Raina” (The night burned so slowly) and “Dil to Baccha Hai Ji” (The heart is a child) that might naturally appeal to the middle-­class audience and Khalujaan. The image of Krishna dressed in Babban’s loud shirt and green pants and sporting his sunglasses primes this audience to experience Khalujaan’s shock. The film reveals the natu­ral alignment between Khalujaan’s improbable dreams and the audience’s romantic expectations and forces them to reassess Khalujaan’s expectations in the face of Krishna’s unapologetic sexuality. She is a young ­woman who is much closer to Babban’s age even if her decorous Hindi film–­style flirtation with Khalujaan lulls the audience into accepting the ridiculousness of the pairing as romantic. The film does not grant any moral authority to Khalujaan’s sense of betrayal when he finds Krishna sleeping with Babban, focusing instead on her cold dismissal of his right to question her actions. Moreover, in the ensuing fight over her, both men look ridicu­lous, and Khalu’s genteel exterior is ripped open to expose uglier biases as he insults his s­ ister and Babban’s m ­ other in his sexual jealousy. However, even though both men feel cheated by Krishna, the film also presumes an audience that is dif­fer­ent from previous audiences of Hindi films—­one that has alternative models, in this case, the noir and the heist, through which to filter Krishna’s role in the film. She is made in the mold of the femme fatale of film noirs, but unlike the moral universe of the noir, where the femme fatale is viewed as trans-

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gressive and often punished for that transgression, Krishna is not. Krishna’s moral authority is underscored in the aftermath of the fight as she takes a leading role in the heist, exhibiting her wits by swiftly turning the ­tables against the two men squabbling over her and taking charge of the prisoner. Such unexpected glitches and countermoves are typical of the heist genre, and as Krishna’s swift reactions reveal, she is more than capable of fitting in this “genre” role in keeping the action moving along. The duo’s change of heart at the end regarding her does signal their ac­cep­tance of her sexuality, albeit in the context of viewing her as the victim of her husband’s machinations. Krishna asserts her right to choose, contradicting the romance logic of the film and the duo by rejecting Khalujaan as well as Babban. However, she is not averse to sampling the choices in front of her, spending the night with Babban even as she flirts with Khalujaan over romantic Hindi songs. Her switch from the role of a ­w idow of a romance narrative to that of a noir w ­ idow is a performative shift, which disorients and disrupts the expectations of the uncle-­nephew duo and the audience. However, this disruption is not too extreme as both the audience and the duo, albeit not perfect, are presumed to be educatable, unlike her husband, with whom she is involved in a deadlier game. Krishna, as a bride romancing her husband, performs yet another switch in the opening and closing sequences of the film. Stretched out in bed in bridal red and humming a song in the opening shot of the film, she pre­sents the classic picture of domesticated sexuality. Such sexuality, contained within the legitimacy of marital bonds, is not uncommon in Hindi films. Any anxiety generated by her slightly excessive sexuality and her clear linguistic superiority to her husband is quickly subsumed in the following dramatic explosion and her reappearance as the domesticated ­widow of Khalujaan’s dreams. However, her excessive sexuality and demands do unsettle her husband, who, as is revealed ­later, decides to kill her ­because her demands interfere with his goals. The film switches to a revenge drama with shades of Kill Bill in the final scene. This Krishna, who dons her bridal red sari again and sets the stage to confront her husband as an avenging w ­ oman, has a dif­fer­ent impact from the opening scene. The audience, along with Khalujaan and Babban, re­orients its expectations several times about Krishna’s role in the film. Her role is not a ­simple progression from a bride to a w ­ idow required to choose between Khalujaan and Babban—­Krishna is involved in a deadlier plot that is revealed in the climax as a confrontation between the wife and the husband. A tied-up Krishna, anticipating the return of her murderous husband, visually represents the threat she has been ­under throughout her married life. Despite the ostensible difference between the opening and concluding scenes, Krishna’s life has always been u ­ nder threat by her husband, who chooses to get rid of her ­because her existence restricts his choices, even though he admits to her that he loves her. This Krishna evokes the sympathy of Khalujaan and Babban and has the unequivocal support of the village community, particularly Nandu and her old ­woman companion who express their loyalty to her in socially extreme acts. Nandu rescues Khalu and Babban instead of killing them as per his initiation rite, and

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the old w ­ oman burns the ­house down, killing Krishna’s husband. It is hard not to view ­t hese as symbolically providing cover to Krishna for her socially disruptive act in the end. As they reenact the romantic intimacy of the initial sequence with deadly irony, Krishna’s husband seriously underestimates her. In the end, too, Krishna is given a choice, to stay and forgive him or to leave him to die as he had done, and she chooses the latter. Such “tit for tat” is an old strategy of revenge drama, and Hindi film audiences would certainly remember countless “flashback” sequences when the “hero” or “heroine” is about to execute a particularly bloody or questionable action. The audience, softened by the sympathy generated for Krishna by the surrounding characters and propelled by such generic nudges about her husband’s betrayal, roots for her escape. However, one needs to pause to consider exactly where her action takes her. Despite her escape, ­t here is no socially codified role for her as she moves out of her rooted surroundings, leaving her village and the burning h ­ ouse ­behind to join the duo on the road. As Krishna performs her roles as wife, ­widow, and lover to preserve herself from danger, she also progressively rejects the socially coded choices offered to her in the film: she rejects Khalujaan, Babban, and fi­nally her husband b ­ ecause her desires do not align with the social and sexual choices available to her. However, the film’s generic flexibility gives her more choices. Her exhilarating final act, of leaving her half-­burned husband and joining the duo to make an impossible trio on the road, pushes the film back to its buddy movie origins, which now potentially incorporates within it a role for a newly mobile female. This conclusion does not end her endangerment as she joins the constantly threatened, albeit comic precarity of Khalujaan and Babban, who are in the crosshairs of Mushtaq Bhai’s gun in the beginning and end of the film. The film declares itself a product of globalization, focusing particularly on two of its ele­ments—­ mobility and choice. The best it can do is to problematize t­ hese ele­ments and not romanticize them, and it negotiates the precarity of its protagonists, particularly the w ­ oman, in terms of performativity, storytelling, and genre-­bending.

Dedh Ishqiya Dedh Ishqiya (2014), like Ishqiya, deals with female sexuality, performativity, and appropriations of choices by two females in a fairy-­tale setting that harks back to the old-­world niceties of Urdu poetry and romance. Begum Para, like Krishna, does not fit the typical image of the New ­Woman. Krishna is a combination of a typical Hindu rural ­woman from Uttar Pradesh and a noir femme fatale who lives on the outskirts of a rapidly expanding city filled with cautious millionaires who hide their newly acquired money in recently bought micro­waves. The rich and beautiful Begum Para is a fantasy from an Indian and Arabian past, who is aestheticized in ghazels and who expresses herself in an arcane art form such as the thumri (a semiclassical song and dance per­for­mance). Yet, Begum Para is also a flesh-­ and-­blood ­woman who needs her faithful companion Muniya to coax her out of her depression and takes pills to calm her jittery nerves. Dedh Ishqiya is deliber-

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ately set just a step away from con­temporary India. It is the practical and efficient Muniya, a young, small-­town Muslim w ­ oman conversant in the language of iPhones and fast food, who typifies the globalized pre­sent that intersects with Begum Para’s world. Globalization adds urgency to the intensity of their relationship as it tempts them with the possibilities of choices and mobilities. Begum Para and Muniya host a mushaira (poetry contest) e­ very year to choose the right husband for the Begum as desired by her late husband. The film provides the w ­ oman with an ostensible array of choices in the form of Begum Para’s numerous suitors, and she has some degree of freedom to choose the best suitor as the host and judge of the mushaira. The film reveals ­later just how eco­nom­ically, socially, and sexually ­limited her choices are. Khalu and Babban, who are vying for dif­fer­ent ­women this time, are once again sexually duped into imagining the situation to be their romance narrative in which they can trick Jaan Mohammad who is Begum Para’s per­sis­tent suitor and win the ­women along with their money. The entire mushaira is, of course, an elaborate ruse by the w ­ omen to keep Jaan Mohammad, who is also Begum Para’s main creditor, at bay. This, however, is just the first layer of role-­playing by the impoverished Begum. The imminent threat posed by the impassioned Jaan Mohammad is compounded by the threat from the past posed by Begum Para’s late husband, the nawab of Mahmudabad. His extravagant lifestyle had left the Begum with nothing but debts and a crumbling, mortgaged mansion. The romance and glamour of the Begum’s past, attractively framed and presented to her suitors by her and Muniya, hides the story of her unfulfilled life with an indifferent husband who was a closet homosexual. It is exacerbated by her inability, in the absence of familial or monetary support, to act upon that realization. However, the Begum’s most dangerous secret is her pos­si­ble lesbian relationship with Muniya, which, if exposed, would make the w ­ omen social outcasts. The film’s final revelation turns the ­tables on Khalujaan and Babban as well as the audience. The trappings of romance that the film sets up—­t he seven stages of love itemized eloquently by Khalujaan in Urdu, the nostalgia of an adolescent romance between Begum Para and Khalujaan, and their shared passion for the pleasures of dance and exquisite poetry—­beguile the audience into emotionally investing in the romance of Khalujaan and Begum Para. The final revelation forces the audience and the duo to reassess their perceptions. In the film, the w ­ omen escape the repercussions of their choice, even though Babban’s spurt of sexual jealousy and physical vio­lence provide a glimpse into the tangible dangers they face in society. Though their elaborate kidnapping plot fails, the w ­ omen manage to escape with the precious necklace and turn their lives around. However, their act requires a complete severance from their previous life. Like Krishna, Begum Para’s desires are in excess of the choices available to her, and she can only take recourse to role-­play and escape to protect herself and Muniya. Begum Para, like Krishna, is neither urban nor con­temporary. The desires of the two ­women are not “new” or “modern,” but they are in excess of the socie­ties they inhabit. Krishna’s “excessive” sexuality threatens her husband as well as her lovers. Begum Para’s lack of sexual interest in men is equally threatening to the

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men around her. The film, albeit in comic mode, shows Khalu and Babban’s inability to accept the seriousness of the ­women’s desires, perhaps foreshadowing the audience’s response to the ­women’s relationship. In the end, despite the ­women’s explicit rejection of their love, the two men assume that they ­will ultimately marry the w ­ omen and live happily ever a­ fter. The film clearly depicts the w ­ omen as having disparate goals from the men. As Khalujaan, Babban, and Jaan Mohammad pursue the goal of heterosexual, romantic love in consonance with the title of the film, Begum Para and Muniya categorically resist it. The film foregrounds the heterosexual cele­bration of love through the eloquent ghazels that Khalujaan and the other suitors sing for Begum Para. The possibility of the Begum Para–­Muniya romance remains hidden in the shadows, lacking an openly articulated and recognizable tradition of literary or artistic expression. It is evident only in the final scenes in the shadow play between Begum Para and Muniya, forcing the audience to reassess the title that hints at missing equations that might express the nuances of the bond between the mistress and her maid. Khalujaan’s satiric query, “Lihaaf laa doon?” (Should I get you the quilt?) directly references writer Ismat Chugtai’s “Lihaaf,” (1942), a rare Urdu short story published in the 1940s about a lesbian relationship, and firmly establishes such an exploration of female sexuality within the local tradition of Urdu lit­er­a­ture rather than Western lit­er­a­t ure. However, the strong ele­ments of heist and con give such an exploration a dif­fer­ent mood and pace in which the lesbian relationship is not the ultimate disclosure. It is subsumed in the genre’s push for gamesmanship and artful outsmarting, and the audience’s investment in the ultimate winners of the heist game. Chaubey’s genre-­mixing continues even ­after the end of the film. He tags on the entire thumri, performed by Begum Para/Madhuri Dixit with an all-­woman dance troupe as the credits roll, to contest the all-­male mushaira that dominates the film. As Begum Para performs her thumri, referencing a male lover and pleading with him not to forsake her for another, Muniya dances on the stage with her. Dixit, an accomplished kathak (classical dance form) dancer, gets to showcase her performative skills just as Begum Para gets to assert her desires by using the spaces within the art form she is passionate about. Employing the story-­w ithin-­a-­story structure, Chaubey links the concluding thumri to the outer plot, dwelling on issues of per­for­mance and art beyond the immediate plot. In this outer plot, the comic villain Mushtaq Bhai relentlessly pursues the male duo. Both films open with the pair being threatened by Mushtaq Bhai and their employment of literary forms to distract him and escape from him. Ishqiya opens with the duo pleading with him for their lives in an open grave. Like Scheherazade, they buy time and opportunity while engaging Mushtaq Bhai with a latifa (a joke) and are able to escape. In Dedh Ishqiya, which opens on a similar scene, Babban offers an afsana (story) that fails to satisfy him, upon which he instigates a Mexican standoff before he can negotiate his escape from Mushtaq Bhai. Unbeknownst to them, Mushtaq Bhai often lets them off deliberately to extend their Tom-­and-­Jerry-­like game so that he may continue to play a role in the endless chase.

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The Arabian Nights analogy of stalling death with the art of storytelling is extended by adding local art forms such as latifa, afsana, and thumri to the repertoire. Mushtaq Bhai, the relentless pursuer, is also the duo’s captive audience. His role is crucial in emphasizing the importance of performativity, role-­playing, power, and survival for the power­f ul and the powerless. Role-­playing requires performers as well as a willing audience who might participate in the game. In Dedh Ishqiya’s final gesture, when Mushtaq Bhai bursts out laughing at the duo’s offer of a thumri, he is fi­nally pleasured rather than duped as he watches the per­for­mance. The film intertwines per­for­mance and spectatorship with pursuit, escape, and even plea­ sure, providing agency to both the pursued and the pursuers from dif­fer­ent perspectives that gain their legitimacy from local and global forms. The final thumri by Begum Para, surrounded by her young female students and Muniya, asserts the power of per­for­mance. Both the star power of Dixit and her skill in the dance form support the triumphant use of it by Begum Para at the end of the film. Thumri has historically been a dance per­for­mance dominated by ­women artists. Its lyr­ics, known for their poetry and eroticism, often revolve around the romance between the Hindu god Krishna and his many lovers. Begum Para’s agency at the end of the film is a layered one. From being the frail and delicately retiring Begum, she actively establishes her dance acad­emy and teaches and performs the art form she is passionate about. In her dance per­for­mance, she “plays” the traditional forlorn beloved craving her male lover’s attention. However, it is a skill she excels in; she controls the per­for­mance, and the audience is aware of the irony of the situation. While the otherworldly Begum both survives and expresses her desires through per­for­mance, the younger Muniya remains poised on the edge of her world, aspiring to escape and travel from “Hong Kong to Honolulu.” She lives in a run-­down mansion and dresses in traditional salwar-­kameezes, but her bedroom wall is plastered with tourist brochures and posters of Australia, Sicily, Hollywood, and Shanghai. When the street-­smart Babban flirtatiously teases Muniya about girls who love “Chinese noodles,” Muniya, who is more ambitious, wants to eat her noodles in Shanghai, bur­gers in New York, and pizza in Naples. The combination of the Begum’s performative skills and the potential and desire for mobility that Muniya exemplifies provides an alternative, utopian, yet temptingly pos­si­ble model for the New ­Woman in the film. Their pairing invites a range of alliances between the past and the pre­sent, the middle-­class w ­ oman and the less represented, working-­ class ­woman, and “art” and “realism” in the film. Dedh Ishqiya, like Ishqiya, offers choices and new mobilities to its female protagonists, with some caveats. Krishna escapes with Khalujaan and Babban to form an unusual trio in the crosshairs of Mushtaq Bhai’s ­rifle. Begum Para and Muniya escape to a new world that enables them to negotiate for their anonymity and means for survival while the thumri evokes a more female-­centric world asserting survival and even power through per­for­mance. In the power dynamics of per­for­mance, if the audience is naturally aligned with power, both the Begum’s per­for­mance and the films survive by pleasuring their audience.

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The ­women characters in Ishqiya and Dedh Ishqiya, besides offering bravura portraits of the less represented sections of India’s con­temporary ­women (such as rural, Muslim, and working-­class w ­ omen), are centrally concerned with the issue of the perception of female sexuality in con­temporary India and the role of art and artfulness in negotiating the shifting power dynamics around it. The films underscore the threatened existence of their female protagonists harboring “excessive” desires while enabling them to test trajectories of survival and escape made pos­si­ ble by the interplay of local and global genres and a changing audience. The portraits of ­these palpable glocal ­women entwined with vari­ous literary and cinematic prototypes encourage an intersection of strange and familiar narratives of desire and performativity to intervene in the current discourse on female sexuality and the New ­Woman in con­temporary India.

notes 1. ​Ishqiya, directed by Abhishek Chaubey (2010; Mumbai: Shemaroo Entertainment & Vishal Bhardwaj Pictures), 118 min. 2. ​ Dedh Ishqiya, directed by Abhishek Chaubey (2014; Mumbai: Shemaroo Entertainment & Vishal Bhardwaj Pictures), 152 min. 3. ​Rupal Oza, The Making of Neoliberal India: Nationalism, Gender and the Paradoxes of Globalization (New York: Routledge, 2006). 4. ​Judith Butler, “Gender as Per­for­mance: An Interview with Judith Butler,” Radical Philosophy: A Journal of Socialist and Feminist Philosophy 67 (Summer 1994): 32–39. 5. ​Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, ed. Colin Gordon, trans. Colin Gordon, Leo Marshall, John Mepham, and Kate Soper (New York: Vintage Books, 1980). 6. ​Roshmila Bhattacharya, “Abhishek Chaubey on Dedh Ishqiya’s Unexpected End,” Mumbai Mirror, February  11, 2014, https://­timesofindia​.­indiatimes​.­com​/­entertainment​/­hindi​ /­b ollywood​/­news​/­A bhishek​-­C haubey​-­on​-­D edh​-­I shqiyas​-­u nexpected​-­e nd​/­a rticleshow​ /­30207325​.­cms.

chapter 13

Q

All Broken Up and Dancing looking at katrina kaif in eight gifs Kuhu Tanvir

Actress Katrina Kaif has been in the Hindi film industry since 2003 and has been plagued by harsh criticism of her acting abilities for the entirety of her nearly two-­ decade-­long ­career. Beginning with Boom in 2003, Kaif was often dismissed as essentially a model and was routinely mocked for her jarringly accented Hindi diction. Now, with a formidable fifty-­plus films u ­ nder her b ­ elt, Kaif is one of Bollywood’s most successful actresses and has played leading roles in numerous big-­ticket films such as Race,1 Ek Tha Tiger,2 and most recently, Bharat.3 And yet, while she is appreciated for her beauty and her dancing skills, her roles in films are far from meaty, and as she acknowledges, she is rarely the first choice for acting-­ heavy, challenging roles.4 Kaif joined the social media site Instagram in April 2017 with a photo of herself sitting on a pool chair, looking into the camera, with a comfortable smile.5 In an interview about her “Instagram debut,” she explains why she fi­nally joined Instagram a­ fter years of resisting invites from fellow Bollywood actors. She says, “The ­t hing that changed my mind for me is that it would be nice if I had some say on what was put out t­ here about me.” As further explanation, she goes to some pains to establish the authenticity of her account, saying, “I manage my Instagram myself, it is not handled by a team, I see the pictures, I post comments . . . ​it is a personal platform for me.”6 In the same interview, she also asserts that in 90 ­percent of the photos she posts she is not wearing any makeup. A scroll down her Instagram page belies t­ hose claims b ­ ecause, despite her statements about the world’s obsession with “selfie-­culture,” most of the photos look like standard, star-­promotional material, likely shot by professional photog­raphers, usually in photo shoots. As with several other celebrities, for Katrina Kaif too, Instagram is an ave­nue to control her star-­text, to ­counter the unflattering pictures taken by the paparazzi, by offering pictures that can claim a higher degree of proximity and authenticity to the star herself, pictures that can make it seem like the fan is actually conversing with her. 181

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While the use of online social media may be a relatively new tool, stars have always tried to control their public persona, with varying degrees of success. And yet, despite their direct, hands-on involvement in controlling their social media platforms that seems to suggest a higher degree of authenticity, the explosion of formal and informal ave­nues for almost anyone to post anything about a star has rendered the star-­text uncontrollable. This essay examines the GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) as a form that can destabilize the star persona by giving the user the ability to extract exactly what they like from a star’s film, a commercial, a live per­for­mance, and so forth, and share it with anyone who has access to the internet, essentially working outside the star’s ability to control his or her image. The Tumblr page in consideration ­here is dedicated to the song “Dhoom Machale” from Dhoom:3 (Acharya 2013), and it is created by a user who identifies herself as preitysrkfan and is based in Germany.7 The Tumblr consists of eight GIFs that have captured images of Katrina Kaif from dif­fer­ent moments of “Dhoom Machale” as it appears in Dhoom:3. A brief description of ­t hese images may be useful ­here. Each image captures a few seconds from the song, and while some of the GIFs ­were created for presenting a glamorous image of Kaif, some ­others capture the awkwardness of the extraction of one moment, more than anything ­else. They are defined, essentially, by their evident incompleteness. The movements extracted include chest and pelvic thrusts, and some, with Kaif ’s hair blowing into her face, seem not unlike a shampoo commercial. The questions driving this examination are multifold: First, how does this fragmented material extracted from a film alter the pre­sen­ta­tion of the star? Second, what impact does the GIF’s endless loop format have on how Kaif’s body is both presented and consumed? Third, in what ways do t­ hese GIFs fragment the original song, and Kaif’s image both in the filmic text and in the more curated paratextual material (like her Instagram account), and how do ­t hese pro­cesses of fragmentation alter the nature of fan activity and visual exchange involved in the acts of consuming films and creating or extrapolating GIFs from them? The song’s relationship to the narrative and in par­tic­u­lar to the diegesis in Hindi cinema has been a long-­debated point with no easy answers, since each song sequence fragments the film in unique ways and to varying degrees. Film songs can have a logic of circulation and afterlives that are not attached to the original film they ­were ­housed in. What this means is that since they can be consumed as in­de­pen­dent media objects, they can very well engender a relationship between the viewer and the star’s image that exceeds the aesthetic configurations of the film. Scholars of popu­lar Indian cinema have demonstrated that the song is not merely an attraction but also the space that has the license to go beyond the par­ameters of realism that dictate the aesthetics of the film’s narrative. The song performs the function of “augmenting our sense of the world of the fiction” by articulating the excess that is other­wise contained, if not repressed, in the rest of the film.8 This could mean exceeding the bounds of social or po­l iti­cal address by couching an expression of romance, erotics, or a po­liti­cal critique in the framework of an attraction. Further, as Sangita Gopal suggests, the song sequence not only interrupts the

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diegesis but in fact opens the relatively closed world of the plot and the narrative as it introduces “spatiotemporalities” that can be well beyond the con­ve­niently enclosed plot structure. While the ­music and lyr­ics of a Hindi film song constitute one way to perform excess, the other is dance, which has historically been a regular accompaniment to song sequences in popu­lar Hindi films. The popu­lar memory of a song often includes visuals from the film of stars performing a choreographed dance. Usha Iyer has argued that dance is the site where cultural anx­i­eties about sexuality are played out: “The regime of per­for­mance including facial expressions and physical movement is significantly altered as a mode of reception. Audiences pay much more attention, suddenly, to limbs and torsos and their movement through space.”9 Iyer suggests that Madhuri Dixit ushered in a more heightened erotic charge to film dance, which ­earlier was ­limited to the vamp figure, who was almost always peripheral to the film’s narrative and was therefore able to emphasize her body as a sexual object more freely. The reference to Madhuri is particularly significant in the context of globalization, since her star persona was dominant in the 1980s and 1990s. This period saw a shift in the anx­i­eties around a generalized notion of Indianness, which strug­gled u ­ nder the opposing appeals of global access and “Indian values.” I would argue that this palpable shift in the mode of viewing and the kind of engagement is crucial to understanding the star’s body as a specific kind of attraction presented to the audience, wherein the song and dance sequence becomes a way to direct the audience’s attention t­ oward the star as an erotic body. In other words, while the song is not the only place in the film that the star’s body might be presented as a sexual object, it is nevertheless the place where this can be done with extensive leeway in social restrictions. In some senses, then, preitysrkfan’s Tumblr of Katrina Kaif dance moves in Dhoom:3 is constructed in such a way that the par­tic­u­lar attention given to Kaif’s body pushes Iyer’s argument to its logical limit; each of t­ hese GIFs can be seen as the most literal manifestation of an audience paying attention to each individual limb of the star in a dance per­for­mance. As a format, a GIF is something of an amalgamation of a still photo­graph and a short video, as it pulls out a snippet from a moving image and freezes it, resembling a clip. What is dif­fer­ent is that it is an endless repetitive loop, so the same ­little nugget w ­ ill run endlessly. Thus, it is the animation or movement that makes a GIF file dif­fer­ent from a JPEG file, which is the standard format for image files. The crucial point of distinction, however, is that as an image format, the GIF does not have any sound. In other words, this par­tic­u­lar set of GIFs are indexed ­under the name of the song “Dhoom Machale,” and yet the song itself is missing, bringing the sole focus on the visuals of Katrina Kaif. Further, this Tumblr does not make its legacy evident, and even though e­ very GIF is from “Dhoom Machale,” the song and the film are barely identifiable. In other words, all ele­ments other than Kaif’s body and its highly fragmented dance moves are erased; what remains is an ultrastreamlined media object that caters only to looking at Kaif’s body. Six out of eight of the individual GIFs are close-­ups of her body, thus making the song irrelevant in its aural and visual integrity. The most obvious evidence of this is the

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removal of Aamir Khan, who originally appears in the visuals attached to the song. I would suggest that ­t hese erasures are not a loss ­because in the short span of time that each GIF captures, the attention is meant to be on the face or body of Katrina Kaif, and t­ here is no room left (quite literally) for the context or any image that brings attention to the film. The choice of GIF as a format is one whose prime significance is that it enables the creation of a media object that is ontologically wedded to fragmentation. It not only strips the sound altogether but also f­ rees itself from the need for sound altogether. In other words, it is not just the film object that is fragmented; the expectation associated with the original song object also is reconfigured. As the star’s body is extracted from the song and placed in an entirely dif­fer­ent context, with no title, no note of intent, and nearly no memory of where the song came from, the original film and song become utterly incidental, reduced to a redundancy. The Dhoom franchise just happens to be one of the sources for this fan to extract images of Kaif; it may as well have been some other song, from some other film. For this user, the film thus does not remain a film, with a narrative; it becomes, instead, a reservoir of images of Kaif. The creation of this series of Tumblr GIFs from the original song and dance sequence entails two distinct but connected ways in which the film’s diegesis is fractured: through stages of fragmentation and erasure, the GIF emerges as the furthest limit of extracting the star’s body from narrative and character, and presenting her as a fragment. If we think of the song and dance sequence and a Tumblr collection of GIFs of that sequence, we are essentially concerned with two dif­fer­ent but connected ways in which the diegesis of the film can be fractured. I would pose them as stages of fragmentation and erasure wherein the GIF is the furthest limit of extracting the star’s body from the narrative and presenting that as a fragment. Diluting the context of the film to extract and foreground the star as a body and a commodity has historically been associated with star photos. Fans have collected ­t hese in the form of pinups and centerfolds in magazines, postcards, and posters in e­ very film culture. ­These objects become the focal point of a fan’s relationship with the star that operates in excess of the film and its narrative. To some extent, then, the GIF can be considered as belonging to the same genre of images, insofar as it is an extraction that allows sole focus on the star. However, the discourse around the GIF is overwhelmed by how it surpasses the limitations of the still photo­graph since it emerged as a file format in 1987 to allow “static” web pages to have moving or animated images that would work on the low bandwidth of dial-up internet connections.10 Speaking about the GIF as a con­ temporary mode of quotation, Michael Z. Newman argues that since a GIF can capture movement, it can quote “a dance, a stunt, a gesture, and glance at least 1000 times better than a still.”11 If we think of the potential offered by the GIF in terms of accessing a star’s body, the possibility of pure movement captured in its most desirable, minute moments does in fact surpass the stasis offered by the still. In his study of stardom, Richard Dyer argues that pinups of movie stars are constructed along gender lines. He suggests that “the female model typically averts

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her eyes, expressing modesty, patience and a lack of interest . . . ​t he male model looks ­either off or up . . . ​his look suggests an interest in something ­else that the viewer cannot see.”12 What this indicates is the degree of choreography that goes into crafting the pinup, which is a very carefully constructed form, with the star consciously modeling him-­or herself in dif­fer­ent postures, with dif­fer­ent gazes. Stars are often even being directed to adopt looks or postures by the photographer, who has a certain audience in mind. The syntax of the pinup has of course seen several variations, not just in terms of differences in size and where they are found but, more significantly, in how they are constructed both aesthetically and in terms of gender politics. The codes of repre­sen­ta­tion are still divided along gender lines, even though ­t here are some changes in the codes of “looking,” and with relative flexibility in how the audience is meant to perceive the star. Kaif’s careful collection of photos on her Instagram account, for instance, illustrates the ways the star can look at the camera, inviting the viewer’s gaze, but also seeming to speak back to it. She can look directly at the camera, but t­ here is more than one kind of looking into the camera—it can be erotically inviting, or combative, or simply smiling or making a conscious attempt to look goofy by making f­ aces, or by appearing to not be posing for the camera at all. This strict control levied on the making of the pinup is in stark contrast with the composition of the GIF, which is much more unstable in terms of control. In the first instance, it can be argued that the film is also a strictly controlled product that is made in as self-­conscious a manner as the pinup. However, the fact of fragmentation is key to the difference. If we look at the “Dhoom Machale” Tumblr, each GIF loop is barely a second in duration, and two of them have Kaif d ­ oing a somewhat awkward chest thrust. This moment w ­ ill likely not draw attention in the video of the song b ­ ecause it gets contextualized in the overall choreography of the song. Once it is extracted and presented as an almost in­de­pen­dent entity, the viewer has no choice but to pay attention to what was most likely one small part of a dance step, and a not particularly salutary or aesthetically suave or pleasing one, at least not in a conventional sense. Newman theorizes the GIF consists of moments that “are plucked out of the fabric of the film, revealing the unique quality of a per­for­mance, body, a face. The epitome of a style, the essence of a character, the allure of the film, its erotic charge”13. While it is true that the form allows the kind of contemplated craft that Newman ascribes to it, in the case of Katrina Kaif’s “Dhoom Machale” GIFs, we are more likely to find dance movements caught in awkward moments. This indicates that while ­t here are the aesthetically standardized GIFs that are more in tune with the cultivated star image, t­ here is also room for the untidy, unglamorous, purely affective needs and desires of the fan. What is of essence ­here is the difference between a cinephile that Newman pre­sents and the fan; the cinephile’s object of interest is the film itself, whereas the fan is interested in a specific part of the film, in this case, the star. In this par­tic­u­lar comparative grid, the cinephile is attributed its own kind of official status, as a figure that has the desire and intellect to analyze the film and its nuances. The GIF, on the other hand, is the fan’s mode of expression

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as it undermines the construction and control of the finished film product and of the star persona. Having said that, it would be inaccurate to suggest that the difference between the fan and the cinephile is by no means absolute, b ­ ecause they are both figures that exist outside the institutional machinery of film production and distribution. In this collection of GIFs—as well as numerous ­others indexed u ­ nder “Katrina Kaif Dhoom,” Kaif is extrapolated from the film and presented as a certain kind of spectacle, for a plea­sure that may be related to the film text (the song in this case), but is also an in­de­pen­dent entity, with a separate plea­sure economy. This fragmenting activity has a bearing on the relationship between the image and time ­because it changes the way viewers experience the image. For instance, how does a se­lection of this nature impact the politics of excess that the song and dance sequence communicates for the film? A moment that may other­wise have been ignored is brought to the forefront and given a duration of its own, thus forcing the spectator to pay attention to it. Writing about the functioning of GIFs, Graig Uhlin explains, “[Its] repetition indicates that a viewer is not guided along by a narrative structuring of time. The viewer is rather caught up in the GIF’s temporal suspension: to view it is to be captivated.”14 Thus, it is not just the extraction but the repetition that ensures that the fragmented moment that has been pulled out of the narrative is acknowledged for its existence and its in­de­pen­dence. The endlessly repetitive looping that is characteristic of the GIF is perhaps its most distinctive feature, b ­ ecause it does not remain an image or a clip but becomes something ­else in its relentless renewals. Oddly, the shorter the clip, the more we are inclined to keep watching it. As a degree of control is taken away from the viewer, ­t here is no pause button, no way to stop it, and ­until you close the page or scroll away, it w ­ ill keep looping. As a result, on the one hand, as Andreas Treske says, the GIF becomes the part of the movie that the viewer has seen the most number of times, and ­because it keeps rolling like a film, it takes on the affect of a film, making it seem like we are watching a series of events unfolding that are rolling out in front of us as they do in a film narrative. The caveat ­here is that while the rolling movement likens it to the affect of film, as a form the GIF is not dedicated to narrative at all. It is instead interested in the minutiae of expression or gesture that may other­wise be overlooked. Furthermore, Treske suggests that the combination of the minute with endless repetition can change the meaning of the moment we are watching. As he proposes: “The loop repeats and pre­sents a new object, an action becoming absurd, losing its purpose and becoming meaningless, representing a constant failure, a strug­gle in an endless circle of repetition. Anything can become a GIF, anything can be looped to the point of absolute banality.”15 Two ­t hings are of significance ­here, First of all, at the most basic level, the clip itself w ­ ill be rendered banal by the endless repetition, almost clearing the snippet of the meaning it once held. It not only has been snatched from its original narrative context and planted into a new one, but the repetition eventually even exceeds what­ever meaning the new context ascribes to the GIF. In some sense, then, it can be argued that as the meaning gets diluted or

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erased, or transformed completely, the clip becomes pure movement. Preitysrkfan’s Tumblr similarly erases the context of the film as well as the ­music and lyr­ics of “Dhoom Machale,” ostensibly to focus on the dance. This seems like a natu­ral choice b ­ ecause of the relative extractibility of song and dance sequences in popu­ lar Hindi cinema, particularly ­because the dance per­for­mance is a vis­i­ble space to foreground the body of the actors. Iyer argues that the dance sequence puts forward the star body “as a body rather than as a vehicle for a diegetic character.”16 In other words, the dance sequence is one where it is permissible to pre­sent and consequently to watch and pay attention to the star’s body. The response to Katrina Kaif’s dance per­for­mance in “Dhoom Machale” exemplifies the emphasis on the body. While the per­for­mance garnered scathing reviews for its unoriginality and lack of spirit, fans and critics alike mentioned that while the awkward “gyrating” dance movements w ­ ere disappointing, “The saving grace is the red-­lipped Katrina in her sexy leather corset outfit.”17 The star body is thus presented as a spectacle in and of itself that not only can circulate as an object in its own right but also offers a register of plea­sure that is dif­fer­ent from diegetic plea­sure and satisfaction. Looking at the princi­ples of fragmentation in preitysrkfan’s Tumblr complicates this to a degree. On the one hand, it seems to push the focus on Katrina Kaif, as a body, to its limit, since each GIF is a se­lection that focuses on her physicality, which gets further enhanced in the absence of any supplemental sound or narrative that could serve as an anchor or as a home. It does not remain a song or a dance, and the only way to identify it is to call it a Tumblr, though that does not provide any real generic or visual description. This breaking down also begs a reconsideration of the kind of plea­sure that is at play ­here, ­because it is not simply the aesthetic or choreography-­centric plea­sure provided by dance. While a picture or pinup of Katrina Kaif’s body in a shot from this song could serve an erotic purpose, the constant repetition and renewal complicates that. Treske calls this a “somnambulist kind of plea­sure,”18 where what is happening has been repeated and watched so many times that it has lost meaning, but it still has a hold on you that keeps you watching. The compressed nature of the GIF is significant with reference to modes of viewing the film and its fragments, and of accessing and relating to the star. The compression is quite literal in the first instance. From its origin in the late 1980s, the GIF has relied on two stages of compression as a file format: the first being lossy palletization and the second the Lempel-­Ziv-­Welch (LZW) stage. Lossy palletization is of par­tic­u­lar significance ­because it refers to the reduction of the color palette of an image to the very basic 256 colors. The word “lossy” indicates that the image loses its vibrancy and color complexity in order to become lighter and hence more transportable. What this means in terms of a big-­budget song like “Dhoom Machale” is that the loss is more than just symbolic; it is literal in that the pro­cess of GIFication is literally stripping the gloss of the image away, thus breaking down the perfectly curated image of the popu­lar Hindi film star. The switch from celluloid to digital is central to this discussion ­because the bigger production ­houses in the Bombay film industry are still dedicated to using celluloid for its superior

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picture quality and perception of depth and color. Stars have historically rejected being filmed by digital cameras in order to maintain the right look for the big screen. The GIF undoes this careful craft and control drastically more than a digital camera would. Despite the loss of quality and, perhaps consequently, of glamour, the GIF has persisted as a mode of extraction and expression. Janez Strehovec argues that the GIF is an ideal form of con­temporary culture b ­ ecause it is conducive to neat spatiotemporal packaging of material that aims to achieve an affect wherein a user can get “as much stimuli in the shortest time pos­si­ble.”19 If we think about it in terms of the differences between a film and its fragment, it comes down to a ­matter of time span; as Treske argues, the GIF is able to gain and maintain attention for the entirety of its duration and beyond as the viewer becomes transfixed on the endless repetition of the minor action. Preitysrkfan’s Tumblr collection of GIFs of Kaif in “Dhoom Machale” offers yet another form of compression—by means of se­lection. By breaking the song down to pick eight other­wise unremarkable moments that are dedicated solely to Katrina Kaif as opposed to the film or even her more established costar Aamir Khan, who dominates screen time in the film, preitysrkfan performs a compressing action wherein the song is reduced to eight audioless GIFs. To be sure, by no means is this a summary ­because the Tumblr is not looking for a comprehensive or representative narrative strategy; it is merely a compression of the song into what is useful for this user. Thus, it can be argued that the GIF as a form lies at the intersection of compression and intensity, making it a form most potent as it compresses the excess into a few moments that are focused singularly on the star’s body, erasing not just the diegesis but the entire mise-­en-­scène of the film. The question, then, is, what happens when this perfect storm meets the song and dance sequence, which in itself is a vehicle and expression of excess and desire? Newman implies that as a form of extraction, a GIF holds the erotic charge of a film, and while he means the entire film, this is expressly true of the song and dance number of the popu­lar Hindi film. In the context of preitysrkfan’s GIFs of Katrina Kaif in “Dhoom Machale,” I would argue that the economy of space and time offered by this form can put it ­under im­mense pressure to contain the excess of the content at hand as it becomes more focused on presenting the body, as a body to be desired, as an unapologetically erotic object. Further, the GIF, as Hampus Hagman argues, is a form that defies closure in f­avor of enduring suspension.20 The similarities with the song and dance sequence are striking. Just as in the Hindi film song, where the star body becomes central to the erotic desires contained in the film, the GIF becomes a form for a simultaneous suspension and continuation of excess. The intervention of the user who performs the l­ abor of extraction is vital to what any GIF is, why it exists, and for whom. This user is variously referred to as the “produser” or the “prosumer” to indicate the merging of the producer, the user, and the consumer. The contours of the GIF reflect the preferences of the user, who can be a fan, but is not always. Preitysrkfan’s Tumblr profile and username—­t hat

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references Bollywood stars Preity Zinta and Shah Rukh Khan—­clearly indicate that she posts as a fan. She picks images of stars that she likes, converts most of them to GIFs, and posts them to her Tumblr page. The pro­cess of se­lection and re-­ production effectively makes her a producer of a new product. The awkwardness of some of the moments the GIFs capture is precisely what establish preitysrkfan as a quasi-­producer ­because she has not only made her mark on the product but has in fact made an entirely new product that captures the awkward chest thrust, that was other­wise all but absent. The centrality of the produser is being buttressed ­here b ­ ecause the GIF is established as a physical establishment of the fan’s spectatorial experience. What is pertinent is the relationship between the star and the fan (or, rather, between the fan and the star’s image) ­because the GIF as a form allows the fan to manipulate the star’s image to a degree; it manifests the fan’s desire for the star and, perhaps to an extent, the desire to undercut the star’s perfect image. In some senses, then, the viewer of the GIF is not seeing the film, but is seeing only the star and, more impor­tant, is seeing the star only in the way the fan has chosen to pre­sent her. With the se­lection she has made, preitysrkfan has invested the Tumblr with more than just screen captures from the song, making it a personalized vision of a fan, which depended on the film for raw material but has ultimately exceeded the film, at least for this fan and perhaps for some viewers of the Tumblr as well. The loop, Lev Manovich has argued, is part of the genesis of cinema as all protocinematic devices up ­until the kinetoscope utilized short loops.21 Further, he suggests that as the stronghold of narrative and in par­tic­u­lar narrative realism took over, the attraction inherent in the repetitions of the loop was pushed to the realm of unsophisticated “low art forms,” in order to “put forward a notion of ­human existence as a linear progression through narrative events.” Thus, in some ways, the GIF is a remnant of the early attractions of cinematic technology. Its incredibly short duration, combined with its habitat ­limited to the informal, user-­produced cir­cuits of the internet, has relegated it to the margins of both cinema and art. The endlessly repetitive loop and the capturing of awkward moments has made GIFs a format most suitable for jokes on the internet. For Uhlin, this structure of time and the multiple uses of fragments of a film, and the inherent instability of this form can liken GIFs to what Walter Benjamin theorized as “play,” which exceeds the circumscription of stable categories and focuses on an “intermediary zone” that holds potential for acquiring dif­fer­ent meanings. Uhlin argues that the GIF similarly “occupies this intermediary zone, pressing its excerpts of popu­lar cultural texts into dif­fer­ent uses.” It is of course the enabled spectator who does the work of attaching dif­fer­ent texts together and giving the same few moments of a film a multitude of meanings. Thus, in the instability of the fragment, the afterlife of the film becomes that much more varied, deeper, and endlessly more colorful.

notes 1. ​ Race, directed by Abbas-­Mastan (2008; India: Tips Films). DVD, 149 mins. 2. ​ Ek Tha Tiger, directed by Kabir Khan (2012; India: Yash Raj Films). DVD, 133 minutes.

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3. ​ Bharat, directed by Ali Abbas Zafar (2019; India: Reel Life Productions). DVD, 153 minutes. 4. ​Pinkvilla Desk, “Katrina Kaif: I Am Not the First Choice for Offbeat Films B ­ ecause I Tend to Do Large Scale Films,” Pinkvilla​.­com, last modified July 1, 2019, https://­w ww​.­pinkvilla​ .­com​/­entertainment​/­news​/­k atrina​-­k aif​-­i​-­a m​-­not​-­fi rst​-­choice​-­offbeat​-­fi lms​-­because​-­i​-­tend​ -­do​-­large​-s­ cale​-fi ­ lms​-­458845. 5. ​Katrina Kaif ’s Instagram page: https://­w ww​.­instagram​.­com​/­p​/­BTYiM4vAnNx ​/­​?­taken​ -­by​=k­ atrinakaif. 6. ​The Quint, “Katrina Kaif Is Her Own Instagram Man­ag­er,” last modified April 29, 2017, https://­w ww​.­youtube​.c­ om​/­watch​?­v ​= ­apKnKtiYSA4. 7. ​Preitysrkfan, created November 1, 2014, http://­preitysrkfan​.­tumblr​.­com​/­post​/7­ 2926416239. This Tumblr is created by a person who identifies him/herself as Dyugu from Germany, and the Tumblr username is preitysrkfan (profile can be found at http://­preitysrkfan​.­tumblr​.c­ om​/­). 8. ​Ravi Vasudevan, The Melodramatic Public: Film Form and Spectatorship in India (Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2010), 210. 9. ​Usha Iyer, “Stardom Ke Peeche Kya Hai?/What Is ­behind the Stardom? Madhuri Dixit, the Production Number, and the Construction of the Female Star Text in 1990s Hindi Cinema,” Camera Obscura 30, no. 3 (90) (2015): 133, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1215​/­02705346​-­3160674. 10. ​Andrea Treske, Video Theory: Online Video Aesthetics or the Afterlife of Video (Bielefeld, Germany: transcript Verlag, 2015). 11. ​Michael Z. Newman, “GIFs: The Attainable Text,” Film Criticism 40, no. 1 (January 2016) (unpaginated), http://­d x​.­doi​.­org​/­10​.­3998​/f­ c​.1­ 3761232​.­0040​.­123. 12. ​Richard Dyer, Only Entertainment (New York: Routledge, 1992), 123. 13. ​Richard Dyer, Only Entertainment (New York: Routledge, 1992), 123. 14. ​Graig Uhlin, “Playing in the Gif(t) Economy,” Games and Culture 9, no. 6 (2014): 520. https://­doi​.­org​/1­ 0​.1­ 177​/­1555412014549805. 15. ​Uhlin. 16. ​Uhlin. 17. ​“Dhoom 3: Katrina Kaif’s Dhoom Machale Falls Flat against Aishwarya Rai’s,” International Business Times, November 17, 2013, http://­w ww​.­ibtimes​.­co​.­in​/­d hoom​-­3​-­k atrina​-­k aifs​ -­d hoom​-­machale​-­d hoom​-­falls​-­flat​-­against​-­a ishwarya​-­rai​-­bachchan039s​-­rendition​-­v ideos​ -­522791. 18. ​“Dhoom 3.” 19. ​Janez Strehovec, “Text as Loop,” MelbourneDAC (2003), https://­p oetikhars​.c­ om​ /­f iles​/­deneme​/­text ​_­as​_­a ​_ ­loop​.­pdf. 20. ​Hampus Hagman, “The Digital Gesture: Rediscovering Cinematic Movement through GIFs,” Refractory: A Journal of Entertainment and Media, Special Issue on Digital Cartography: Screening Space, no. 21, December 2012, http://­refractory​.­u nimelb​.­edu​.­au​/­2012​/­1 2​/­29​ /­hagman​/­. 21. ​Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), 265.

chapter 14

Q

Reshaping “Bollywood” dissident new media femininities and hindi cinema Tanushree Ghosh

In a 2018 roundtable discussion among Hindi film producers conducted by Anupama Chopra, participants such as Siddharth Roy Kapur and Karan Johar bemoaned the inevitable decline of “Bollywood,” citing the rise of digital media and the lack of relevant content as key reasons for shrinking audiences at film theaters.1 Indeed, digital content available for consumption online has exploded in the last de­cade. The “rising demographic of India’s population, aged less than 30, with privileged access to social media,” has greatly contributed to the success of channels offering digital content.2 The last few years have seen the rise of streaming channels including TVF, which produces hugely popu­lar original web series such as Pitchers, Permanent Roommates, Tripling, and Yeh Meri ­Family.3 With 12 million cumulative views in two years, Permanent Roommates, for instance, is now one of the most-­v iewed series on YouTube anywhere in the world.4 Netflix has also joined the bandwagon with original content through shows such as Ghoul, Lust Stories, and Sacred Games.5 Lust Stories was, according to a CNN Tech article, “more popu­lar with Netflix users in India than ‘House of Cards’ or ‘Narcos’ ­were with Netflix viewers in the United States when they w ­ ere first released.”6 YouTube now is replete with short films, web series, reaction videos, and parodies that pre­sent a dif­fer­ent, more youthful, face of urban India than what usually may be found in Hindi cinema. For this essay, I focus mostly on LargeShortFilms, a production com­pany set up by Royal Stag Barrel Select Whisky, and two very popu­lar web series, TVF’s Permanent Roommates and ­Little ­Things.7 The latter series started as a Filtercopy and Dice Media web series but was acquired by Netflix for its second season. LargeShortFilms has produced short films that have won awards at multiple film festivals. Reportedly, the platform “has achieved 267+ million reach, 627+ million views, 5.5+ lakh subscribers on YouTube and more than one million followers on Facebook with an engagement rate of 5+%.”8 The short films often feature actors, such as Manoj Bajpayee, 191

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Radhika Apte, and Shefali Shah, and directors, such as Anurag Kashyap, Imtiaz Ali, and Sujoy Ghosh, who are well known for their work in Hindi films. Recent web series like Sacred Games, Mirzapur, Ghoul, and Made in Heaven also feature well-­k nown actors from the Hindi film fraternity, like Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Saif Khan, and Kalki Koechlin.9 Their roles in short films and web series build on and add to their star or directorial texts in in­ter­est­ing ways. Additionally, actors from miniseries, such as Sumeet Vyas from Permanent Roommates and Mithila Palkar from ­Little ­Things, move between the digital space and Hindi cinema, carry­i ng their New Media star-­texts with them, and implicitly shaping respective content in both New Media and Bollywood. In this essay, I explore how New Media narratives resist the repre­sen­ta­tional paradigm often spotted in postliberalization Hindi cinema wherein the Indian ­woman’s negotiation of tradition and modernity recuperates and reconfigures cinematic forms of nationalism. Unlike the hero-­centric narratives in mainstream Hindi cinema, which remain the norm even with the emergence of multiplex cinemas and diverse scripts, the short films overwhelmingly feature w ­ omen protagonists while the web series pre­sent ­women characters as equal subjects of narrative attention. The identificatory dynamic found in this emergent digital new media complicates the normative tropes in Hindi cinema of the w ­ oman as ­either love interest, self-­effacing wife/mother, or wronged avenger. Significant differences, such as corporate sponsorship, streaming content, and the immediacy of audience interaction and feedback, allow for forms of storytelling in New Media that are more transgressive as compared with Hindi cinema, which remains bound by both its cinematic repre­sen­ta­t ional traditions, which reflect dominant cultural ideologies, and the more repressive control of the Censor Board. While the censorship of streaming content is very much a contentious issue in India, the lack of consensus and indeterminate government policy have resulted in repre­sen­ta­tional freedom in digital content to a degree not seen in Hindi cinema.10 I posit that the outcome of ­t hese key differences in production, circulation, and, most significantly, reception generates forms of femininity and gender dynamics that are novel and subversive and that offer sites to dissent against Hindi cinema’s hegemonic gender ideologies. This essay, then, is also an investigation of the relationship between the New ­Woman and new media, or an exercise in assessing how opting out of mainstream Hindi film format opens up new modes of repre­sen­ ta­tion of the postliberalization ­woman.

New ­Woman in New Media I should clarify that I depend on the definition of New Media that “identifies it with the use of a computer for distribution and exhibition rather than production.”11 Lev Manovich observes that “­today we are in the ­middle of a new media revolution—­the shift of all culture to computer-­mediated forms of production, distribution, and communication. . . . ​the computer media revolution affects all stages of communication, including acquisition, manipulation, storage, and dis-

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tribution; it also affects all types of media—­texts, still images, moving images, sound, and spatial constructions.”12 Robert Logan also characterizes New media as “very easily pro­cessed, stored, transformed, retrieved, hyperlinked and, perhaps most radical of all, easily searched for and accessed.”13 An impor­tant point of distinction between older forms of mass media and new media lies in the collaborative and interactive role of viewers. The short films and web series that I discuss h ­ ere definitely do not allow interactivity along the lines of gaming platforms or even, for instance, a viewer-­driven media experience, such as the interactive episode recently offered by the Netflix dystopian series Black Mirror.14 However, they do operate within the interface of YouTube and digital channels, granting viewers ease of access across a range of screens as well as ave­nues of immediate response and debate in the comment section. The short films and web series also routinely provide fodder for another form of online community and YouTube genre called reaction videos. Channels such as Jaby Koay, Our Stupid Reactions, and PakistaniReacts cater to viewers who prefer to watch the trailers, short films, and web series with the hosts of ­t hese reaction channels and carry on discussions in the comments section. Viewers subscribe to ­these reaction channels, suggest trailers and web series that the hosts might react to, and watch or rewatch this content with the hosts. At a time when Hindi cinema moves ­toward the epic and spectacular, with films such as Bahubali, Bajirao Mastani, and Padmavat attempting to woo audiences back to theaters, the digital content being produced represents a radical turn ­toward the ordinary, lived experience, mostly pertaining to the urban and middle-­class India, but offering a repre­sen­ta­tional paradigm distinctly dif­fer­ent from commercial Hindi cinema.15 In ­doing so, the scriptwriters and directors of the short films and web series invoke the ­middle cinema of the 1970s to explain their deviation from the standard repre­sen­ta­t ional norms of “Bollywood”: the cinema of Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Sai Paranjpye, and Basu Bhattacharya. For instance, Jaydeep Sarkar, the director of Nayantara’s Necklace, a story about the toxic social aspirations of the Indian ­middle class, explains that his film draws from his observation of middle-­class life: “Hindi films are mostly seen as an escape. ­W hether it is the audiences or the filmmakers, they ­don’t want to see their daily trou­bles on-­screen. Cinema has become time pass. I ­don’t think ­t here are films right now which talk about the monotony of life, which we saw in the films of 70s. Govind Nihalani’s ‘Party’ was one such film, which talks about us.”16 Mithila Palkar, assaying the role of Kavya in the runaway hit web series ­Little ­Things, reiterates this sentiment: “Our show is about l­ ittle t­ hings, it’s not dramatic. Th ­ ere’s no deliberate conflict in it. We have not gone out of our way to make it more dramatic. It is about trying to find fun in the mundane.”17 Madhava M. Prasad has argued that the Hindi film industry countered the establishment of the National Film Development Corporation in 1975 as a “parallel industry with an alternative aesthetic program” with middle-­class cinema characterized by “an aesthetic of authenticity and simplicity.”18 Films such as Anand (1970), Bawarchi (1972), Rajnigandha (1974), Chhoti Si Baat (1976), and Katha (1982)

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successfully combined commercial motives with realistic repre­sen­ta­tion of middle-­ class lives and strug­gles.19 ­Middle cinema, as per Prasad’s reading, was invested in asserting the national role of the ­middle class and consolidating middle-­class identity around issues that dealt with class-­based anx­i­eties, particularly around the susceptibility of ­women, postmarital tensions, the prob­lems of urban space, and the difficulty of privacy for young c­ ouples.20 I posit that the emergent new media in India, especially digital short films and web series, not only negotiates a nexus between social relevance and commercial interests similar to m ­ iddle cinema but also, and more impor­tant, allows a comparable focus on the everyday lived experience, which often does not find expression in Hindi cinema. Not all new media is progressive or dissident just ­because of formal or generic differences from mainstream cinema and media, but, as Mark Whitaker argues, the internet’s Habermasian presence can potentially act as “an alternative but proximate po­liti­cal landscape [and] provide a counter-­context in which dif­fer­ent possibilities can be displayed by ­people who would other­w ise be constrained from speech, and who can now speak to audiences they would other­w ise be unable to reach.”21 Significantly, then, while not entirely postcinematic, t­ hese films initiate a dif­fer­ent aesthetic, affective, and cultural paradigm that introduces the quotidian as a valid modality of subject formation and articulating lived experience. The establishing shots in most short films u ­ nder analy­sis in this essay situate the narratives firmly within the middle-­class domestic space. Worn appliances, peeling wall paint, clothes drying in hallways, and cramped kitchens constitute ­t hese spaces. The lighting is low-­key, emphasizing the everydayness of the space and of the characters who inhabit it. We often see close-­ups of hands preparing food or tea in the kitchen; t­ hese sequences are slow-­paced, taking their time and asking viewers to invest in actions and by extension ways of life that do not usually find repre­sen­ta­tion in commercial filmic storytelling. Tracking shots follow subjects as they navigate the stairways and passages connecting rooms, often very cramped spaces of their homes. Interestingly, the narrative rarely ventures out of the home; the focus on the domestic space is intense and rarely interrupted. The dialogue in most short films, but particularly the web series, is a recognizable urban hybrid that intermingles Hindi and En­glish; characters switch registers from speaking formally in the office to casually using swear words with friends. The use of this hybrid language, peppered with na, toh, yaar, opens up a linguistic paradigm dif­fer­ent from the Hindi-­Urdu base of Hindi cinema. While this admixture of Hindi and En­glish, the swift move from one language to another, or the easy combination of both to create a new hybrid form, signifies an urban, privileged use of language, it is not to be confused with a hybridity that springs from lack of access to En­glish. Instead, the language of ­t hese web series and short films creates a space that is representative of urban, middle-­class Indian youths and their experience.22 ­These aesthetic choices coupled with a focus on female protagonists also seem to resonate with feminist film practices that emphasize, to use Pam Cook’s phrase, “the personal, the intimate, the domestic.”23 While Cook looks at how feminist arti-

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sanal cinema recuperates the discourse of the domestic in cinema, by making “the f­ amily, the home, personal and sexual relationships” the loci of “drama and strug­gle,” her insight is useful in understanding the focus on the domestic and personal in the emergent new media in con­temporary Indian digital culture.24 We see the diegetic use of everyday familiar sounds, such as the background noise of TVs, the whirring of pedestal fans, ­water dripping in air coolers, and utensils clanging in the kitchen sink, but moments of personal crisis do not come packaged with nondiegetic musical cues. In films such as Anurag Kashyap’s The Day ­after That Day, the background news of sexual vio­lence against ­women and ­children remains a constant as we see ­women in the film not only get ready for work but also ready themselves to head out and face their harassers.25 Neeraj Ghaywan’s Juice opens with a black screen with the recognizable voice of the Indian journalist Barkha Dutt discussing the 2016 U.S. elections.26 Dutt ­counters the oft-­repeated criticism of Hillary Clinton being “unlikable” by pointing out that that par­tic­u ­lar charge is often levied against “tough ­women that ­don’t conform to a feminine ste­ reo­t ype.”27 Dutt’s commentary is interrupted by the raucous laughter of men who go on to criticize their new female boss. All of this diegetic work happens at the aural level before the fade-in reveals the female protagonist, Manju, played by Shefali Shah, kneeling on the floor, clearing leftover food from the coffee t­ able around which her husband and his colleagues are sitting, drinking, and snacking. We witness a familiar scene of gender-­segregated spaces in the home: the husband and his male colleagues occupy the living room, a space of leisure, plea­sure, and public discourse while Manju and the other ­women mostly remain in the kitchen, a space of discomfort and l­ abor, but also a space filled with rich conversations about their private lives as well as the pressures of social norms and expectations. Manju’s husband and his colleagues drink and discuss local and world politics, significantly endorsing Donald Trump’s brand of power­f ul masculinity. ­Women occupy the kitchen, the space of domestic l­abor; it is also a communal space, but conversations happen intermittently between work and despite the stifling heat. As the film evokes viewers’ sympathy for w ­ omen, especially Manju, who is si­mul­ ta­neously cooking, trying to attend to the comfort of her guests in the kitchen, and shooing c­ hildren away from the living room at her husband’s behest, through Parbatiya, the domestic worker, the film also highlights that discussions of patriarchy and power are further complicated by caste and class in India. We see oppressive norms move across generations as a young girl is cherry-­picked from a room full of c­ hildren to serve dinner to her “­brothers.” The moment of protest in this film is power­f ul in its simplicity: Manju pours herself a glass of fruit juice, drags a plastic chair into the living room, places it in front of the air cooler. She sits in front of the cool air, sips the juice, and looks at the men who have been startled into silence. As in The Day ­after That Day, where the film ends with a fight between harassed w ­ omen and their abusers, terrible in its silence interrupted only by visceral grunts and shrieks, silence in Juice is a crucial aesthetic choice and is used strategically. The articulation of protest and anger happens silently, without fanfare, with a tight close-up of Manju’s face and no

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verbal outbursts. Significantly, the film’s conclusion again evokes the idea of the unlikable ­woman; Manju’s minor revolt against the everyday experience of the unequal distribution of ­labor within the home and gender-­segregated spaces does not reverse the patriarchal power dynamic. The ­simple move of claiming a place in the room of comfort and leisure is unlikable; protest, one might say, happens in the realm of affect. Building on Elaine Scarry’s work, Vivian Sobchak notes: “Insofar as the photographic, the cinematic, and the electronic have each been objectively constituted as a new and discrete techno-­logic, each also has been subjectively incorporated, enabling a new and discrete perceptual mode of existential and embodied presence. In sum, as they have mediated and represented our engagement with the world, with ­others, and with ourselves, photographic, cinematic, and electronic technologies have transformed us so that we presently see, sense, and make sense of ourselves as quite other than we ­were before each of them existed.”28 ­These formations in Indian new media thus represent existing cultural realities but are also productive of subjectivities, extending and complicating how viewers make sense of the world and understand themselves. One of the most vis­i­ble configurations of identity is the formation of dissident femininities in new media. The emergent Indian New Media opens up a dif­fer­ent paradigm wherein to situate potentially more progressive formulations of gender identities, specifically femininities, as compared with Hindi cinema’s reactionary turn as a response to global media. From the 1990s onward, ­factors such as the influx of foreign money and international cultural influences, the increased visibility and appeal of the Hindu right, as well as the growing influence of the Indian diaspora in liberalized India generated cultural discourses that consolidated traditional gender roles, sometimes to reactionary proportions. Leela Fernandes and Jenny Sharpe, among ­others, have commented on how the Hindi film heroine, such as in films like Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (1995) and Pardes (1997), became a site of identity politics that took specific shape in postliberal India.29 Fernandes observes, “The potential disruption [of globalization and cultural hybridity] is managed through a remapping of the nation’s bound­a ries through a politics of gender which center around conflicts over the preservation of the purity of ­women’s sexuality, a pro­cess which once again conflates the preservation of nation-­ness with the protection of ­women.”30 However, I would like to suggest h ­ ere that instead of a singular reactionary turn ­toward a discourse on purity and Indian traditional values, the New ­Woman in Indian film, TV, and media might be better understood as a more complex, culturally hybrid figure. Rupal Oza, for instance, offers the possibility of complicating the narrative about repre­sen­ta­tion, gender, particularly femininity, and global modernities: “The creation of the new liberal Indian w ­ oman was registered in several discursive locations such as magazine articles, tele­v i­sion fictional narratives, and talk shows. Together, t­ hese narratives generated a vis­i­ble public archive in which the new w ­ oman entered as an icon of modernity.”31 In opposition to the oppressed traditional ­woman, the new modern ­woman was heralded as analogous to and an outcome of 1990s economic liberalization; her agency was often consti-

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tuted as her desires and choices as a consumer. Yet, Oza points out that ­these newer models of modern femininities did not break away from the patriarchal network; instead, ­t hese identities renegotiated modernities around existing and new forms of gender-­based inequalities and oppressions. Sushmita Chatterjee’s reading of the film En­glish Vinglish also offers a way to understand how postliberalization Hindi cinema negotiates the hybrid figure of the New ­Woman.32 Chatterjee argues that the ability to traverse the domestic and the global space (En­g lish) becomes the marker of the modern Indian ­woman, who is an upper-­or middle-­class, upper-­ caste Hindu.33 Two assumptions might be extrapolated from the critical discussion centered around the figure of the New W ­ oman just presented. First, the figure of the New ­Woman is not a cultural monolith. Th ­ ere are differences between the 1990s reactionary formulations of femininity as a response to globalization and economic liberalization and the cinema of the last de­cade that attempts more sincerely to grapple with newer, more modern forms of femininity. Second, it is also safe to posit that despite several attempts to imagine the New W ­ oman on-­screen, such as Queen (2014), Dangal (2016), and Tumhari Sulu (2017), Hindi cinema has more or less operated within the normative cultural par­ameters of femininity.34 The genre of a time-­bound film, the pressures of box office per­for­mance, and the anx­i­eties of censorship mostly ensure that femininities, even in their subversive expressions, remain contained within the dominant social mores. Rani in Queen, for instance, travels abroad to “find herself,” since such explorations would presumably be harder to situate in her West Delhi neighborhood; Dangal is an ambiguous narrative of female empowerment given the female protagonists’ utter lack of agency and their ­father’s rejection of every­t hing that is feminine in his desire to transform his ­daughters into effective wrestlers; Tumhari Sulu features a ­house­wife turned late-­ night radio show host who grapples with the lopsided power dynamic in her f­ amily as a result of her newfound ­career and resolves it fi­nally by jump-­starting her husband’s catering business. Of course, a­ fter the 1990s, t­here are Hindi films that push the envelope when it comes to articulating the New ­Woman, such as No One Killed Jessica (2011), Tanu Weds Manu (2011), Tanu Weds Manu Returns (2015), Kahaani (2012), Kahaani 2 (2016), Mary Kom (2014), Margarita with a Straw (2014), Neerja (2016), Secret Superstar (2017), Pataakha (2018), and Raazi (2018).35 Most of ­t hese films did well commercially and critically; however, they are still promoted and discussed as exceptional narratives featuring “woman-­centric” plots, which are hatke or dif­fer­ent from the typical hero-­oriented stories found in Hindi cinema.36 More impor­tant, while overlaps are certainly discernible between recent woman-­centric Hindi cinema and New Media, most characters in the previously mentioned Hindi films are placed in extraordinary circumstances, such as murders, a hostage crisis, domestic abuse, or espionage. Stories about ordinary female protagonists negotiating everyday prob­lems such as complications in the workplace, relationship issues, and identity crises are few and far between. Consider, for instance, the topic of premarital or extramarital sex. In most Hindi cinema, extramarital relationships have functioned as sensational ways of

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showcasing the hero’s moral decline (a filmic shorthand would be to show a dance number at a courtesan’s establishment or a kotha), while premarital sex usually led to tragic unwed ­mothers, such as in Dhool ka Phool (1959), Aradhana (1969), and Trishul (1978).37 From the 1990s onward, sexploitation films, like Raaz (2002), Jism (2003), and Murder (2004), also employed extramarital sex as a way to mark characters as morally ambiguous and visit h ­ uman or super­natural punishment 38 on them. In contrast to the rather polarized repre­sen­ta­tion of sexuality within and without marriage in Hindi cinema, the vicissitudes of marriage also become prominent themes in the emergent New Media; however, the topic is addressed without taking recourse to a binary morality. For example, Imtiaz Ali’s The Other Way (2018) employs the aesthetic of rewinding videotapes to offer a meditation on time, and how ­going back in time changes and adds layers to our sense of characters, their actions and motivations, versus a linear narrative.39 While the male narrator adds a jarring note of censure throughout, the film is in­ter­est­ing in ending with the photo­graph of the bride who—as viewers now know—­carries the baggage of a sexual past and flawed choices. As far as wedding movies go, this one definitely adds an ­angle we do not see often, if at all. Jyoti Kapur Das’s Chutney (2016) and Mansi Jain’s Churi (2017), both featuring Tisca Chopra, revolve around the character of a wife whose spouse is cheating on her.40 Yet, the films refuse to use the trope of the victimized wronged w ­ oman and instead employ dark comedy, adding agency to the wife’s character. While the female protagonist in Chutney transforms from a frumpy, neglected h ­ ouse­w ife to a garrulous storyteller narrating a gory tale of extramarital affairs between her brother-­i n-­law and the domestic worker’s wife and the death of all parties concerned, Churi complicates the idea of the wronged w ­ oman by showing the wife visiting the home of the other ­woman to calmly figure out a way to divide her husband’s time between their f­amily and his mistress, and strategically sabotaging the affair. Sujoy Ghosh’s Ahalya (2015) also employs the trope of extramarital sex by invoking the mythological tale of a naive Ahalya, who is tricked by the imposter demigod Indra and turned to stone for her unwitting adultery by her furious husband.41 In the film, however, the young wife becomes the object of desire without the eventual punishment. The film is shot predominantly from the point of view of the young male inspector who arrives at the artist’s h ­ ouse while investigating the disappearance of a male model. The young wife of the artist, played to perfection by Radhika Apte, is immediately sexualized. As she leads the policeman to the living room, the officer’s gaze and the camera linger on her body. Still, the narrative refuses to pigeonhole her as a sex-­starved young w ­ oman married to an older man. The vari­ous touches that happen between her and the policeman—­her fin­gers brushing against his as she hands him a cup of tea, her foot accidentally grazing his leg—­seem shrouded in ambiguity. By combining the young w ­ oman’s gestures, which are read as intentionally seductive by the policeman, with her obvious affection for her artist husband and candid expressions, the narrative refuses to immediately cast her in the role of the seductress. The ambiguity is critically significant

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as the narrative holds off moral censure of the young, seemingly promiscuous ­woman, thereby problematizing the policeman’s one-­sided desire for her. The film’s morality takes on the proportions of a fairy tale: the policeman who had been objectifying the young w ­ oman throughout the film ultimately becomes an object himself: a wooden miniature doll displayed in a showcase. At the end of the film, which seems to be a macabre social experiment on the psyche of the Indian male, another young man comes in through the door and the artist’s wife wags her fin­ ger reprovingly at the policeman doll, telling him not to be “naughty” again. While romantic coupling continues to be the focus on web series, like ­Little ­Things (2016–) and Permanent Roommates (2014–), the female leads of ­t hese series are not only the object of desire, a one-­dimensional love interest who finds completion in the successful denouement of the marriage plot, but also complex, layered individuals who often strug­gle with their identities being subsumed by ­t hese romantic relationships, their professional lives being threatened by the demands of their significant ­others, without becoming vamp figures. Unlike the highly moralistic and judgmental repre­sen­ta­tion of premarital sex or the figure of the unwed ­mother in Hindi cinema, such as in Aradhana (1969), Julie (1975), Kya Kehna (2000), and Salaam Namaste (2005), both web series show their female leads as cohabiting with their significant ­others before marriage and negotiate that real­ity without social censure.42 Interestingly, the fact that t­ hese c­ ouples live together before marriage rarely becomes a plot point whereas even in more recent films, like Shuddh Desi Romance (2013), Cocktail (2012), and OK Jaanu (2017), the act of ­couples living together becomes the point of contention, or at least one of the key tropes driving the plot forward.43 Permanent Roommates revolves around Tanya, who is anxious about committing to Mikesh ­after being in a long-­distance relationship with him for a year. The series begins with Mikesh showing up at her doorstep with an engagement ring. The series skillfully turns the marriage plot premise of romantic comedies on its head by using a marriage proposal as an event that generates a disastrous chain of events culminating in a breakup. Throughout the series, however, Tanya’s ner­vous­ ness about marriage, specifically about committing to Mikesh, is never invalidated or used to portray her as a negative character. Even when Tanya loses her child ­after a premarital pregnancy, it is not presented as punishment for conceiving a child out of wedlock or for being unsure about marriage and impending motherhood, but as a genuine tragedy that befalls the young ­couple, bringing them closer together. In season 2 of ­Little ­Things, the female protagonist, Kavya, moves beyond her waiflike hipster persona to pre­sent a complicated character of a driven ambitious ­woman who desires money more than even her current relationship and who finds her partner, Dhruv, wanting due to his lack of vision or goals for the ­future. In episode 4, in which the c­ ouple gets into a huge argument about their relationship, Kavya exclaims that money is “impor­tant” to her, that “it r­ eally, ­really ­matters.” Yet, her insistence on needing money or wanting professional and social success is not used to vilify her character or portray her as being crassly materialistic;

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instead, the conflict between Kavya and Dhruv is represented as a clash of worldviews and personalities. The ability to portray ­women who disagree with their significant ­others, who perhaps have dif­fer­ent life goals and expectations, and who are committed to their ­careers as much as to their personal lives without portraying this difference as devious or immoral is the kind of repre­sen­ta­tional shift that the emergent digital media in India makes pos­si­ble. ­These dissents are power­f ul b ­ ecause they do not occur in melodramatized plot situations, but in recognizable and familiar everyday circumstances. Individuals contend over t­ hings that impact the domestic lived space, and the clashes are at once personal and ideological. Thus, the emergent new media in India fashions a New W ­ oman markedly dif­fer­ent from the hegemonic femininities in Hindi cinema, and often not only resonates with the dissident femininities i­magined in con­temporary cinema but also introduces actors from the digital space as well as new kinds of storytelling into Hindi cinema, in films such as Ribbon (2017), Veere di Wedding (2018), and Karwaan (2018).44

Conclusion To reiterate by way of conclusion, emergent Indian New Media may be productively understood as engendering space wherein the predominant repre­sen­ta­tional paradigms of popu­lar Hindi cinema may be resisted. It does so by validating the ordinariness of lived experience, granted within the middle-­class social spectrum; by exploring difficult, complex, and extraordinary issues, such as sexual vio­lence, uneven gender roles, and dysfunctional families, through an aesthetics of the ordinary; and by representing as well as generating dissident ways of being. I end this essay by offering another example that complicates our understanding of the New ­Woman in India and how she might be represented on-­screen by considering the character of the transgender heroine Kukoo in the Netflix crime drama Sacred Games (2018–). Kukoo is represented as a gangster moll, the glamorous dancer who is the keep of Suleiman Isa, one of Mumbai’s crime lords. As she climbs out of a Rolls Royce to enter an exclusive club, she embodies class, power, and beauty—­a ll the ele­ments that are missing from the life of the aspiring gangster Ganesh Gaitonde’s, who is still entrenched in the seamier strata of the Mumbai underworld. Pivotal conversations between Kukoo and Gaitonde take place in front of mirrors; the self and its reflection(s) serve as meta­phors for an identity split between public pre­sen­ta­tion and self-­perception. The crucial moment when Kukoo’s identity as a trans w ­ oman is revealed through frontal nudity is definitely a first for the Indian screen. Kukoo’s cry of despair, “Is this what you want to see?” is not a moment of shaming, disgust, or even crude humor, as is often the case in Hindi cinema, where trans ­people are marginalized and mocked. In fact, it is helpful to understand the visual repre­sen­ta­t ion of the trans ­woman’s body in light of E. Jessica Groothis’s observation that visual repre­sen­ta­tions of gender-­variant trans bodies create “sites of meaning creation beyond the mere erotic” and by interrupting the spectators’ look and foregrounding “a perceived incongruity in socially con-

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structed understandings of sex and gender” (“The Look Interrupted”). In fact, Gaitonde’s response to Kukoo’s frustration at perceiving herself as “unfit” for marriage and c­ hildren not only rejects the heteronormative ­f uture but also transcends the binary of ­whether the trans ­woman’s body is or can be an object of desire for cisgender men. His vocabulary redirects attention away from sexual desire to affective care and concern for Kukoo’s well-­being and happiness. “I want your love and laughter,” Gaitonde tells his distraught lover, offering an alternative model of happiness and future-­oriented thought for themselves. In contrast to the etherealized and self-­effacing wife and m ­ other bound by a discourse of virtue and values often found in popu­lar Hindi cinema, the repre­sen­ ta­tions of the New ­Woman in New Media overlaps with the emergent New ­Woman in con­temporary Hindi cinema in their desire to portray femininities unbound by a discourse of nationalism. Their stories are clearly set in urban, upper-­or middle-­ class India, but are not about being “Indian,” that is, are not coded in ways to appease or affirm nationalist models of femininities. While ­t hese narratives are certainly l­imited by class, caste, and regional privilege, the New ­Woman’s strug­ gles, centering around her body, sexuality, relationships, domestic oppression, and/ or sexual vio­lence, articulate modern forms of feminine self-­fashioning.

notes 1. ​Anupama Chopra, “The Producers Adda,” Film Companion, YouTube video, December 9, 2018, https://­w ww​.­youtube​.­com​/w ­ atch​?­v​=f­ 9TnhffMac0. 2. ​Amrit Srinivasan, “New Media, Terror and the Repre­s en­t a­t ional Politics of Youth Vio­lence,” South Asian Popu­l ar Culture 11, no. 2 (2013): 194, doi:10.1080/14746689.2013.78 4069. 3. ​ Pitchers, directed by Amit Golani (2015; TVF); Permanent Roommates, directed by Deepak Kumar Mishra and Sameer Saxena (2014–­; TVF); Tripling, directed by Rajesh Krishnan (2016; TVF); Yeh Meri F ­ amily, directed by Sameer Saxena (2018; Netflix). 4. ​“Permanent Roommates,” HuffPost India, February 17, 2016. URL cannot be provided at this time as HuffPost India shut down its website on November 24, 2020, and the articles have not been archived as yet. 5. ​ Ghoul, directed by Patrick Graham (2018; Netflix); Lust Stories, directed by Zoya Akhtar, Dibakar Banerjee, Karan Johar, and Anurag Kashyap (2018; Netflix); Sacred Games, directed by Anurag Kashyap and Vikramaditya Motwane (2018–2019; Netflix). 6. ​Rishi Iyengar, “Netflix Has Its First Hits in India. It Needs More,” CNN Business, July 17, 2018, https://­money​.­cnn​.­com​/­2018​/­07​/­17​/­technology​/­netflix​-­sacred​-­games​-­india​-­plans​/­index​ .­html. 7. ​ ­Little ­Things, directed by Ajay Bhuyan (2016; Netflix). 8. ​Nalini Kher, “How ‘Large Short Films’ Worked for Royal Stag Barrel Select,” Buzzincontent, February 11, 2018, https://­w ww​.­buzzincontent​.c­ om​/­story​/­how​-­single​-­large​-­short​-­films​ -­single​-­worked​-­for​-­royal​-­stag​-­barrel​-­select​-­5​/­. 9. ​ Mirzapur, directed by Karan Anshuman and Gurmeet Singh (2018; Netflix); Made in Heaven, directed by Zoya Akhtar (2019–­; Amazon Prime). 10. ​See Rahul Joglekar, “Why Netflix’s First Original Series in India Is Already Facing a Court Case,” Time, July 20, 2018, http://­time​.­com​/­5339495​/­sacred​-­games​-­netflix​-­india​-­court​/­; Meghna Mandavia, “Netflix, Amazon Explore Voluntary Censorship,” Economic Times, September 4, 2018, https://­economictimes​.­indiatimes​.­com​/­industry​/­media​/­entertainment​/­media​ /­netflix​-a­ mazon​-­explore​-v­ oluntary​-­censorship​/­articleshow​/6­ 5676976​.c­ ms. 11. ​Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010), 5. 12. ​Manovich, 5–6.

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13. ​Robert Logan, Understanding New Media: Extending Marshall McLuhan (New York: Peter Lang, 2016), 7. 14. ​ Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, directed by David Slade (2018; Netflix), 90 min. 15. ​ Bahubali, the Beginning directed by S. S. Rajamouli (2015; Mumbai: Reliance Entertainment), DVD, 158 min.; Bajirao Mastani, directed by Sanjay L. Bhansali (2015; Mumbai: Eros International Media Ltd), DVD, 158 min.; Padmavat, directed by Sanjay L. Bhansali (2018; Mumbai: Shemaroo Entertainment), DVD, 164 min. 16. ​“Jaydeep Sarkar: ‘Nayantara’s Necklace’ Was about Middle-­Class Aspirations,” Mid​-d ­ ay​ .­com, October 19, 2015, https://­w ww​.m ­ id​-­day​.­com​/­articles​/­jaydeep​-s­ arkar​-n ­ ayantara​-­s​-n ­ ecklace​ -­about​-­middle​-­class​-­aspirations​/­16618176. 17. ​Chris Newbould, “Indian Web Series ‘­Little ­Th ings’ Goes Global with Netflix,” The National, October 4, 2018, https://­w ww​.­t henational​.­ae​/­a rts​-­culture​/­television​/­i ndian​-­web​ -­series​-­little​-­t hings​-­goes​-­global​-­w ith​-­netflix​-­1​.­777137. 18. ​Madhava M. Prasad, Ideology of the Hindi Film: A Historical Construction (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 123. 19. ​ Anand, directed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee (1971; Mumbai: Shemaroo Entertainment), DVD, 123 min.; Bawarchi, directed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee (1972; Mumbai: Shemaroo Entertainment), DVD, 130 min.; Rajnigandha, directed by Basu Chatterjee (1974; Mumbai: Shemaroo Entertainment), DVD, 110 min.; Chhoti Si Baat, directed by Basu Chatterjee (1976; London: Eros International Ltd.), DVD, 140 min.; Katha, directed by Sai Paranjpye (1982; Mumbai: Big Home Video), DVD, 141 min. 20. ​Prasad, Ideology of the Hindi Film, 162–164. 21. ​Mark Whitaker, “Internet ­Counter Counter-­Insurgency: Tamilnet​.­com and Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka,” in Native on the Net: Indigenous and Diasporic P ­ eople in the Virtual Age, ed. Kyra Landzelius (New York: Routledge, 2016), 268. 22. ​Rita Kothari and Robert Snell, eds., Chutneyfying En­glish: The Phenomenon of Hinglish (New Delhi: Penguin, 2011), 190–199. 23. ​Pam Cook, “The Point of Expression in Avant-­Garde Film,” in Cata­logue of British Film Institute Productions 1977–78, ed. Elizabeth Cowie (London: British Film Institute, 1978), 53. 24. ​Cook, 54. 25. ​“The Day ­after That Day,” YouTube video, 21 min., “Large Short Films,” October 29, 2013, https://­w ww​.­youtube​.c­ om /watch?v=AQR6cB1DXzY. 26. ​“Juice,” YouTube video, 15 min., “Large Short Films,” November 22, 2017, https://­w ww​ .­youtube​.­com/watch?v=R-­Sk7fQGIjE. 27. ​Barkha Dutt is an Indian tele­v i­sion journalist and author best known for her frontline war reporting on the Kargil conflict between India and Pakistan in 1999. Before joining Tiranga TV, Dutt was part of the NDTV news channel for twenty-­one years. Radhika Parameswaran, “Watching Barkha Dutt: Turning on the News in Tele­v i­sion Studies,” South Asian History and Culture 3, no. 4 (2012): 626–635. 28. ​Vivian Sobchak, “The Scene of the Screen: Envisioning Photographic, Cinematic, and Electronic ‘Presence,’ ” in Post-­cinema: Theorizing 21st-­Century Film, ed. Shane Denson and Julia Leyda (Falmer, UK: Reframe Books, 2016), 139. 29. ​ Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, directed by Aditya Chopra (1995; Mumbai: Yash Raj Films), DVD, 181 min.; Pardes, directed by Subhash Ghai (1997; Mumbai: Ultra DVD), DVD, 191 min. 30. ​Leela Fernandes, “Rethinking Globalization: Gender and the Nation in India,” in Feminist Locations: Global and Local, Theory and Practice, ed. Marianne DeKoven (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001), 157. 31. ​Rupal Oza, The Making of Neoliberal India: Nationalism, Gender, and the Paradoxes of Globalization (New York: Routledge, 2006), 25–26. 32. ​ En­glish Vinglish, directed by Gauri Shinde (2013; London: Eros International), DVD, 134 min. 33. ​Sushmita Chatterjee, “ ‘En­glish Vinglish’ and Bollywood: What Is ‘New’ about the ‘New ­Woman’?,” Gender, Place & Culture 23, no. 8 (2016): 1183.

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34. ​ Queen, directed by Vikas Bahl (2014; Mumbai: Viacom18 Motion Pictures & Phantom Films), DVD, 146 min.; Dangal, directed by Nitesh Tiwari (2016; Mumbai: Reliance Big Entertainment Pvt. Ltd.), DVD, 161 min.; Tumhari Sulu, directed by Suresh Triveni (2017; Delhi: T-­Series Films), DVD, 150 min. 35. ​ No One Killed Jessica, directed by Rajkumar Gupta (2011; Mumbai: UTV Motion Pictures), DVD, 136 min.; Tanu Weds Manu, directed by Raj L. Anand (2011; Mumbai: Viacom18 Entertainment), DVD, 120 min.; Tanu Weds Manu Returns, directed by Raj L. Anand (2015; Mumbai: Eros International), DVD, 128 min.; Kahaani, directed by Sujoy Ghosh (2012; Mumbai: Shemaroo Entertainment), DVD, 128 min.; Kahaani 2, directed by Sujoy Ghosh (2016; London: Eros International, DVD, 128 min.; Mary Kom, directed by Omung Kumar (2014; Mumbai: Shemaroo Entertainment), DVD, 122 min.; Margarita with a Straw, directed by Shonali Bose (2014; Mumbai: Shemaroo Entertainment), DVD, 140  min.; Neerja, directed by Ram Madhavani (2016; Mumbai: Ultra DVD), DVD, 122 min.; Secret Superstar, directed by Advait Chandan (2017; Mumbai: Amir Khan Productions), DVD, 155 min.; Pataakha, directed by Vishal Bharadwaj (2018; Mumbai: B4U Motion Pictures), DVD, 134 min.; Raazi, directed by Meghna Gulzar (2018; Mumbai: Reliance Big Entertainment), DVD, 140 min. 36. ​See news articles that still discuss women-­centric films as cultural novelties: Archita Kashyap, “Want Bollywood to Change?,” Thread, June 18, 2018, https://­w ww​.­t hehindu​.­com​ /­t hread​/­entertainment​-­variety​/­want​-­bollywood​-­to​-­change​-­get​-­women​-­centric​-­fi lms​-­to​-­do​ -­well​/­article24173830​.­ece; Giridhar Jha, “The Rise and Rise of the Female Protagonist,” OutlookIndia, March 30, 2017, https://­w ww​.­outlookindia​.­com​/­magazine​/­story​/t­ he​-­rise​-­a nd​-­rise​ -­of​-­t he​-­female​-­protagonist​/­298692. 37. ​ Dhool ka Phool, directed by Yash Chopra (1959; Mumbai: Eros), DVD, 153 min.; Aradhana, directed by Sujit Kumar (1969; Mumbai: Moser Baer Entertainment), DVD, 169 min.; Trishul, directed by Yash Chopra (1978; Mumbai: Shemaroo), DVD, 174 min. 38. ​ Raaz, directed by Vikram Bhatt (2002; Mumbai: Tips), DVD, 152 min.; Jism, directed by Amit Saxena (2003; Chatsworth, CA: Image Entertainment), DVD, 136 min.; Murder, directed by Mahesh Bhatt (2004; Edison, NJ: Video Sound Inc.), DVD, 130 min. 39. ​“The Other Way,” YouTube video, 14 min., “LargeShortFilms,” March 20, 2018, https://­ www​.­youtube​.­com/watch?v=8dcAN3QS7kY. 40. ​“Chutney,” YouTube video, 16 min., “LargeShortFilms,” November 28, 2016, https://­w ww​ .­youtube​.­com/watch?v=0krwKbsQscw; “Churi.” YouTube video, 12 min., “LargeShortFilms,” December 19, 2017, https://­w ww​.­youtube​.­com/watch?v=XDiwdQ8KvNU. 41. ​“Ahalya,” YouTube video, 14 min., “LargeShortFilms,” July 20, 2015, https://­w ww​.­youtube​ .­com/watch?v=Ff82XtV78xo. 42. ​ Julie, directed by K. S. Sethumadhavan (1975; Sacramento, CA: Bollywood Entertainment), DVD, 145 min.; Kya Kehna, directed by Kundan Shah (2000; Edison, NJ: Tips Exports), DVD, 155 min.; Salaam Namaste, directed by Siddharth Anand (2005; Mumbai: Yash Raj Films), DVD, 159 min. 43. ​ Shuddh Desi Romance, directed by Maneesh Sharma (2013; Mumbai: Yash Raj Films), DVD, 141  min.; Cocktail, directed by Homi Adjania (2012; Mumbai: Eros International), DVD, 146 min.; OK Jaanu, directed by Shaad Ali (2017; Mumbai: Reliance Big Entertainment), DVD, 137 min. 44. ​ Ribbon, directed by Rakhee Sandilya (2017; Amazon Prime Video), 109 min.; Veere di Wedding, directed by Shashank Ghosh (2018; Mumbai: MMG), DVD, 135 min.; Karwaan, directed by Bijoy Nambiar (2018; Amazon Prime Video), 125 min.

Acknowl­edgments

This book emerges from our ongoing research proj­ects, conversations, and collaborations on popu­lar Indian cinema. It has been a plea­sure to work with each other and with our contributors. We are grateful to our contributors for sharing their insights and scholarship, and being timely in their submissions and revisions. We are especially thankful to our editor at Rutgers University Press, Nicole Solano, for her enthusiasm and support for this proj­ect, and the rigor and care that she and the anonymous reviewers have shown this manuscript. Megha Anwer is grateful to her parents, Ahmer and Pamela, for sharing their love of cinema with her. As a f­ amily, we spent the 1980s, despite our meager bud­ gets, renting TV and VCR sets for weekend-­long binge sessions of movies from around the world; the 1990s, devouring ­every classic Bollywood and Hollywood film that graced satellite tele­v i­sion; and then for many years, without fail, my ­mother and I would catch ­every Friday-­night release. In many ways, this book is dedicated to our ­family time, so much of which was centered around loving films, and loving one another in the midst of films. I am also indebted to Deepasri Baul for her superhuman capacity to remember Bollywood dialogues and songs from even the most arcane films, for being a repository of ideas about Bollywood that stir much thought and joy, for ensuring I keep pace with the latest Bollywood films, and for indulging (almost) e­ very significant and passing cinematic thought I have ever had. A big thank-­you to Anish Vanaik, alongside whom, nineteen years ago, I began the “film appreciation” journey, who readily came to share my love for Hindi cinema, so much so that he is now an unbeatable contender at Antakshari. Eternal gratitude to Vrinda Marwah, who keeps me on my toes by rarely liking the films I recommend but grudgingly watches them anyway, for our shared undying, even if increasingly hard to sustain, love of SRK, and the wide array of movies we have guffawed through and fought about. Special thanks, too, to Kriti Budhiraja for helping me think about caste in cinema and for her limitless intellectual generosity and empathy. This proj­ect would not have been pos­si­ble without the intellectual, administrative, and emotional support I receive from my friends and 205

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colleagues at Purdue University’s Honors College. In many ways, the intellectual community and camaraderie they offer are what makes being so far away from home feasible. Anupama Arora would like to thank her f­ amily, especially her parents, Akshey Kumar and Sudarshan Arora, for their unstinting support of all her academic proj­ ects. But b ­ ecause they did not allow me to watch a lot of TV or films growing up, I have spent most of my adult life making up for lost time! I am grateful to my ­family—­A radhana Arora and Pradeep Kapoor; Vaibhav Arora and Prabhjot Kaur—­for their love and support, and for indulging my habit of talking nonstop and commenting on films while watching them. My partner, Gautam Sarin, however, finds this habit most annoying but reluctantly watches even the trashiest of Hindi films with me and constantly surprises me with knowing the lyr­ics of some obscure and old Hindi film songs. Watching my American-­born nieces—­Tanishi, Kavisha, and Kaashvi—­develop a love for Hindi films, song, and dance fills me with so much joy. At University of Mas­sa­chu­setts Dartmouth, I am grateful for the intellectual community and friendship of my colleagues in the En­glish and w ­ omen’s and gender studies departments. I would also like to acknowledge that work on this book was supported by the Provost Fellows Program grant at the University of Mas­sa­chu­setts Dartmouth, Dartmouth, Mas­sa­chu­setts.

Notes on Contributors

Megha Anwer is a clinical assistant professor at Purdue University’s Honors College. She has published several articles in her areas of interest, and her work has appeared in Feminist Media Studies, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, Short Film Studies, Victorian Studies, Widescreen, Global South, and A Review of International En­glish Lit­er­a­ture. Anupama Arora is professor of En­glish and w ­ omen’s and gender studies at the University of Mas­sa­chu­setts Dartmouth. She is coeditor of the open-­access Journal of Feminist Scholarship and serves on the editorial board of Tulsa Studies in ­Women’s Lit­er­at­ ure. Her work has appeared in South Asian Popu­lar Culture, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Journal of Commonwealth Lit­er­a­ture, Ariel: A Review of International En­glish Lit­er­a­ture, and ­Women’s Studies, among other journals and collections. Koel Banerjee is a visiting postdoctoral scholar of En­glish at Car­ne­gie Mellon University. She received her PhD from the University of Minnesota. Her current research focuses on Bollywood cinema, neoliberalism, and the aesthetics of consumption. Her writing has appeared in Studies in South Asian Film and Media and Cultural Critique. She is also a contributing author for several forthcoming edited anthologies, including Third Cinema, World Cinema and Marxism, The Oxford Handbook of ­Children’s Film, and The Cold War in South Asia. Madhavi Biswas teaches world lit­er­a­ture at Collin College in Frisco, Texas. Her thesis is on globalization and three con­temporary hatke directors (Vishal Bhardwaj, Anurag Kashyap, and Abhishek Chaubey) of New Bollywood Cinema. Her interests include adaptation studies, translation theory and practice, and global cinema. Baidurya Chakrabarti is an assistant professor at the Symbiosis Centre for Media and Communication, Pune, ­under the Symbiosis International (Deemed University). Beginning with his doctoral thesis, titled “Mapping the Ideological 207

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Terrain of Con­temporary Bollywood,” he has been trying to capture the broad ideological tendencies of con­temporary Bollywood cinema, connecting such trends with the larger ideological dynamism of the Indian nation-­state. He is currently a research fellow at the National Film Archive of India, Pune, working on prein­de­pen­dence Bengali cinema. Debadatta Chakraborty is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Mas­sa­chu­setts Amherst. Her research interests include exploring so­cio­log­i­cal theory, immigrant community formation, and media through an intersectional lens. She has previously worked on how gender, race, ethnicity, and religion interact closely in the formation of immigrant communities. She is currently working on a proj­ect that examines the global cap­i­tal­ist crisis and its racial and gendered implications. Her dissertation focuses on racial-­patriarchal capitalism and communal politics of the Indian diaspora in the United States, the rise of Hindutva politics in India, and the links between white supremacy and the Hindu right wing. Aparajita De is associate professor of En­glish at the University of District of Columbia. She specializes in postcolonial theory, South Asian literary studies, and cultural and film studies. She has published an edited collection of essays, South Asian Racialization and Belonging ­after 9/11: Masks of Threat (2016). Aparajita also has essays in Postcolonial Text, Journal of South Asian Popu­lar Culture, and South Asian Review, among o ­ thers. Jigna Desai is professor in the Department of Gender, ­Women, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of Beyond Bollywood: The Cultural Politics of South Asian Diasporic Film (2004) and coeditor of several collections, including Bollywood: A Reader (2009), Transnational Feminism and Global Advocacy in South Asia (2012), and Asian Americans in ­Dixie: Race and Migration in the South (2013). She has published widely on issues of race, media, gender, and sexuality in journals such as Social Text, Journal of Asian American Studies, and Meridians. Prathim-­Maya Dora-­Laskey teaches En­glish and ­women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Alma College, in Alma, Michigan, ­after having attended gradu­ate school on three continents. An alumna of Stella Maris College in Chennai, she has received scholarships from the Pennathur Foundation and the University of South Carolina, and a Violet Morgan Vaughan Award at the University of Oxford. She is currently working on a monograph examining the figuration of c­ hildren in postcolonial fiction. A poetry editor at JaggeryLit Magazine and a current moderator at SAWNET (south asian ­women’s net @ sawnet​.­org), she has published work in Con­temporary South Asia, Interventions: A Journal of Postcolonial Studies, South Asian Review, and Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy. Ajay Gehlawat is professor of theatre and film at Sonoma State University. He is the author of Reframing Bollywood: Theories of Popu­lar Hindi Cinema (2010) and

Notes on Contr ibutors

209

Twenty-­First ­Century Bollywood (2015), as well as editor of The Slumdog Phenomenon: A Critical Anthology (2013). Most recently, he co-­edited The Evolution of Song and Dance in Hindi Cinema (2019). He has also recently contributed a chapter on Kareena Kapoor to Stardom in Con­temporary Hindi Cinema (2020). Along with Bollywood, his teaching and research interests include postcolonial studies, film theory, and popu­lar culture. Tanushree Ghosh is an associate professor of En­glish at University of Nebraska at Omaha. Her teaching and research interests include nineteenth-­century studies, utopian studies, South Asian studies, and visual studies. Sangita Gopal is associate professor of En­glish at the University of Oregon. She is author of Conjugations: Marriage and Film Form in New Bollywood Cinema (2012) and is completing a monograph entitled Mixed Media: W ­ omen Filmmakers, Intermediality and Feminism in India in which she examines the rise of the ­woman filmmaker in India in the context of new media ecologies and social movements. She has published most recently in Feminist Media Histories and Cinema Journal. Anjali Ram (PhD, Ohio University) is a professor of communication and media. Grounded in the critical cultural studies tradition, her research explores formations of gendered, racialized, and transnational identities in the context of migration and global media. Her book Consuming Bollywood: Gender, Globalization and Media in the Indian Diaspora analyzes how diasporic audiences use the spectacle of Bollywood cinema to renegotiate cultural meanings of home, gender, belonging, and identity. Her work has also appeared in vari­ous edited volumes and journals such as ­Women’s Studies in Communication, International Journal of Intercultural Relations, ­Human Development, and Mind, Cultural and Activity. Namrata Rele Sathe holds a PhD in media studies from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Her dissertation, “You Only Live Once: Bollywood, Neoliberal Subjectivity, and the Hindutva State,” focuses on the politics of gender, sexuality, and caste in neoliberal right-­w ing India viewed through the lens of popu­lar Hindi cinema. She is the assistant editor of Studies in South Asian Film and Media. Her research interests include feminist media studies, literary studies, gender and sexuality studies, and popu­lar culture. Puja Sen works as an editor for the long-­form narrative journalism magazine The Caravan. Previously, she was based in Kathmandu, Nepal, where she worked with the politics and culture magazine Himal Southasian. Gohar Siddiqui is an assistant professor of screen studies at Clark University in Worcester, Mas­sa­chu­setts. Her research interests include film remakes, Hindi cinema, docudrama, and transnational feminism. She has published variously on remakes and Hindi cinema, and her articles have appeared in Jump Cut and Oxford Biblio­graphies Online: Cinema and Media Studies. Currently, she is working on a

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book proj­ect that investigates issues of nation, gender, and genre in Bollywood remakes of Hollywood cinema. Kuhu Tanvir is an assistant professor of film and digital humanities at Michigan State University. She is a founding editor of the open-­access journal Wide Screen. Her work has appeared in the journals Bioscope, South Asian Film and Media, NECSUS, and ­others. Her research interests include media piracy, small screens, cell phones, and WhatsApp.

Index

ableism, 95–96. See also disability action heroine, 110, 124, 174 agency, 7, 15, 17, 29, 40–45, 51n4, 53n23, 62, 71, 79–80, 83–90, 95, 102, 112–114, 146–150, 157, 163, 171, 177, 196–198 Akhtar, Farhan, 16 Akhtar, Zoya, 18–19, 104, 114 Aman, Zeenat, 7 aspiration(s), 28, 37, 49, 61, 64, 84, 109, 120, 125, 129, 134, 137–141 aspirational, 16–19, 43–44, 49, 60–61, 64, 74, 139, 141–142, 146, 148 asexual, 94–95, 101 avenging ­woman, 7, 9–10, 22, 46, 51, 68–69, 173 Babi, Parveen, 7 Badrinath Ki Dulhania, 134–139, 141–144 bahu, 7 Bachchan, Amitabh, 16, 28, 35, 154 Balan, Vidya, 14, 68, 116–129 Beta, 9–10 bhadramahila, 3–4 Bharatiya Janata Party, 127 bharatiya nari, 6–7, 71, 119 Bollywoodization, 1, 8, 23n23, 28, 60 bourgeois, 3–4, 10, 12, 18, 30–31, 47, 55 Brahminical/Brahmanical, 17, 66, 111. See also caste; Dalit burqa, 79–80, 84–87 caste, 4, 10, 16–17, 20–21, 43–48, 51n4, 52n12, 57–58, 71, 75, 98, 105n69, 153, 155n6, 159–160, 195, 197, 201. See also Brahminical/Brahmanical; Dalit censorship, 10, 192, 197. See also Censor Board

celebrity/celebrities, 13, 118–120, 129, 181 Censor Board of Film Certification (CBFC), 79, 88–91. Chatterjee, Sushmita, 1, 11, 33, 99, 120, 143n11, 156n16, 197 class, 8, 16, 21; lower-­class, 3, 43; ­middle-­class, 1–2, 10, 27–37, 43, 49–50, 54, 59–63; upper-­class, 15, 17–18; working­class, 5 colonial, 2–3, 33–35, 55, 94, 96, 120, 135, 153–154, 155n3 commodity/commodities, 4–6, 16, 29, 33, 81, 84–85, 161, 184 commodification, 84, 90, 119, 163 conjugal/conjugality, 6, 54–64, 108–111, 114 consumer(s)/consumerist/consumerism, 5–6, 10, 12, 16–17, 28, 31–37, 42–46, 56–58, 68, 81, 84, 120, 123, 128, 141–142, 155n6, 166, 168, 188, 197 corporate, 36; culture(s), 5, 12, 14, 16, 165, 192; feminism, 44, 147, 152, 155n6 corporeal/corporeality, 70, 99, 103, 110, 121 cosmopolitan/cosmopolitanism, 2, 4, 6–7, 14, 16, 28–36, 124–127, 134–143, 146–148, 152–155, 163 courtesan, 9–10, 17, 198 Dalit, 4, 17–18, 44, 143. See also caste Dedh Ishqiya, 10, 18, 168–169, 174–178 diasporic/diaspora, 37, 49, 56, 59, 61, 63, 92–93, 98, 105n69, 135, 151–154, 168, 196 disability, 92–106. See also ableism Dixit, Madhuri, 9–10, 16, 57, 176–177, 183 domestic/domesticity, 2–4, 10–11, 15, 17, 19, 29–30, 32, 37, 57, 66–68, 72–74, 82, 97, 102, 123, 128, 148, 161, 172, 194–201

211

212 I n d e x domesticated/domestication, 6, 8, 10, 29, 37, 42, 72, 99, 102, 128, 173 Dum Laga ke Haisha, 14, 17, 40, 48, 59, 61, 107–115 The Dirty Picture, 118–119, 122–127 En­glish Vinglish, 10, 14–15, 18, 27–32, 37, 40–42, 46, 51, 133–134, 146–155, 156n11, 156n15, 156n16, 197 emergent new media, 20, 194–195, 198, 200 entrepreneur/entrepreneurial, 10, 16, 19–20, 27, 34–39, 47, 61, 133, 141–142, 151 enterprise/enterprising, 14, 44, 47, 49, 60, 134, 140–142 erotic/eroticism/eroticization, 4, 8–12, 17, 20, 24, 83, 94, 118–119, 122, 127–128, 177, 182–188, 200 erectile dysfunction, 107, 113 family/familial, 6–8, 10, 12, 14, 20–21, 28–34, 36–38, 41, 48–50, 53n30, 54–64, 72–75, 80–81, 83, 85, 88, 90, 96–99, 102, 107, 109–115, 119, 124–128, 136–139, 147–155, 157–161, 168, 175, 178, 191, 195–198, 200 fat-­shaming, 121, 128–129 fat-­to-­fit narrative, 107–109 feminism, 10, 15, 20, 32–51, 69, 80–89, 96, 147, 152–156 femme fatale, 15, 42, 50, 169, 172 Fernandes, Leela, 5, 22, 34, 196 flaneur/flaneuse/flânerie, 158–161 Fire, 93–96, 105n60 gaze, 48, 56–57, 61–62, 69, 82–83, 88, 90, 115, 123, 136–137, 161–163, 185, 198 globalization, 4–5, 15, 21, 22n13, 27, 41–42, 54, 81, 137, 170–171, 174–175, 183, 196–197 glocal, 11, 169–170, 178 governmentality, 34, 36 ­Grand, Sarah, 2, 54 hatke cinema, 10, 18, 24n46, 81, 88, 90, 116n6, 119, 129, 146, 168–169, 172, 197 Helen, 13, 38n2, 128. See also vamp Hindutva, 1–2, 4, 15, 17, 111 “Hinglish,” 24, 151, 156n9 hypersexual/hypersexualization, 7, 12, 94 101 hybrid/hybridity, 151–152, 156n9, 194, 196, 197 indecent repre­sen­ta­tion of ­women act 1986, 122 international, 5, 16–17, 68, 147, 154, 155n5, 157–158, 163–165 item number/item girl/itemization, 12–13, 110, 114, 116n6, 123

jugaad, 85–86, 91n18 Kaif, Katrina, 12–13, 20, 120, 123, 181–188 Kahaani, 18, 40, 42, 66–76, 118–119, 124–128, 197 Kapoor, Kareena, 12, 110–111, 116n6, 120 Kolkata, 68–70, 74, 124–126 Khan, Farah, 19 Khurrana, Ayushmann, 61, 107, 113–114 leisure, 36, 158, 165, 195–196 Leone, Sunny, 12–13 liberalization/economic liberalization, 1–10, 14–17, 23n23, 28, 31, 34–35, 48, 59, 80, 98, 121, 147, 155n5, 192, 196–197 liberation/liberating, 3, 86, 90, 103, 120, 158, 163 The Lunchbox, 18, 66, 68, 71–74 Lipstick ­under My Burkha, 17–18, 79–90 localized, 62, 135, 142, 151, 165 Lust Stories, 19, 114, 191 Made in Heaven, 19–20, 192 Mangeshkar, Lata, 13 Margarita, with a Straw, 18, 92–106, 197 marriage, 3, 11, 14, 21–23, 31, 37, 48, 51n4, 55, 62–63, 71–74, 80, 102, 107–108, 111, 114, 126–127, 137, 146–150, 155n1, 198–201. See also marriage matrimony, 2, 8, 11, 27. See also wedding melodrama(s)/melodramatic, 8, 24n46, 48, 51n4, 55–63, 66, 68, 89, 200 metropole, 66, 136–137 Modern Girl Around the World, 4, 54–58, 64–65 modernity, 1–3, 8, 11, 13, 29–31, 48, 54–58, 62, 67, 72–73, 80–84, 87, 93, 113–114, 119–120, 126, 128, 138, 159, 170, 192, 196 modern ­woman, 27, 30–32, 37, 109, 124, 196 modernize/modernization, 3, 6, 10, 31, 33, 80 multiplex(es), 24n46, 27–28, 30, 32, 50, 119, 157, 168, 192 motherhood, 2, 10–11, 55, 124, 199 Mumbai, 8, 74, 124, 133, 138, 141, 200 Muslim, 17–19, 66, 70, 79, 86–87, 169, 175, 178 Nadira, 13 nationalism, 2–4, 15, 24n46, 37, 66, 70–71, 74, 96, 123, 127, 137, 146, 155n1, 168, 192, 201 Nehruvian Socialism, 4–5 neoliberal/neoliberalism, 1, 8, 10–11, 14–21, 27–38, 38n5, 40–51, 51n2, 56–64, 65n15, 67, 79–86, 89, 93–103, 105n60, 108, 116n9, 125, 134, 139, 142, 146–147, 152, 154, 157–158, 164–165 new age, 4, 6, 11, 15

Index New Bollywood, 8, 16, 18, 21, 23n23, 24n46, 49, 59, 81, 98, 168. See also Sangita Gopal new media, 19–20, 38n7, 192–201 new man, 15–17 NH10, 15, 42 Nirbhaya, 15, 42–51, 52n7, 52n11 Non-­resident Indian/NRI, 16, 168 Oza, Rupal, 1, 5, 67, 80–81, 86, 97, 119, 134, 138, 169, 196–197 parallel cinema, 48, 51n.4. See also hatke Paranjpye, Sai, 20, 68, 193 patriarch, 15–16, 29, 48 patriarchy/heteropatriarchy, 4, 15–16, 31–32, 37, 41, 43, 50, 64, 67, 79–90, 110, 120–123, 135, 146–149, 153–157, 161, 195 Pednekar, Bhumi, 61, 107–116 postnuptial, 16, 58–59, 63–64 portable purdah, 80 Prasad, Madhava M., 21n3, 48, 67, 193–194 Precariat, 17, 59–65 precarity, 37, 41, 43, 46–49, 73, 174 privatization, 97, 164–165 public spheres, 3, 36, 74, 80, 119, 122, 129n12, 146–150, 154, 155n4 queer, 18, 29, 38n2, 46, 67, 92–106 Queen, 12–15, 18, 40, 42, 46, 76, 105, 127, 133–166, 197 Rai, Aishwarya, 12, 120–121 Ranaut, Kangana, 13, 127, 158 Rajadhyaksha, Ashish, 1, 23n23 Rekha, 7, 27, 38n2 romance novel, 82–84 romantic love, 48, 101, 135, 162, 176 rural, 2, 5, 18, 43–44, 46, 85, 135, 169, 171, 174, 178 sartorial, 5, 7, 11, 13–14, 140, 172 self: self-­care, 5, 33, 41, 83, 137; self-­ fashioning, 13, 20, 201; self-­actualization, 5, 11, 15, 41, 44, 134, 141; self-­f ulfillment, 11, 137; self-­transformation, 41, 50, 157, 161, 164; self-­discovery, 29, 97, 134, 141, 146, 150 sex: extramarital, 19, 73, 197–198; premarital, 127, 197–199 sexual: assault/violence, 43, 157, 160; freedom, 113, 119–120 sexism/heterosexism, 13, 146, 155–156 Shah Rukh Khan, 16, 118, 125, 189 Shinde, Gauri, 18, 27–28, 40, 146 Shubh Mangal Saavdhan, 107, 113, 115

213 “Size 0”/size zero figure, 108, 110, 112, 116n6 and 7, 119–120, 123 shining India/India shining, 5, 18, 46, 138 short films, 19, 191–194 Silk Smitha, 116n7, 118, 122–124 Sridevi, 9–10, 16, 27–30, 32, 37, 38n2, 128, 133 star/superstar/stardom, 9–10, 13–14, 17–19, 21n3, 23n29, 27–30, 38n2, 38n10, 55, 57, 61, 84, 98, 109, 118–119, 121, 124, 127, 129, 133, 141, 177, 181–189, 190n9, 192, 197 Tagore, Sharmila, 7, 125 technology/technologies, 5, 10, 36–37, 57, 59, 79–89, 142, 152, 189, 196 Toilet: Ek Prem Katha, 107, 110–113 toxic masculinity, 15, 42–43, 46, 146 tradition, 1–13, 16, 22n13, 29–33, 37, 48, 56–60; 65n15, 66–67, 70–75, 80–81, 85, 90, 94, 97, 99, 102, 113–114, 119–122, 125–128, 135, 137, 146–148, 153–154, 156n16, 157, 159, 161–165, 176–177, 192, 196 trailer, 79, 88–90, 91n22, 193 transnational, 11, 14–15, 22n13, 33, 36, 87, 92–98, 103, 129n12, 135–142, 147–154, 157, 161, 164, 169 transgender, 20, 200 travel, 5, 14, 16, 36, 80, 96–97, 116n8, 135–142, 146–155, 157–164, 167n12, 169, 177, 197 Titli, 15, 42–43, 45, 48–51 Tumhari Sulu, 119, 127, 197 vamp, 6–9, 11–13, 16, 22, 31, 56, 97, 114, 119, 122–123, 128, 172, 183, 199 Veere Di Wedding, 14, 17–18, 20, 64, 200 vernacular/vernacularism, 14, 19–20, 24n46, 134–138, 140, 142, 143n12 Victorian, 2–4, 21n4 villain/villainy, 8, 16, 91, 94, 176 Virdi, Jyotika, 14, 71, 75, 81, 123, 126; The Cinematic ImagiNation, 51–52, 71, 75, 81, 123, 126 wedding, 8, 30, 32, 35, 37, 50, 60–63, 108, 114–115, 135, 139–141, 147–149, 151, 153, 155, 158–160, 168, 198 westernized, 5, 7, 86–87, 110, 112, 120, 122–123, 170, 172 wife/house­w ife, 4, 9–10, 22n19, 29–32, 36, 50, 57, 62, 68, 71–73, 79, 82, 98, 109, 115, 128, 134, 149, 173–174, 192, 197–201 woman/women-­centric, 28, 66, 68, 70, 81, 118, 177, 192, 203n36 Yash Raj Films/YRF, 17, 54, 58–59, 65 Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, 12, 16, 135