Portraits of Women

Women filmmakers are bringing to audiences real women, flaws and all.

- Suhani Singh

When Shah Rukh Khan arrived on the sets of Dear Zindagi, one of the first things he said was “Arre yaar, kitni auratein hain set pe (there are so many women on the set). It is so lovely to see”. That’s because her second film, like her first, English Vinglish, is centred around a woman, albeit a younger one (Alia Bhatt as Kaira), Shinde had a crew with a woman editor, women costume designers and five female assistant directors. “For me, it is about the people I connect with,” says Shinde. “The men on my team are great and I love them, but women are just more reliable, trustworthy and great multitaskers.”

TREAT HER LIKE A LADY

Shinde has one basic criterion when she sets out to make a film on a woman. She doesn’t want her protagonist to be anything like the women she has grown up seeing in Hindi films. “Look at the way the men have stalked women to woo them. Pulling their skirts, touching them without their permission... it is disgraceful,” she says. These viewing experiences also made Shinde conscious of the men women seek in their lives. “Every girl doesn’t want to see some kind of Adonis or Superman,” she says. In Kaira’s life, the words of wisdom come from an older man (Shah Rukh Khan). “It is lovely to see that an actor on top of his game is okay with letting a woman have a longer play,” says Shinde about Shah Rukh, whose production house Red Chillies has produced the film.