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Why I loved Angry Indian Goddesses

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Vani
VaniDec 07, 2015 | 20:22

Why I loved Angry Indian Goddesses

After two years of painstaking work, I finally finished my second book.

"Yay! "cried my friend," calls for a grand celebration!

"Next I knew, she packed a couple of us in her car and drove us to a mall nearby for a movie.

"Angry Indian Goddesses - it has excellent reviews, sweetheart!" she gushed. "You'll thank me for this."

Excited, we took our seats and within the first few minutes, we were introduced to a flurry of female characters; young, city-bred, daintily dressed. These girls were as bindaas as a bunch of Punjabi kudis high on Bacardi; they didn't hide their emotions under a pallu and much preferred to wear them on their sleeves, just like us.

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The movie seemed promising, and no wonder, we erupted into gales of laughter the moment we saw a young Bollywood aspirant, Joanna (Amrit Maghera), throw her boob and hip pads away at a director who suggested all she needed to do in Bollywood was shake her assets for the pleasure of the audience.

The screenplay was brilliant, however, much as I wished to enjoy it, the frequent pokes from my friends made it impossible. A sweat-ridden Pamela (Pavleen Gujral) had just been teased by two perverts while exercising on a treadmill in her gym when my friend was reminded of her yoga class and how a middle-aged married man made orgasmic sounds every time she bent in Marjariasana (The Cat Pose).

As the movie progressed and my friend oohed and aahed at the well-chiselled, bare-chested body of Anuj Choudhry, I didn't have to guess hard where she learnt those sounds from!

I had just about changed my seat to enjoy Suranjana (Sandhya Mridul) bashing her male colleagues, when another friend of mine was reminded of her own office; the memories opening a litany of complaints against everybody from the top management to her boss to her colleagues, followed by a hammering of her choicest Punjabi cuss words. I wish Pahlaj Nihalani could bleep out those words, just like he'd done in the movie, because I could see some people were staring at us by now, an old woman even suggesting us to leave the hall and come back when we were more sober.

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By the time, my friend calmed down, I realised all the female characters in the movie had congregated in Goa for Frieda's (Sarah-Jane Dias) "unusual" wedding. That was enough to stir half of us into a gossip session, that included reminders of a long pending holiday, and now that we also knew the destination to be Goa. It was all about getting the necessary leaves from our offices (which I knew would never happen!). And while I thought this was like a typical Indian wedding movie, I couldn't have been more wrong.

As the movie delved deeper into the lives of each of these characters- a single mother managing a demanding corporate career, a second one in an unhappy marriage, yet another one trying to stay afloat while waiting for her perfect opportunity in Bollywood, a fourth one agonising over a much awaited musical breakthrough, somewhere it struck a chord. The movie was packed with great twists and turns which were easy to relate to and for about an hour, no one in my group spoke a word.

If the makers of this movie were trying to evoke pathos, they had been successful; it was nearing its end when I heard my friend break into a sob. Alas, no matter how much we told her this was just a movie, she kept insisting such things happened in real life.

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Later, as we sat in a café, we couldn't help discussing the movie threadbare, peppering our talks with everything from gender inequality at workplace to single motherhood and gay marriages. In the end, I just wish to congratulate Pan Nalin for making such a thought provoking movie about women that wound me up even more than I had thought. An "unwinding party" with my girl pals is next on the cards.

Last updated: December 07, 2015 | 20:22
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