‘Love You Zindagi’: Gauri Shinde’s Celebration of Women and Life on Screen

Abstract

This chapter explores the ways in which Gauri Shinde celebrates ‘ordinary’ women in her two full-length feature films English Vinglish (2012) and Dear Zindagi (Dear Life, 2016). In English Vinglish, Shinde’s debut film, Shashi (Sridevi), the docile housewife is often dismissed by her smug husband and condescending teenage daughter. The only way she can express herself is by being a good homemaker and by excelling in making laddoos (golden, round sweets). Shashi’s life, however, takes a turn when an opportunity arises for her to travel alone to the USA. Gauri Shinde maps the heroine’s trajectory at two levels: her gradual awakening to the world outside the narrow confines of her small town and her increasing self-confidence as she learns to communicate in the English language. In Dear Zindagi, Gauri throws the spotlight on a relatively unexplored theme of depression and mental health. Kaira (Alia Bhat) is a young and promising filmmaker, with unresolved conflicts towards her family, particularly her mother. At some level these personal demons segue into her love life that is marred by commitment phobia. Both films call attention to women coming into their own and articulating their voices, while negotiating their private/public spaces, both at home (ghar) and world outside (bahir), in a media-saturated and culturally diverse milieu. As a genre, these texts can be categorized along with Eat Pray Love (Murphy, 2010) and Queen (Bahl, 2013) where women (re)discover themselves through the tropes of travel, globalization and multiculturalism. Although Gauri Shinde endows her heroines with agency, she also (partially) credits their transformation to their unconventional relationships. Shashi’s interaction with a gay American English teacher and an adoring French man, and Kaira’s attraction towards her much older psychologist, form interesting sub-plots that help forge the heroines’ growth. A notable facet of her films is a joyous celebration of stars and Bollywood glamour. Apart from two major female stars, Shinde also includes mainstream superstars like Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan in her films, thus making her product commercially viable. Both films have been critically acclaimed, though the commercially more successful English Vinglish was accused of a cop-out ending, and Dear Zindagi was questioned for its simplistic approach towards the representation of psychology. Nevertheless, Shinde has successfully demonstrated that issue-based films can receive attention without being excessively heavy-handed. Shinde denies to identify herself as a ‘feminist’ or a ‘women’s director’, but her work, from a theoretical standpoint, straddles various waves of feminism, and the chapter will analyse the director’s films through the specificity of the discourses on feminism. While doing so, it will explore how invested are Gauri Shinde’s films in feminist causes in the current times.