Corporate Ltd

Alankrita Shrivastava’s new web show touches all the right talking points but fails to hold the viewer’s attention

- POOJA BIRAIA JAISWAL

Mummy, why did Eve eat the forbidden fruit and why should anything be forbidden anyway? Was she not free to eat the fruit that she found most juicy? Do all women have to lie to themselves to survive? These and more such reflections by a 13-year-old narrator form the essential subtext of Bombay Begums, a six-episode series that hit Netflix on Women’s Day. On the face of it, the show—created, co-written, and directed in parts by Alankrita Shrivastava—seems to fall under her favorite smash-the-patriarchy trope. But this time the plot is set in the snake-pit of corporate India, where four urban women and a teenage girl from diverse backgrounds battle against society’s intrinsic patriarchy, entitlement, and barriers to win freedom for themselves and their bodies. Where does one look for refuge when one’s own body is a battleground, with #MeToo, menstruation, motherhood, menopause, and a messy head? A deep-seated yearning to be heard and understood in an unforgivingly chauvinistic society continues to plague all of Shrivastava’s women, be it the 20-something Dolly in Dolly, Kitty Aur Woh Chamakte Sitare (2019), 60-year-old Buaji in Lipstick Under My Burkha (2016), Tara Khanna from Made in Heaven (web show; 2019) or Ayesha (Plabita Borthakur) in Bombay Begums, whose frustration as a single woman from a small town struggling to make it big in Mumbai, is relatable at so many levels.