Indian cinema is just about starting to explore subjects and storylines which were otherwise considered untellable because they "would not sell". The producers would hesitate because they knew that the cinema going audience was not ready to see the darker side of life or look at characters that didn't fit into their storybook idea of girl, boy, mother, father. But with the new age of multiplexes and a changed audience profile of the urban young, who can spend close to five hundred rupees on a movie "experience", movie makers are willing to experiment. So now you have movies which talk about live-in relationships, women exploring their sexuality, same-sex couples, failed parents and corporate corruption.
One such movie is "Break Ke Baad". The movie touches (yet again) the hot new topic in Indian cinema- the complexities of urban love with couples becoming less inclined to commit to marriage right away. The storylines are fairly simple, girl meets boy, boy is confused, girl is confused, they laugh , they fight, they separate, and finally in true hindi film style unite at an airport or a train station. So just when you think that you have a true break-through in cinema, you are brought back to the same old ending. In many ways just the same old wine, albeit in a swanky new bottle, complete with designer clothes, foreign locales and zippy wheels.
It seems our movie-makers have taken a leap by showing a woman willing to have just a live-in relationship, but are unable or unwilling to go all the way. They show her as a rebellious young gal but in the end they bring her back to the traditional fold by showing how "the truth ultimately dawns on her" and she agrees to the holy bond of matrimony that sanctifies her existence and conveniently fits her into the popular idea of what is acceptable. Not only that, many a times the directors use popular stereotypes to depict a so-called "liberated" woman. In "Break Ke Baad" , Deepika Padukone is depicted as someone from a broken home, calls her mother by her first name, smokes and has little respect for anyone in her life. All classic characterisations of a rebel who must then be tamed and brought into the patriarchal fold. The profile would have been far more interesting if she was a mature woman whose active choice of postponing marriage and putting career first was not just a whim but a well thought out decision.
So while bollywood is breaking the norm, it is unable to shed the stereotypes. Maybe in a few years we will see a leading lady with more than just marriage as her fate, and then she will be a more truthful representative of the mature Indian woman of today.
