February at Outspoken-ish

In which we're dealing with Bollywood dealing with trauma

Watching Gehraiyaan be like

You know it’s officially a living-with-Covid-2022-and-beyond when the most good looking product outta mainstream Hindi cinema is all kinds of #feelbad and an OTT release. Even Deepika Padukone, it seems to say, can’t get her shit together. If you’re willing and able on this side of it all, it seems to say, then simply hook up and drown/float. (In that order). Old wounds, new wounds, raw wounds, scars and toxicities, they’re here to stay.

How does Bollywood deal with trauma? Particularly in recent films that have invented a genre of their own - it used to go by multiplex cinema, now it’s allegedly millennial cinema. Where does Dear Zindagi fit in, you think? Or Dil Dhadakne Do? And how about the stuff that the Ayushmann Khurrana movies bring up?

Can it be trauma for the sake of trauma? Is it just a new-ish word that’s yet another safe-ish go-to label when there’s confusion? Is it a layered suffering, hand-in-hand with the tolerance and sehen-shakti we like to celebrate? Throw in a Bollywood Maa, and we got ourselves cringey/classic melodrama?

Or is it deeper, like the title of the latest offering peeps are semi-obsessing over?

Hey T! Resident Outspoken-ish millennial. Go on. Deal with it.

(P winks, plays Bekhabar Bekhabar).