Film Review: Laapata Ladies

 #LaapataaLadies on #Netflix

This film made me realise an important thing - The heartland is to Bollywood what the snake charmer was to the 19th Century English Sahab. It is the single story of India. Or, let me be blunt - it is the caricature of India that they love to perpetuate.

And just like the English sahab, Bollywood crams all its stereotypes of "Bharat" into the motif - snake charmer or heartland.

There is no such thing as "real" heartland. People everywhere are multi-dimensional. But in Bollywood, single dimension humans exist in these single story products - the good chhotu, the innocent Phool, the sincere dulha, the greedy Pardeep, the evil inspector... If you can describe all of your major characters using single adjectives, you are not looking at story telling. You are looking at caricatures. Which is what Bollywood's story telling of India is.

Kiran Rao's earlier work has not been like this. In the Ship of Theseus, she so sensitively brought together the various back stories. So, like many others, I was waiting for this film. But I am angry. Angry that someone gets away with selling pictures of India that have remained unchanged in 50 years. That they can start with a premise so utterly nonsensical that two brides and two grooms will be identically dressed, will get seats in the same physical space, and most importantly, through the journey, will spend so little time communicating with each other that when the time to alight comes, the man will actually awaken the wrong bride! Angry that this snake charmer story telling is being consumed by urban Indians who have never interacted with the smart people who live in rural India, as good storytelling! Seriously WTF.

If you like Laapata Ladies, you have not travelled in an Indian train for a long, long time. But you might remember that as children, when you travelled by train, everyone around you knew where you were getting off. If the station was to come at night, there would be someone charged with the duty of waking u up two stations before, so you can "freshen up" before getting off. There would be people to receive you at the station. Night or day.

If you have not been to the heartland for a long time, you might want to know that a woman going missing is not something that will be taken as lightly as someone filing a police report two days later. The entire village will get on the next day's train, get off on every single station on the route of that train, and ask if a certain woman was found there. And even before that, the two couples would have shared the stories of their lives, not just their geographies. SO, the groom would know exactly where to go to try and get his wife back, and where to take his "bhojai" to her home.

And if you ever find a bride traveling in Indian rail with 150 grams of gold jewelry on her, please take a picture.

Until then, enjoy the snake charmer.