Musings

It was a lazy Saturday evening and I planned to binge-watch some movies on Netflix. One of the suggestions that Netlfix offered (courtesy: algorithm) was Eat Pray Love ( 2010). Perhaps it was the title that caught my attention and I decided to go for it.  Halfway through the movie, I knew I was in love with Julia Robert's character, Elizabeth (Liz as she referred to by her friends). The resemblance that I found with her character is unimaginable. Being in love is not easy. It is a constant delirium of how much to give in and how much to withhold. As someone who has fallen in love and out of it it is quite daunting to see what Liz was going through. Liz's journey was emblematic of what many women in an unhappy relationship go through. However, Liz taking a break from her monotonous life and exploring Paris, India and later Bali is a reminder of what Woolf says about women being financially idenpendent and having a space of their own to create fiction. She was able to do this bec...

It was in 1974 that D.K Baruah proclaimed, "India is Indira. Indira is India". Almost 50 years later the film Indoo ki Jawani (2020) works on almost similar premises. While registering on a dating app Indoo's friend misspells her name and hence she is addressed as India throughout the film by her date. Though the film is a romantic comedy the political underpinnings of this film cannot be negated. Indira (Kiara Advani) is an overt nationalist and does not shy away from displaying her allegiance towards the country. It is well established that she is a virgin and is contrasted with her friend, Sonal (Mallika Dua) who acts as a foil and she is depicted as someone with a colorful taste and as the one who has a voracious appetite for sex. Indira's body also becomes a site of her being "guarded" from any foreign invasion even though she has been greedily stared at by men of all age groups.  She perhaps also represents India as a country that has been under attac...