Although Alia Bhatt’s Jigra whimpered like a limp firecracker and Do Patti, the Kajol-Kriti Sanon film on domestic abuse, has started streaming on Netflix where you can’t keep track of its commercial acceptance, there is a concerted effort to give women a fairer deal than ever before. On-screen and off it. Even if there is a hint of patronisation from the men who pat women in public for their good work, there are women who’ve started some sort of sisterhood.
One can see it in Do Patti where writer Kanika Dhillon has conjured a Seeta Aur Geeta kind of double role for Kriti Sanon with Kajol as a dogged police inspector and Tanvi Azmi as a nanny-Amma who brings up the toxic twin sisters. Whether it works or not, the men in the film are side players, the spotlight firmly on the women.
Similarly, when Amazon tapped Raj & DK to extend their Citadel world to India, the filmmakers who put men like Manoj Bajpayee and Shahid Kapur in the driver’s seat (The Family Man and Farzi), collaborated with journalist-turned-writer Sita R. Menon. The outcome was Citadel: Honey Bunny that focuses on Priyanka Chopra’s character of Nadia from the original Citadel and builds a back story for her. Nadia gets Agent Honey and Agent Bunny as her parents in this espionage thriller which is, as Sita put it, “Like giving parents to James Bond”. Raj & DK have a soft corner for Samantha Ruth Prabhu, who was cast in one season of The Family Man as a Sri Lankan LTTE assassin. She’s now kickass Agent Honey.
But the filmmakers still find high levels of male testosterone comfort territory. Also, Priyanka’s Citadel was high on hype, low on ratings. So Raj & DK have played safe and given Varun Dhawan his first taste of hardcore action as Agent Bunny in the Amazon show that will start streaming this November. The year will end with Varun moving from romantic comedies to knuckled knocks and kicks as Baby John is also due in December. “That is a different level of action,” Varun said, admiring the energised fight scenes of south Indian makers. Baby John, long overdue for release, is Varun’s baby step into the territory that gave Shah Rukh Khan a new lease of life with Jawan. Produced by Jawan director Atlee, the Varun Dhawan actioner is the remake of Atlee’s Tamil film Theri (2016) and has been directed by his assistant Kalees.
Varun’s colleague Samantha was all about work and profession on her Honey trip to Mumbai while ex-husband Naga Chaitanya ecstatically stepped into a band-baja Marriage No. 2 with Shobhita Dhulipala in Hyderabad.
Speaking of moving on, the Salman Khan family is like a story factory. To relate just one chapter, most of us had woken up one fine morning in 1998 to the news of Sohail Khan eloping with Chunky Panday’s niece Seema Sajdeh (famous as a Bollywood Wife and as Rohit Sharma’s wife’s cousin). She’d eloped when invites had already begun to go out and her fiancé, the affluent Vikram Ahuja, was trousseau shopping in Singapore. Chunky’s mom Dr Sneh Panday had hastily arranged an Arya Samaj ceremony for Seema and Sohail.
Two decades and two sons later, it’s no longer news that Seema is back with ex-fiance Vikram. What’s not known is that after Seema ditched him, Vikram wed another south Mumbai girl and had twin children with her. But Vikram’s marriage also failed and in the settlement, he got to keep the kids. Whispered to have a taste for gambling, Vikram got only a lean share of his wealthy father’s inheritance, leading to such an acrimonious relationship with his sister Tania (Bobby Deol’s wife) that lawyers on both sides have been on their toes. A side story is that when Seema got together with Vikram again, Tania snapped all ties with her. At one time Seema and Tania were such close friends that Bobby Deol had dropped in as a guest in an earlier season of The Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives.
