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Tahira Kashyap hasn’t had only red flags or green flags in her life. No, not even beige flags. Her actor-husband Ayushmann Khurrana once confessed that he started off as a typical Chandigarh ka launda exercising casual sexism, before he began dating Tahira and gradually evolved into a feminist man. His films like Vicky Donor and Shubh Mangal Saavdhan demonstrate that. And so does the directorial debut feature of Tahira, Sharmajee Ki Beti.
(Also Read – Sharmajee Ki Beti review: A warm group hug celebrating womanhood; your next watch after Laapataa Ladies)
Not every man turns green with envy
Sharmajee Ki Beti revolves around three stories set in Mumbai. In the first one, Sakshi Tanwar’s Jyoti Sharma is an ace coaching class teacher whose husband Sudhir (Sharib Hashmi) takes care of all household chores and looks after their daughter because Jyoti is too occupied with her work. She has constant reminders on her phone and dishes them out at Sudhir. In a hilarious scene, when she’s leaving for work, Sudhir invokes Shah Rukh Khan’s popular romantic line “Palat!” from Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge. Turn around she does, only to give him another task following the latest phone reminder.
Sharib also played a supportive husband, Nalin Dalal, in Piyush Gupta’s film Tarla last year. But that man, like the best of them, gives in to envy after Tarla (Huma Qureshi) begins to prosper as a chef. This is similar to Suresh Triveni’s 2017 film Tumhari Sulu, in which Ashok (Manav Kaul), a frustrated employee, can’t get himself to root for his wife Sulochana’s (Vidya Balan) rise as a late-night radio jockey. However, Sudhir in Sharmajee Ki Beti is equally busy and secure, as he keeps reminding his wife, sans any grudges, that he also works – the only difference is that he does evening shifts. He doesn’t internalise the hurt and keeps making his grievances heard.
Both Nalin and Ashok in Tarla and Tumhari Sulu, respectively, also step down from their ideal husband prototype when they witness their wives sharing and commodifying something intimate that was reserved only for them. In case of Tarla, it’s food; and in case of Sulochana, it’s the sex talk. Once those go out of their kitchen and bedroom, the husbands can’t help but feel threatened. That tipping point is also teased at in Sharmajee Ki Beti, when Sudhir overhears Jyoti’s two male colleagues discussing how she got an award because of her gender. But instead of overthinking on those lines, he goes and gives them a piece of his mind – in typical mard fashion, I must add.
Red flag with redemption
In the second track, Divya Dutta plays Kiran Sharma, a homemaker who’s recently moved to Mumbai from Patiala. She has an absentee husband Vinod (Parvin Dabas), who doesn’t even make eye contact and responds to all her talking with a lifeless ‘hmm’ during breakfast, the only time she gets to see him before sleeping. When she finds out he’s cheating on her, she confronts him gently. To our surprise, he apologises and clarifies that the fault lies in him, not her. He confesses he married out of parental pressure and can’t feel connected to her anymore.
One would appreciate the honesty, but that doesn’t justify the husband cheating on his wife, leaving her all lonely and emotionally crippled. Definitely a red flag. But Vinod tries to atone his follies when he moves out, separates from his wife and daughter, and gifts his fancy flat to Kiran. The best part is that there are no lawyers or drama involved – we just see Kiran calling and thanking him. When she feels hesitant about taking away his home, he replies casually, “That’s the least I can do.” Bribing her with a home to make up for the emotional scars isn’t completely justified, but as Sobhita Dhulipala’s Tara Khanna says in Made in Heaven, “Make them pay. It softens the blow.”
Green flag with red spots
The third track revolves around Tanvi Sharma (Saiyami Kher), a state-level cricketer who’s dating Rohan (Ravjeet Singh), an aspiring actor. He’s introduced as cheerleader of a boyfriend immensely proud of her sporting achievements. But we begin to see how he dictates her lifestyle choices in minor ways – he wants her to get manicure done every once in a while and mocks her for eating only bananas and milk. As soon as he bags his break, he proposes to her and then asks her to quit cricket. The motive isn’t envy, but the patriarchal notion to protect the feminine appeal of his woman. It’s cute till it’s frustrating.
Sharmajee Ki Beti may be the stories of women and girls, but it speaks volumes of the men who can make or break their lives. Not every green flag turns into red, and not every red one remains so. Moreover, every green flag has specks of red and vice-versa. They may make for an interesting social media debate or dating vocabulary, but there exists a wide range of hues and shades between the red and the green flag. For all you know, your next-door front-bencher Sharmajee ka beta may be waving the red flag, and you wouldn’t know it.
Sharmajee Ki Beti is streaming on Prime Video India.
