Some of the best scenes in Bobby Jasoos unfold between Vidya Balan and Rajendra Gupta. Gupta is the taciturn abba who rules his household with forbidding silence and occasional bitterness because his eldest daughter is a joyous, guilt-free, 30-year-old with no intentions to interrupt her ‘career’ as a jasoos for marriage.
She tries often to break the ice, once with her first pay-packet, but her gender gets in the way because as Gupta says, ‘mere ghar ko aurat ki kamai ki zaroorat nahin’ (My household does not need a woman’s earnings). A woman in the suffocating confines of a Hyderabadi mohalla should not have male-buddies she can back-slap. She should not yell back at men or make money by spying on the behalf of unwilling grooms, suspicious mothers and mysterious strangers.
Especially because women in her own family do nothing more ambitious than watch TV soaps and cook and serve food. So Bilquis (Balan), who has chosen to call herself Bobby, is an annoying mystery to her father. He doesn’t get her and repeatedly snubs her till that moment when they are on the opposite sides of a closed door and she says, “Main aapki sharm nahin shaan banna chahti hoon” (I want to be your pride, not your shame).
This is a significant thing to say in a country where daughters by and large, especially in middle-class milieus in small towns, must be chaste and always observe an unwritten code of honour to be of any value. Their ambition, their free-spiritedness, their ability to speak for themselves are not really ‘safe’ qualities and the best part about Bobby’s behaviour is that she is not consciously breaking rules. She is just being herself and has no fear.
Also radical is the fact that for the first time in a long time, a Muslim woman is not a friend or an aapa or a family friend but the main lead in a film. And she with her accidental fiance Tassavur, (Ali Fazal), her cronies and her little acts of rebellion commands the maximum screen time. More stereotypes are broken when she is dismissed by a judgmental patriarch as not good enough to be ‘marriage material’ and is told, “What is wrong in being career-minded? She is not like other girls…just confined to making rotis and watching TV serials.”
Other heart-warming bits come when Bobby and Tassavur end up getting engaged despite not being in love and then connect over little things that somehow add up to make the big picture. As Tassavur says, “With you, I forget that I am in a small mohalla of a small town…I feel happy.” Fazal is a talent with a presence to match and it would be interesting to see what Hollywood does with him in Fast & Furious 7.
The bustle of Hyderabadi streets during Ramzan, barrels of biryani, little kiosks selling bangles, the colour and light spangled bylanes and the local dialect coupled with endearing performances by Tanvi Azmi, Zarina Wahab, Rajendra Gupta and Supriya Pathak create a vibrant texture and Balan is happy to flit from case to case and juggle multiple disguises. The film, visually at least is a refreshing departure from the tired palettes we have come to expect every Friday.
With a more dramatic climax and a stronger story, it would have broken more ground. But Bobby Jasoos was obviously not meant to be another Kahani. It playfully creates some space for characters that we don’t get to see in commercial films.Watch it just for the scene where Vidya, after her engagement, is sitting on a parapet with her buddies, brushing away a piece of jewellery from her face in irritation.
Debutant Samar Shaikh should be applauded just for daring to make a film without the paraphernalia of big male stars, side-lined heroines and an item song by Yo Yo Honey Singh. May his repertoire increase.
with The New Indian Express
Reema Moudgil works for The New Indian Express, Bangalore, is the author of Perfect Eight, the editor of Chicken Soup for the Soul-Indian Women, an artist, a former RJ and a mother. She dreams of a cottage of her own that opens to a garden and where she can just be