Celebrating Kusum Sangwan, the girl who refuses to grow up

Woh to tumhara marital status hai. Andar se to tum kunwari ho.

Welcome, welcome, Tanuja Trivedi, and leave your ego at the door. Because you, with all your spunkiness, smartness, and spiritedness, have been outdone by Kusum Kumari Sangwan aka Datto, sports quota student of Ramjas College and state level athlete. She comes from Jhajjhar district of Haryana where they either prevent girls from being born or strangle them when they show signs of independence. She is a sportswoman, who either aims to come first or nothing at all. ''I don't believe in consolation prizes,'' she says. She is also, like Tanuja Trivedi Sharma, a girl at heart, a kunwari, who refuses to let womanhood tame her inner beast.

Indeed, if Tanu is a woman who believes in her free will, a legendary ''Batman'' whose exploits still get talked about in her home town of Kanpur, then Kusum is a young woman who is more than her match. She can keep down a job, run a home, and raise babies, all without the support of a man, thank you very much. She doesn't need English to be cool - she just needs to be herself, in her running shoes and her track pants. And when Tanu calls her a duplicate and a gawwar, she doesn't curl up and skulk. She straightens her shoulders, flicks her pixie cut (which is just a convenience for a very busy girl), and gives it back as good as she gets.

No doubt Kusum will soon become the pin-up of every girl in Haryana who has ever dreamt of becoming Indira Gandhi or Kalpana Chawla, and justifiably so. Even when her uncle's speech to the village elders who protest an intercaste marriage seems a little too pat, certain things bear repeating. There is something so moving in the abandon with which Kusum dances, her movements joyous and totally uncoordinated, in the way she tries to cover her rather large front teeth, and in the way she clambers on to buses and autos - it reminds us that for many young women these are still joys that need to be fought for. Here's a woman trying so hard to make it in the world, on her own terms, with only her wits and her talent in her armoury, that we have no choice but to root for her.

Tanu's different, a tragedy queen of her own personal biopic, the lead act of her own circus, the star of her own soap opera. There is only so much shopping she can do in Tesco during the sales and only so many streets she can walk down in London - a city she has to get used to after she drags her husband away from Southhall where everyone dries their underwear in the open. She in her delicate, barely there blouses and gossamer thin saris finds her idea of herself under siege when her husband runs to fat and boredom. She craves excitement, enticement, excess, none of which she finds among the boring Brits. India is the place for her to be, where she can strut around in her towel, asking questions of her cousin's prospective groom (don't get married because you're bored, she tells her cousin); or where she can watch romantic movies and sing along loudly with an old lover; or where she can ride shotgun with a young man who is quite in love with her, without acknowledging that he carries a torch for her, the kandha (shoulder to cry on) who can never aspire to boyfriend or husband. She is the eternal femme fatale, but with an air of charming innocence mixed with insouciance.

In short, she's, gosh, almost as complex as a real girl, who is perpetually on a journey of self discovery.

Kangana Ranaut strides through the film with a swagger that comes from the complete awareness that she is the brightest spark in her generation, that she doesn't need a man to complete her or any film starring her, that she will have roles written for her, because she has the courage to embrace them with open arms, a hungry heart and a sharp mind.

Tanu Weds Manu Returns? Nah. Call it Tanu and Datto Take the City.