Bollywood's new good girl
Preity Zinta's character in Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna breaks the mould, exults. When director Karan Johar calls Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna the film he "grew up with", he means the divorce. Kabhi Alvida... ostensibly takes Bollywood forward by several lightyears in that it is what Silsila could not be: a coming-of-age film for cinematic sensibilities that have stubbornly refused to keep pace with modern times.
So here we have brave new protagonists with less than perfect marriages, people who defy Hindi film tradition not by straying — for Amitabh and Rekha did much the same and so did countless others — but by, horror of horrors, not returning to the fold, to the notion of essentially Hindu morality that we have hitherto held up as "Indian" and ideal.
In Kal Ho Na Ho, it's predecessor from the Dharma Productions stable, a dying Shah Rukh Khan tells Saif Ali Khan that he is "giving" him Naina (Preity Zinta, lady love to both) on one condition: "Is janam mein Naina teri, agle cheh janamon mein meri (she is yours in this birth, but mine in the next six)," he says.
This, in essence, is an expression of the worldview upheld by Bollywood down the ages, where marriage is an institution not just for keeps but for seven lives! "Janam janam ka saath," as the song goes. Kabhi Alvida... is a break from this paradigm, albeit not quite in the "grown up" fashion 30-something Johar may have led us to believe.
Even if you overlook Shah Rukh's over-the-hill-going-on-16 type of frankly ugly sartorial style, a neurotic Rani Mukherjee's infantile dreams of romance — last seen by 18-year-old Mills and Boon heroines (though now I hear, even they have grown up), there is the question of how pathbreaking the final resolution really is.
Despite the divorce, the answer must be, not quite. Sure, the transgressing lovers are allowed dreams of happily ever after (though how that will come about given two such flawed personalities is best left in the realm of suspended disbelief) but only after their love has got moral sanction from society and family represented by their former spouses.
This comes after a suitable period of atonement — three years, wherein they live apart and in relative poverty — and the exs finally and conveniently cheer them on as they run to catch the train of togetherness — and pardon the Johar-tongue.
While we may laugh, or despair, at Bollywood's latest attempt at progressive cinema, discount the divorce track and Kabhi Alvida... is a grown up film in other ways. You have to give it to Johar when it comes to delineating Ria's (Preity Zinta) character.
Modern, unapologetic and very real, she is perhaps the first career woman in Bollywood who takes her work seriously, places it above her relationships, is ambitious without being guilty or a villain.
Completely breaking the stereotype, Ria wears good clothes — not just the pants in the house — parties hard, even gives a social peck or two to a man other than her husband and neglects her child yet remains quite the good girl.
In a brilliant inversion of Bollywood tradition, it is not she but the plainer, more diffident, and more goody Maya (Rani Mukherjee), who transgresses conventional morality and has the extra-marital affair.
With Ria, Johar truly breaks the mould, so much so that if there is one defining moment in this "modern" flick, it is the slap she gives her errant husband. And never mind that the latter is superstar Shah Rukh Khan himself, the audience — neighbourhood aunties, bored teenagers, head-holding gentlemen — all sit up and clap when poor Shah Rukh lands that slap.
Despite appearances, Ria is the film's moral centre and if Kabhi Alvida... deserves a watch, it is because it has finally given us a mainstream protagonist who is not the subservient wife in the Manu scheme.
Consider what we had prior to this: Films like Sanjog, Aandhi, Abhimaan, Akele Hum Akele Tum, among countless others, old and new. The successful wife in all these pays a price for her achievement.
And it is only when she gives up on her work/individuality that she gains back her husband/child/family.
Ambition in a woman is never condoned; in the patriarchal order that these films propagate, it is something to be denounced, a threat to the male ideal of superiority and any woman who even unwittingly (remember the suffering-in-silence Jaya Bachchan in Abhimaan?) challenges it must be punished — whether by society, or by her own "guilt".
It is a theme deeply ingrained in not just all our popular culture, literature (the "unnatural" Lady Macbeth, in fact, could be a symbol) but also in our collective psyches.
In the splendid portrayal of the modern woman — interestingly, not afraid to be single either — Kabhi Alvida... scores over other current films too.
Sure, Bollywood has moved beyond the only professions heroines used to pursue on-screen (dancers, mujrewalis and gangsters' molls), and we now have lawyers, doctors and TV journalists aplenty.
But even when you compare Zinta's character with that of the scheming Bipasha Basu in the more "real" Corporate, you find Ria is more the individual. Basu is a hard-as-nails, unfazed executive, but ultimately, even her motivations can be traced to the grand notion of self-sacrificing love in Hindi cinema.
Finally, she wants her lover, the man, to be the more successful part of the couple. At heart, she remains the successful-but-not-too-successful girl patriarchy wants her to be, the kind they seek in matrimonial ads, "working but homely". Zinta, on the other hand, has no such qualms, which is why Johar deserves the credit.
Edited by sus143 - 19 years ago
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