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Bareilly ki Barfi: Rise of the new wave of small-town women in Bollywood

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Kaveree Bamzai
Kaveree BamzaiAug 21, 2017 | 12:49

Bareilly ki Barfi: Rise of the new wave of small-town women in Bollywood

So what's common between Buaji of Bhopal in Lipstick Under My Burkha, Jaya of Mandgaon in Toilet: Ek Prem Katha and Bitti of Bareilly in Bareilly ki Barfi? Well, apart from being super smart and super aware?

They belong to a new wave of small-town women who don't need to escape the limitations of geography to transcend. They don't need to get on a train like Bunty and Babli of 2005 to make something of themselves. They are quite content to be the big fish in their little pond, a la Malcolm Gladwell.

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Kriti Sanon and Ayushmann Khurrana in Bareilly ki Barfi.

Blame it on the reality check on a tanking economy. Blame it on the rise of internet and social media, which has democratised ambition, and increasingly made your place of birth and living irrelevant - you just have . Blame it on the millennial lack of drive. Not everyone wants to be like Leela in Lipstick Under My Burkha, start a Band Baaja Baraat kind of wedding planners incorporated with her photographer boyfriend. Some are quite happy to be 50-something, queen of her building, lusting after the swimming coach and reading about the lovelife of the Mills and Boon Rosie.

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Ratna Pathak Shah in Lipstick Under My Burkha.

Like Tanu of Tanu Weds Manu, Bitti is the star of her small universe. Raised like a "beta" by her halwai father, she smokes, stays out late roaming around on her scooty, drinks occasionally, has a day job attending to complaints in the electricity office, and has been rejected twice by suitors. But unlike Tanu she is curiously un-sexual. Despite declaring to a prospective suitor that she is not a virgin, she doesn't seem too obsessed by the idea of exploring her sexuality. She is not averse to an arranged marriage either, just irritated that she can't find a match.

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Her desire for freedom is an end in itself, not a by-product of having a grand goal and even grander career. She is quite content to be in Bareilly, all she wants is to live there with a certain amount of dignity, liberty and equality.

It's an interesting idea as increasingly reel life seems to be catching with reality. Greater education for women isn't necessarily resulting in a rise in their presence in the workforce - in fact, according to one estimate, the number of women in the workforce has actually declined (data available with the International Labour Organization (ILO) shows that between 2004 to 2011, when the Indian economy grew at a healthy average of about 7 per cent, there was a decline in female participation in the country’s labour force from over 35 per cent to 25 per cent).

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Bhumi Pednekar and Akshay Kumar in Toilet: Ek Prem Katha.

Education doesn't necessarily mean career ambition, as in Jaya's case. Jaya is a topper in BCA in Mandgaon, but she is quite happy to fall giddily in love with a man much older who didn't even go to college (though he claims his general knowledge is better than the best). The prospective husband, played by Akshay Kumar, loves the fact that his wife speaks English, is mobile (she roams around the village on her cycle) and after a certain amount of persuasion, is proud of the fact that she was raised in a household with a toilet.

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In Bareilly ki Barfi, Bitti's suitors are both men with modest means - one owns a printing press that prints cards, pamplets, posters, invites, while the other sells saries for a living. There's not much to choose between Chirag Dubey and Pritam Vidrohi, but she can always fall back on her father's halwai ki dukaan. Both Bitti and Jaya are raised by their father with a lot of love and turning a blind eye to her flaws.

There may be no jobs in the market, our towns may be collapsing (as are the big cities) and the men maybe particularly daft, but they adore her. And she'd rather be the apple of their eye than the heroine of a big city adventure.

 

Last updated: August 22, 2017 | 12:12
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