 "Bombay Begums")
There are few good guys but plenty of resilient women in Bombay Begums, the Netflix series launched on March 8. As an unsparing look at the predicament of the professional Indian woman, it was one of the better ways to mark Women’s Day instead of the mawkish paeans to “women’s empowerment”.
The series’ six episodes tell the overlapping stories of four professional women – three bankers at various stage of their careers and a sex worker. Created and directed by Alankrita Shrivastava of the hugely enjoyable Lipstick Under My Burkha fame, Bombay Begums could almost be a continuum of that movie.
Lipstick … was a wry portrayal of the risks that attend Indian women who choose to push the boundaries of their designated societal roles. Bombay Begums offers a look at the dilemmas of women who have grasped the nettle of the working world and struggle to negotiate the spaces between social prejudice and professional demands.
Shrivastava has located her story in the world of banking, a profession in which women have conspicuously occupied leading roles in India on their own merit (even if the fall from grace by some of them has marred the record a bit). In fact, the institutions here are thinly disguised even if the personalities don’t entirely match.
There is, for instance, the “Royal Bank of Bombay”. It is one of the largest private banks weighed down by bad debt and headed by the ambitious Rani, played by the 49-year-old Pooja Bhatt, whose choice of exquisite saris deserves a review of its own. Her mentor is the bank’s former chairman. She has a woman rival, who leaves to lead another successful private bank. Any of this ring bells?
The serial is a little rough around the edges but a compelling storyline makes it a good watch. It operates at multiple levels across class and gender lines. Anyone with even half a foot in the corporate world will have little difficulty identifying the cut-throat pettiness of the corporate rat race, the instinctive sexism that haunts even successful women, the big-city snobbery for the small-town arriviste and the ambivalent attitudes to bisexualism. Sadly, too, many women will also recognise the ham-handed treatment of a sexual harassment case.
By far the star of the show is Amruta Subhash, of Gully Boy fame, for her rambunctious portrayal of Lily, the beleaguered former dance-bar girl turned sex worker. Plabita Borthakur appeared to extend her role as the covert rebel in Lipstick into a competent performance as the part-savvy, part-innocent bisexual small-town girl with ambitions to become an investment banker. Pooja Bhatt manages to pull off the contradictions between her role as assertive CEO and the insecurities of an ageing, menopausal second wife with elan. Among the men, Bombay Begum is a timely reminder that Rahul Bose needs another stint in acting school.
The big message is rarely out of focus. Can women be judged on their own terms? From Bombay Begums, the answer is not yet. At least part of the reason can be found in the somewhat clichéd image of “liberated” women. Must all professional women drink alcohol by the bucket-load and/or smoke like chimneys and/or sleep around with awesome energy and swear like troopers?
This is not a moralist objection. There are plenty of women living on their own terms who do not feel the need to adopt such externalities. Shrivastava would have added credibility to the story if at least one of the characters didn’t conform to these stereotypes.
That apart, we could have done without the improbably precocious musings of a 14-year-old girl. Okay, we get it, her teen maunderings and sulks represent the dilemmas of emerging (read hormonal) womanhood. That is the accepted theory of modern parenthood; in an earlier generation she would have been soundly smacked. But her role doesn’t add to the story any more than the pointlessly lengthy sex scenes and the overuse of the F-word. If there is a Season 2, restraint would be a good principle to follow.
