Girls, ‘dosti’ and love

Madhuri Dixit-Nene (left) and Huma Qureshi in ‘Dedh Ishqiya’.

Yaari hai imaan mera, yaar meri zindagi, sang Sher Khan (Pran, in the voice of Manna Dey), about his friendship with Vijay in Zanjeer (1973), directed by Prakash Mehra. It was the same year that Bobby (Dimple Kapadia) invited Raj (Rishi Kapoor) to become her friend in Raj Kapoor’s Bobby —“Mujhse Dosti Karoge?” By 1989 boys and girls could actually be friends, as seen in Maine Pyar Kiya.

The 1970s saw a spate of films about men whose dostana/dosti looked at relationships between adopted brothers (Parvarish, 1958), real brothers who were separated (Waqt, 1965), and friends who became brothers (Dosti, 1964). While Raj Kapoor mourned the loss of friendship in Dost Dost Na Raha (Sangam, 1964), Jai (Amitabh Bachchan) and Veeru (Dharmendra) celebrated their eternal bond, Yeh Dosti, in Sholay (1975).

Many Hindi films are about men, brothers and friends, whose bond is tested when they fall in love with the same girl (Qurbani, 1980; Saajan, 1991). Male camaraderie has continued with Farhan Akhtar’s Dil Chahta Hai (2001) and Zoya Akhtar’s Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011).

Deepika Padukone (left) and Kalki Koechlin in Ye Jawaani Hai Deewani.

Female friendship does not have such a celebrated history. The standard narrative is that the heroine’s sahelis are usually less attractive than her so that her beauty is pronounced, and they would vanish once the hero appears. There were sisters who were close, like in P.L. Santoshi’s Barsaat Ki Raat (1960), or Simran and Chutki in Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995). But sisters are usually shown to be closer to their brothers, a relationship celebrated on Raksha Bandhan—so Prashant (Dev Anand) and Jasbir/Janice (Zeenat Aman) in Haré Rama Haré Krishna (1971) in the Phoolon Ka Taaron Ka song.

Only a handful of female friendships in films spring to mind: Rekha and Shabana Azmi in Raaste Pyaar Ke (directed by Rajendra Prasad V.B., 1982); Neetu Singh and Azmi in Parvarish (Manmohan Desai, 1977); Kareena Kapoor and Rani Mukerji in Mujhse Dosti Karoge! (Kunal Kohli, 2002), and Deepika Padukone and Kalki Koechlin in Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani (directed by Ayan Mukerji, 2013).

Madhubala, and Nigar Sultana, in Mughal-e-Azam.

Over the years, two kinds of female relationship are striking and have produced wonderful songs. One is enmity, of which Bahar (Nigar Sultana) versus Anarkali (Madhubala) in Mughal-E-Azam (1960) is the classic, with the two (or rather Shamshad Begum and Lata Mangeshkar) singing together in Teri Mehfil Mein Kismet Aazmaakar. The other are songs where one of the women dresses as a man; the two high spots of this cross-dressing being Gore Gore O Banke Chhore, where Lata Mangeshkar and Amirbai Karnataki sing for Nalini Jaywant and Kuldeep Kaur in Samadhi (1950); and Reshmi Salwar Kurta Jali Ka in Naya Daur (1957), with Minoo Mumtaz and Kumkum, where, surprisingly, the “male” voice is sung by Asha Bhosle and the woman by Shamshad Begum.

Perhaps it is these cross-dressing films and the queer readings they invite which underpin two great female friendships in two fascinating films released this year.

The first is Queen, directed by Vikas Bahl. An unscientific poll of my friends and students names this as the most popular film of the year (as I write this in Amsterdam, I confess to having looked at the city afresh to check the locations). The romantic elements of the film are very limited; from the distinctly unheroic groom—a brave role choice for the interesting portfolio of Rajkummar Rao, a light romantic interest in the chef, and a curious gender blindness between Rani (Kangana Ranaut) and her room-mates. The film has a wonderful transformative friendship between Rani and Vijay (Lisa Haydon), a housekeeper at the hotel where Rani is staying. Vijay’s name, shortened from Vijayalakshmi, is the same as that of Rani’s fiancé, who ditches her just before the wedding: “Vijay nahi hai toh kya hua Vijayalakshmi toh hai (So what if Vijay is not there, Vijayalakshmi is there).”

Kangana Ranaut (left) and Lisa Haydon in ‘Queen’.

This substitution of one Vijay for another is also seen in their shopping together, and their awareness of each other’s bodies: Vijay tells Rani to show herself off more, grabs her chest and chooses her new clothes (getting rid of the hideous cardigan), while Rani admires how Vijay has maintained her figure even after childbirth. Vijay the man ducks out of the marriage so Vijay the woman takes Rani around Paris on her “solo honeymoon” and even says, “Je t’aime (I love you)” to her in a cab. Although the French verb may mean love or like, Je t’aime has only one meaning.

While there is no suggestion of a lesbian relationship between Vijay the woman, who has a boyfriend, the possibility is not denied, thus opening the film to queer readings, which are further supplemented in the second half where Roxanne, a stripper, mistakes Rani for a client.

These ambiguous possibilities show further in the title of the film in publicity and on the DVD box where the word is spelt out in rainbow colours of the LGBT flag. The name, Queen, itself is a term reclaimed from homophobic abuse, most famously by Mumbai’s most famous rock star, Freddie Mercury.

"Perhaps it is these cross-dressing films and the queer readings they invite which underpin two great female friendships in two fascinating films released this year"

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Dedh Ishqiya, directed by Abhishek Chaubey, which also released this year, is a strange mix of gangster, comedy and Islamicate genres, and is far less ambiguous. The widowed Begum Para (Dixit-Nene in a tribute to the great star?) holds a swayamvar-cum-mushaira (self-selection of a husband through poetry recitals) to find a new raja of Mahmudabad (I have not found a connection to the real-life Cambridge-educated incumbent raja, long may he live). She ultimately chooses maid Muniya (Huma Qureshi), with whom she lives happily ever after, we hope, after selling a valuable necklace. The lesbian element of this film is much less ambivalent, though still discreet, and does not require a queer reading.

Queen is not the first film where a woman chooses to live her life on her own—even as long ago as 1947, Mehboob Khan’s Elan, a Muslim social, showed the heroine choosing to be a teacher rather than marry her beloved. Dedh Ishqiya pays tribute to Ismat Chughtai’s short story Lihaaf (1942), which was tried for obscenity but none was found, in the relationship between Begum Jaan and her maid servant Rabbu.

The films are new in that they celebrate the woman’s choice in living her own life, moving away from a society in which she is smothered, and which is shown to be pleasant enough but stiflingly dull.

A song from ‘Dedh Ishqiya’, that celebrates the friendship between two women

These films seem to form a group with other female-centred films that have proved popular in recent years, and in which Vidya Balan played the lead: The Dirty Picture (2011), No One Killed Jessica (2011) and Kahaani (2012). In these films, the heroine did not have a close female friendship to transform her life, but was searching for her own place in the world. The role of female friendship and sisterhood has added a new dimension and Ranaut and Qureshi, along with Balan and Rani Mukerji, are defining new roles in cinema, with the superstar, Dixit-Nene, choosing an interesting range of films as a senior artiste.

The Hindi film industry is aware that men and women seek more complex relationships and search for personal fulfilment. While these may appeal to women, whose increasing independence and financial security make them important media consumers, I suspect there is also an eye on the pink rupee. There is nothing new in queer readings of Bollywood films and these play a huge role in the diaspora’s relationship with cinema. Even mainstream Bollywood is developing these, as was evident in the four films which form Bombay Talkies (2013).

(Writer’s note: Thanks to Geetakshi Arora and Koninika Roy for their discussions on these films.)

Rachel Dwyer is a professor of Indian cultures and cinema at SOAS, University of London. Her latest book is Picture Abhi Baaki Hai: Bollywood As A Guide To Modern India.