Date: 12th March, 2025
Time: 3:47 pm
Mood: Periods, i.e., high stakes, erratic. This could go literally anywhere.
Set up: heating pad on my stomach, obnoxiously sweet Vietnamese coffee on my side, brain rot’s my best friend. I want to take a Meftal, but somebody said it causes cancer. I take it anyway.
Topic of discussion: Best Friends' bad date.
Song: As good a reason by Paris Paloma
Another bad date, another rant.
17 minutes into the conversation, emotions are free-flowing, and it’s evolved into something else as it always does.
“What a privilege it is to have your girlfriends just show up for you in all things real, delusional, even when I fuck up and say I’m okay... Like, you guys crashed my fucking surgery.” (For context: It was a tiny one so dw)
I thought about how these friendships are and always have been this strange, ever-looming love that is constantly dispelling. How wild it is to find girlfriends who will always show up in a city as bustling as Mumbai.
We’ve been in Bombay for over a hot second and in each other's lives even longer.
Which brings me to what this column is really about. It’s a journal that you don’t need to read because it won't change your life in any way, but you can if you want to delve into the vulnerabilities of a very confused, millennial mind that can and will grasp at every last straw to make sense of a very convoluted world.
It so happens that I consume the world around me emotionally so I’m writing about everything emotionally whilst gaslighting imposter syndrome with anxious pacing and a self worth reel I saw at just the right time.
Today,
We humanize films.
For Indian cinema, three films brought together this article for me, namely Girls Will Be Girls, Laapataa Ladies, and All We Imagine As Light. I won’t deep dive into the technicalities of these films—there are people out there with more informed analysis of all of that. To me, it’s the idea of womanhood that shone through in each of these stories.
Girls Will Be Girls starts off on what feels like the nostalgia of a first romance. It’s endearing, makes you feel stupidly giggly as you recount watching Paranormal Activity 3 with a boy that played basketball really well because you wanted him to hold your hand (may or may not be based off true events) It slowly shifts your gaze to the deeply layered mother and daughter relationship that in moments has you feeling so uneasy. It dawned on me by the end (Disclaimer: I cried) that much like life we see everything from the daughter's POV, a distorted perception for the user that remains honest to her struggle with adolescence. What struck, and will stay is how the mother, essayed by Kani Kusruti, forced us to perceive mothers beyond the weight of the label of ‘a mother’. Seldom do we see our mothers for the people they are, complex, flawed, with desires of their own.
A 50-year-old woman once told me that her biggest struggle with ageing was how you start becoming invisible. After being objectified for all things superficial your whole life, at one point you disappear. You aren’t desirable she said, desirable in a manner that only youth allows. It bothered me, I didn’t get it, it sounded freeing to not be burdened by the weight of external gaze. She said it was - beyond the heartbreak lay freedom. Maybe the burden of womanhood can only exist in contradiction, maybe it is in the disappearance that you find yourself - is it then that we as women truly stop giving a shit?
All We Imagine as Light drew me in like the smell of wet mud, petrol and mehendi (No, I will not be rationalising mehendi). Essentially, it felt like an invitation to see womanhood in all its intimacy and breathe through it. The film took up space, something we all struggle to do. It never flinched or rushed through the stillness, not trying to be more than it was, it simply, just was. If I had to be a physical manifestation of a film, I would like to be this one - soft, kind, vulnerable with just enough magic to hold on to. The lives of three women, distinct in their perceptions, problems and life - united by shared space somehow caress each other's chaos in all the in-betweens.
Personally, I adore how so much of the film lies in the minute moments and subtle changes in body language and nothing makes me smile more than women and giddy, uninhibited laughter. It is an ode to friendship in the personification of a city like Mumbai which will forever take me back to the hug of a friend after a 4 am hysterical call.
Before I speak about Laapata Ladies, I must first confess the distaste I possessed for the idea of femininity. Somehow, the world around us associated it with weakness, submission and something to be looked down upon. I discovered feminism and almost subconsciously and a little ironically continued to pander to male validation, except this time for my grades, my work, my worth. As I observed my mother, this incredible housewife who made me the person I am, I was reminded of how femininity has always spoken of resilience and strength. How truly mortifying it was to equate it to how the patriarchy packaged it and placed it in front of me.
My holier than thou conditioning finally humbled, Laapataa Ladies is a gentle nudge for you and me. It speaks of the kind of femininity that reeks of valour whilst, holding onto kindness through it all. It allows for love to move you in more ways than one and what a relief to know, it’s not always the romantic kind. A jab at society carefully cushioned by a laugh is my favourite kind of commentary and this film did it so many times, I lost count. It redefined in a mass-y manner the garbage that soap operas have drilled into our minds of what the relationship between a daughter-in-law and mother-in-law in a quintessential household looks like. You are not the backdrop of your life, it reiterated - cook for yourself, draw for yourself, your happiness is not just valid but quite possibly the most important part of your existence. This seems basic, like obviously, Ayushi, shut up. But if you paid attention you’d catch more than a glimpse of the lack of this basic in your own household.
I distinctly remember my father watching and enjoying the film and I think for now, that’s enough.
I’m still on my period, this did go everywhere and I wonder if i should get another obnoxiously sweet Vietnamese coffee.
Update : I didn’t get the coffee, stalked Ishaan Khatter on Instagram instead.
About the author : Ayushi Gupta (She/her) is an actor, writer, filmmaker and, as her friends jokingly put it, the group's moral compass (not a hard feat considering their questionable standards). She began her artistic journey in English experimental theatre with a play titled Coming Out, which delved into gender fluidity and the complexities of self-disclosure. As an actor she continued to do shows like Hostel Daze, Cubicles etc.
When she’s not acting or writing, Ayushi channels her creative energy into reading, pole dancing—partly for fitness and partly for its undeniable cool factor—and dreams of taking up pottery someday.
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