"A huge part of being a feminist is giving other women the freedom to make choices you might not necessarily make yourself."

This quote exactly signifies all that Dor is. It is about forgiveness and humanity, freedom and liberation, love and friendship. And it is about taking your own decisions in life. When Zeenat's husband leaves for Saudi Arabia from Himachal, and Meera's husband from Rajasthan, the two of them become roommates, and the women are left behind in their households. When Zeenat's husband ends up supposedly killing Meera's husband and is imprisoned for the same, Zeenat's only hope is to get a document of forgiveness signed from Meera. Zeenat travels all alone to Rajasthan in search of Meera, and on the way, finds help in the form of Behroopiya, a mysterious personality who helps her out. She befriends Meera, who is blamed as having brought 'bad luck' to her husband and caused his death, and slowly, sets her free, allowing her to take her own decisions in life. Meera slowly sheds all her guilt, and even learns to dance once again. But little does she know Zeenat's true identity. And, Meera's father-in-law is also planning to sell her.

The movie teaches us so many things all at once, without being overly preachy. You have this woman who can go to any lengths to rescue her husband. And you have this other woman who has just lost her husband. Both of them need each other, and yet, there is something that prevents Zeenat from going whole hog. What is this 'izzat' that we Indians are so fixated about? The movie calls a spade a spade, and unearths the double-standards in a highly patriarchal Indian society with astounding brilliance. Amisha Patel as Meera gets into the character so much that you can't really differentiate her from the character. Gul Panag as Zeenat is simply liberating. Shreyas Talpade as Behroopiya is funny, and provides the much required comic relief, while also emphasising on the fact that men can also help to support women in their journeys, in remarkable ways. In closing, all I'd like to say is, take the "imaan ki chhalaang", and watch the movie and liberate your soul!

Pooja (Shabana Azmi) is a typical housewife, who dreams of a home of her own. Her filmmaker husband Inder (Kulbhushan Karbanda) is unable to provide her with the same, due to financial crisis. But one find day, he does, and she is delighted. She starts decorating her home with furniture and every other accessory. Meanwhile, Inder is away on a shoot. And that's when we discover that he has an extramarital affair with this established actress Kavita (Smita Patil).
Blissfully unaware of this, Pooja appoints a maid for household chores. So blind is Pooja in her faith in her husband, that it is heartbreaking. When the maid, always accompanied by her little daughter, describes her husband as a drunkard, she suggests that she would never tolerate her husband, were she in her place. In some days, she discovers that she is almost in her place. Inder confronts Pooja, and tells her that their relationship should end here, as he is serious about Kavita. The scene in this movie where Pooja, on seeing Inder and Kavita together at a party, gets drunk and rants boldly, is sure to force you out of every comfort zone and denial you may have ever built around you. When Pooja finds out that it is with Kavita's help that Inder has bought their home, she leaves the house and moves in to a hostel.
Pooja finds a friend and anchor in the form of Raj (Raj Kiran), an aspiring singer. He tries convincing Pooja by suggesting that she cannot spend all her life brooding about what has already happened.
Kavita, we discover, often experiences meltdowns due to schizophrenia. And Inder is often torn between the two women, since Kavita often hallucinates about Inder's frequent interactions with his wife.

So, traditionally, a woman's role in an Indian society is one where she accepts her husband unconditionally, every time he strays, whereas a woman is not only shunned by her husband, but also isolated and disgraced by the entire society if she is unfaithful to him.

Arth dares to shatter this norm.

And it leaves you spellbound. Speechless. May be even shocked, and shaken out of your comfort zone. But isn't that what art does? The purpose of art is to defamiliarise one from what is familiar and comfortable, and lead one to meet the bitter truths in the eye. And Arth does exactly that by portraying a confident Pooja meeting the eyes of her husband, and asking him whether he would accept her had she committed the same mistake. This is not your typical 'other woman' drama. Mahesh Bhatt ensures that it isn't.

Shabana Azmi easily becomes a role-model for every woman through this movie. Her eyes emote so much, that one can feel every word, every thought and emotion till the deepest core of one's heart. Smita Patil is pathbreaking in her role as a woman suffering from Schizophrenia (probably one of the few such roles at that time). The two leading ladies of parallel cinema in one frame is a delight to watch. Kulbhushan Karbanda is also fantastic as Inder, portraying every nuance beautifully. Raj Kiran is simply adorable, and sadly, very underrated.
All in all, this movie is a must, must, must watch. Enjoy the movie and question some faulty patterns.

The 70s was a time when there were hardcore commercial movies that purely entertained, and there were parallel or art movies, that provided realistic pictures of the society at different levels. And then, there was Hrishikesh Mukherjee, who catered to both these aspects.

Hrishida's movies were such that anyone and everyone could enjoy them. Let's take one of the greatest laughter riots of Bollywood - Chupke Chupke. So there's this professor of botany, by the name Parimal Tripathi (Dharmendra), who often visits a hill-station for his research on flowers. The chowkidar of this place has to rush back to his village as his grandson is ailing, and that's how Parimal takes up the role of the chowkidar. A troop of girls arrives with their strict professor, and he goes about carrying their load and doing odd jobs for them. One of the girls in this troop is Sulekha (Sharmila Tagore). It so turns out that these women are also students of Botany, who study Parimal Tripathi's textbooks. So naturally, when they learn that this professor is staying put in this place, they wish to meet him. But Parimal is not the professor right now, but a chowkidar. And so, they meet only the chowkidar. Sulekha soon discovers this fact, and that's how the two of them fall in love.

Post their marriage, Parimal's ego is hurt by the fact that Sulekha reveres her older sister's husband, Raghavendra (Om Prakash), and almost idolises him. So our hero wants to spite this man. Dressed up as a driver, he goes to Raghavendra's home, and speaks more than perfect Hindi with the man who is very particular about speaking unadulterated language. You may crack up at the words he ends up using in this process. Enter Sulekha here, and it isn't long before Raghavendra and his wife begin to suspect her of having a relationship with the driver who, unbeknownst to them, is her husband. To make matters worse (for them and best for us!), Parimal arranges for his friend Sukumar (Amitabh Bachchan) to pretend as Parimal the professor and make his way to Raghavendra's home. There is also a common friend named Prashant (Asrani), between Raghav and Parimal, who is the only one who remains true to his identity on both sides. He has a beautiful sister, Vasudha (Jaya Bachchan), also a botany student. In accordance with the plan, Sukumar, as Parimal, pretends to be angry with Raghav about the fact that his 'wife' has eloped with the 'driver' that morning, and so, Prashant takes him to his home. More chaos ensues as Sukumar falls for Vasudha!

So, what are you looking for? Pure humour and wit? It's here. Subtle political and social satire? It's here. Comedy with some meaning and sense? It's here. Intellect? It's here. Easily one of the best clean comedies ever? It's here. Meaning and masala merge into one, and Hrishida films result.

The Indian society is progressing for sure. We have a society where women are receiving better education, more opportunities, more freedom...wait. Really? Are we?

A lot of questions have been hailed at feminism and its ideologies, some of them being: 'Why feminism? Why not equalism, or some other term label?', 'If you want equal opportunities, why have separate seats in public transport for women?', and 'We are not saying no to educating women, but they also need to learn household duties as women...' etc. These are just some of them.
Well, Man's World provides a very different and interesting world-view. What if men got into women's shoes, and were faced with all of those challenges that a woman faces every single day in Indian society?

Kiran is the pampered son of another typical middle-class household. He reads headlines concerning women's struggles for equality, and laughs at how women demand equality but don't want to take responsibilities that come with it. He is agitated by the reservation of seats for women in public transport, and finds the entire hullabaloo over 'mother's job is not easy' overrated and nonsensical. He takes it for granted that his mother and sister would do the cooking and household chores while the men read the newspaper at the table, and criticise the food. He also sends one-liners and P.J.s to his girlfriend every morning without fail. And one day, when his girlfriend invites him for dinner and ditches him at the last minute, his friend convinces him that women use feminism as an excuse to dominate over men. Kiran frantically prays for the order of this world to be reversed, and men to take the place of women. And, voila! His wish is fulfilled, and to his surprise, he finds on his phone the next morning, a number of one-liners sent to him by his girlfriend; his father expecting him to help him with the household chores, and his mother making it sound like she is doing him a huge favour by allowing him to step out and earn. What's more, he finds that women dominate every small and big sector of the society: there are women bus drivers and conductors, women taxi drivers, women at paan bidi shops, women playing cricket on the streets, and yes, an all men's college for promoting men's education!
Father India is the popular Bollywood movie now, since fatherhood is looked upon as a very challenging job. Men at work are objectified and exploited, and favours are demanded of them in order for them to be promoted. Women chase men on streets during late nights, making the roads unsafe for them. Police-women (of course) also add to the exploitation by nonchalance at best, and inappropriate touching at worst. And there are some women who are chivalrous knights in shining armours. Mothers struggle to arrange for their sons' dowry. And men conceive. That's a man's world in Man's World for you.

The director turns the entire society upside-down, giving birth to a topsy-turvy world where gender roles are reversed. Empathy is said to be one of the most important assets of a good psychologist, in order to understand the client by stepping into the client's shoes. That's exactly what Man's World tries to do - it attempts to give the men a taste of their own medicine. And it does so in such a way that it is not in the least preachy or condescending. It causes one to question the extent to which we are revelling in our own fixed mindsets. And it does a fabulous job.

It was a time when the class system in the Indian urban world was gradually getting more and more demarcated in terms of the elite, the middle-class and the lower middle class. This class system caused the elites to believe themselves to be sophisticated and charming in their ways, while believing the middle-class to be loud and gregarious and miserly.
While our other serials always ran in a parallel world of huge palace-like homes and saas and bahu fights and plastic surgeries, director Deven Bhojani and writer Aatish Kapadia quietly created a witty mirror of the society. Thus was born the cult, Sarabhai versus Sarabhai.

We have Maya (Ratna Pathak), the matriarch of the family - the eternally sophisticated and gracious, educated and classy woman to the world outside, versus a hypocrite to Indravadan (Satish Shah), her hubby. You have the spoilt brat Rosesh (Rajesh Kumar) - the baby of the house, whose poetries are "so bad that they are good", and who is detested with a vengeance by Indravadan. You have Monisha (Rupali Ganguly), the "middle-class" woman Maya loves to hate, all the time, anywhere, anytime. Then there's Sahil, Monisha's husband and Maya and Indu's oldest son - the rope that is pulled from both sides in a fierce tug-of-war between the seas and bahu.

The serial follows the conventions of a Horatian satire, which satirises the society in a very light-hearted manner, without hurting anyone's sentiments. That's exactly what this serial does for you. What with Madhusudhan who cannot hear for the life of him and still never once accepts his problems,; and Dushyant, who mechanically chews gum as he technically "explains" mechanisms with Rosesh as the model, the serial is a funny mirror to the inside story of an outwardly posh and elite household.

"He had the vague sense of standing on a threshold, the crossing of which would change everything." - Kate Morton, The Forgotten Garden

In this case, it is a "she".

Sulabha Mahajan (Smita Patil) dreams of doing something great for the society. She lives in a 'progressive' family, where her husband, Subhash (Girish Karnad) is an advocate who uses big words that reflect his education; and her mother-in-law indulges in social work from the comforts of her house itself, never once crossing the threshold. Sulabha also has a little daughter. Sulabha gets a job opportunity as Superintendent of a Women's Reformatory Home in a very remote village, Sangamwadi. Her mother-in-law and husband expect her to help her mother-in-law with the social work from home, without stepping out of the four walls, and are hence, quite upset about her decision to move to Sangamwadi. However, with her sister-in-law's support and willingness to look after her daughter, Sulabha dares to step out and move to Sangamwadi.
Umbartha lays out the bare bones of exploitation, corruption and double-standards in the Indian society. In the form of the MLA Bane, it explores the sexual exploitation of women by so-called 'respectable' people. Sulabha also goes against the will of her supervisor, and brings about several reforms. The movie also deals with lesbianism, which was (and still is) considered a subject that is completely overlooked by Indian popular culture. Sulabha tries to deal with the taboo by educating the women, and explaining to them that no matter how much they bicker and quarrel, they ultimately have no other place to go to, and that this reformatory is their home.

What happens when a woman crosses the Lakshman-rekha, or the boundaries, set for her? And who, in the first place, decides these boundaries? This pathbreaking movie brilliantly explores the different facets to Indian society. Every bit of the movie shatters preconceived notions of a comfortably calm society, and questions the then-new wave of the 'progressive ' way of life.

Smita Patil, with her eyes that speak and tears that may flow through your eyes, is not only the most fundamental unit of the film, but, in fact, is the film itself. Girish Karnad does a wonderful job in creating a niche for himself in a woman-centric movie like this. Enough said. This movie breaks and rebuilds, destroys and constructs, explores and questions, And makes its audience question, too.