Oct 13, 2007 01:06 AM
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Let the search for the Indian woman begin…
Who is the real Indian woman? Will she please stand up…
Is she the mother who has to wear the pants in the family to support her children? Because her husband is too pompous to step down from his royal chair…
Is it the young, achiever who thanks to her good education and presence of mind not only finds herself a good job and a good man?
It definitely is not the woman who goes down the road of pr*stitution and is not in the least bit apologetic about it…
That is the reason why I did not like Pradeep Sarkar’s film Lagaa Chunri Mein Daag.
The protagonist of the film is a woman who wants to prove to her father that she can be the boy he never had. She wants to support her mother who has been burning the midnight oil to run her house and does not want to deprive her sister of the opportunities that she missed out on.
For the very many women in the metros of our country who work harder than the men and I am not talking of just the educated, independent class here. Women from all walks of life are as capable and as strong as their male counterparts.
To take the easy way out and provide the riches for your family is still not acceptable to the Indian mindset. And that is exactly why neither do you feel sorry nor do you connect with Vibhavari’s(Rani) character in the film.
Laaga Chunri Mein Daag fails to touch that humane, emotional chord in you that makes for good cinema.
Apart from Rani, (although she is very good in the film) all the other characters make a great effort.
Ninad in a miniscule role as the understanding and helpful friend symbolises the true Mumbaite who would go out of their way to help an outsider.
Suchitra Pillai on the other hand fails to justify her character. She plays the woman who transforms the simple Banarasi Vibhavari to the modern esc*rt Natasha.
Konkana Sen Sharma and Jaya Bachchan evoke some emotions in you through their prowess of acting but fail at the hands of the story.
The only breather in the film is Abhishek Bachchan. He makes an entry just before the interval making the grim story a little light hearted.
Only at the end his characters makes you laugh rather than empathize. His dialogue to Rani, when he proposes, is “You to me are like Ganga”, while he means pure, a rather slang interpretation which I heard in the theatre was, “You are like Ganga, everyone can wash their dirty linen in you.”
So much for a film that lot was expected from. A good story makes for a good film. This story however should have been made in the 1960’s or perhaps even earlier than that.
