QUEEN: News of the World

Kangana Ranaut is so positively adorable as Rani Mehra, the title character in Vikas Bahl's Queen, that I'm willing to overlook the film's imperfections. I've seen her before without being wowed (in Once Upon a Time in Mumbai, as a Bollywood starlet involved with a noble gangster; in Tanu Weds Manu, as a girl so wacky and high-spirited that R. Madhavan falls for her while she's unconscious; and in Double Dhamaal, ugh ugh ugh). However, in Queen she inhabits the part of the sheltered apple of her family's eye with enormous charm and gusto. Queen follows Rani's rollercoaster emotional journey from happiness to heartbreak and back, from India to Europe and back, without turning our heroine into a cliché. 

Would that the same could be said for everyone she meets—but oh, well; let's give credit where it's due: the film's time in Delhi is well spent, and it's a pleasure to meet not just Rani but all the people at home who have made her the gentle soul she is and the strong woman she becomes over the course of the film.

Amit Trivedi scores, in both senses. The first song, just minutes into the film, plunges us into the kind of prenuptial song and dance that would be the climactic number in a more conventional Bollywood narrative. The bride-to-be (Kangana) and her people all dance to filmi songs! Everyone sings vaguely naughty lyrics! Everyone is so, so, so happy!

It's a great song, and a great setup for the quick descent that follows. The bridegroom, Vijay (Rajkummar Rao, once again playing cute-but-weak—I'm still waiting for a role in which I find him likable), asks Rani to meet him at a coffee shop. He has just returned from London and seems as full of pompous notions as SRK was at the beginning of the splashy 2002 Devdas—but Vijay's impulse isn't to woo his old flame by wearing a monocle and English suit; it's to tell his fiancée that he can't marry her because he has become a man of the world, and she's still just a simple, traditional girl.


I can't recall a more dramatic change of mood, from raucous to heartbroken, in the first fifteen minutes of a film, and Amit Trivedi is more than up to the task. The spare, heartbreaking second song plays as the stricken Rani shares an autorickshaw ride home from the coffee shop with her little brother, who wants to help but can't. The would-be bride runs into her house (where everyone has already heard the news) and locks herself in her room.

Both song sequences are smashing--great music and great visuals that work together to make something even more powerful than either one alone. Come to think of it, that pretty much defines what I love about Bollywood at its best.

As Rani remains in her room, a montage of her memories takes us through the surprisingly sweet courtship leading up to the happy engagement party at the beginning. We learn how doggedly Vijay pursued Rani and why she fell for him. Even though we're already quite prepared to see Vijay as a louse, this flashback instead makes us see him as Rani has seen him, and it ensures that we share her shock and bewilderment.

Rani then decides to use her honeymoon ticket to travel to Europe alone. Why shouldn't she see Paris and Amsterdam? Her grandmother sagely agrees with the plan. Her parents are worried about her safety if she goes, but more worried about her misery if she stays. And so, off Rani goes to see what this seeing-the-world is all about.

The film from this point is still charming and funny in parts, but unfortunately, Rani's family at home are far more interesting than the people she meets abroad. In Paris, there's Vijaylakshmi (Lisa Haydon), a brash half-Indian hotel maid, whose small child serves mostly as a cute prop and never gets in the way of his mother's job, romances, or partying. She's a familiar type—a movie babe who looks like a model, wears club clothes to go for a stroll, and boasts of her no-strings-attached attitude about sex. There doesn't seem to be much depth below these surface characteristics, which are nevertheless supposed to persuade us that Vijaylakshmi is the very model of a modern major feminist and that, therefore, a brief exposure to her midriff-baring tops and short shorts will persuade buttoned-down heroine Rani to loosen up and enjoy life already. You can safely go get a cold drink during the scenes in which the obligatory loosening-up happens: shopping for skimpy clothes = Freedom, alcohol is mistakenly ingested (oops!), dancing on the bar ensues. Rani and the maid become fast friends, the way people do in interludes like this.

Maybe I shouldn't be too hard on the screenwriter for constructing this female character out of plywood; the Euro-boys Rani meets are equally two-dimensional. When the newly loosened-up Rani stays at a youth hostel in Amsterdam, she meets cheerful, understanding boys from Russia, Japan, and France who also want her to enjoy life already. While wandering about with them, Rani stumbles across a handsome Italian restaurant owner and argues with him about seasonings. You won't be surprised to learn that Rani ends up cooking Indian food and selling it on the street and that everyone loves it. Or that she kisses the Italian guy and makes him swoon.

However, the film does do some things right, and most of them have to do with taking the time to develop Rani's character*. Rani doesn't cure the Russian of his tendency to drink too much; she doesn't assuage the grief of her Japanese friend, who is mourning his parents' death; and she doesn't fall for the boringly hunky Italian. Even when she does come out of her shell, the movie doesn't require her to display her newfound confidence by trading her salwar kameez for Daisy Dukes and plunging necklines. And best of all, even though dopey Vijay realizes what a mistake he's made and begs her to marry him after all, she doesn't do it (hooray!!!).

The saggy middle of the film might have been a real disappointment if it weren't such a treat to watch Kangana Ranaut in every scene, listening intently and puzzling out how to behave while surrounded by stereotypically free-thinking Europeans. She does an amazing job of letting Rani's smarts, strength, and humor peep through, even when she's facing humiliations large and small. At the end of the film, Rani is back in Delhi, wiser and happier for her adventure, fully aware of what she wants and doesn't want from life. Here, for once, is a character I'd follow to a sequel.

(But next time I'd like both an interesting heroine and interesting sidekicks. Well, baby steps....)

*Kangana Rangaut gets a screen credit for Rani's dialogues.

RAM TERI GANGA MAILI: My Eyes Are Up Here

Ram Teri Ganga Maili ("Ram, Your Ganges Is Dirty"), the last film from Great Showman Raj Kapoor, features his son Rajiv, who bears a strong resemblance to his Uncle Shammi, and Raj's discovery Mandakini, a gorgeous woman with black hair and blue, blue eyes.

And breasts. Large breasts. Did I mention the breasts? I probably hardly need to mention them--after all, if you google this title you will get an eyeful--but I wouldn't want anyone to think that Raj's obsession with "generous scoops of flesh" had gone unnoticed. Yes, I noticed the breasts; I promise you that if you watch this film, you will notice them too.

The excellent Phillip's Fil-ums discussion taught me quite a lot that I didn't know about the relationship between this film's story and the Shakuntala story of old. I've heard of Shakuntala (after all, she makes a brief appearance in Hum Aapke Hain Kaun--oh, yes, I am that shallow). However, I didn't know the particulars, so I didn't recognize that this film's plot "recapitulates the Shakuntala story," which is itself a recapitulation of a tale from the Mahabharata. Color me enlightened!

And who knows? Maybe the original story aimed at titillation* of a dudely audience while acting oh-so-concerned about the fate of poor Shakuntala, who was really truly married and therefore the unsullied mother of a legitimate son. If so, then RTGM is definitely the recapitulation of the Shakuntala myth, because titillation and concern-trolling are very much in evidence in this story of lovely Ganga and her misadventures after her secret wedding.

The film opens with the river Ganga looking distinctly on the grubby side. There's even what appears to be a documentary shot of a human corpse drifting along face-down in the water; in the US such things only happen in times of major disaster (see Hurricane Katrina), and in those situations Americans tend to feel hat they're not supposed to stare. But Raj Kapoor invites us, even wants us, to stare--first at the river Ganga and then at our heroine Ganga (Mandakini), a pure and innocent girl from the Himalayas who falls in love with Naren (Rajiv Kapoor), the guileless and rather clueless son of a corrupt politician from Calcutta. There may be some surface tsk-tsking about how badly the men she encounters treat poor Ganga, but I think if Raj Kapoor meant to inspire any real empathy he would have spent less time zooming in on her breasts.

As everyone who has ever heard of this film probably knows, Naren is off on a jaunt to find the source of the river Ganga when he meets a rustic mountain girl of the same name. How can a city boy resist? For one thing, the girl-Ganga bathes in a white sari that becomes transparent when wet, singing that her arms call to him. Ganga, I won't be the first to point out that your arms are not the feature everyone notices.

The foggy sheet doesn't do a very good job.

Reader, he marries her. It's legit--her brother (Tom Alter!) accepts her spouse, even keeping watch outside the temple during their wedding night. It's a fairly racy wedding night as Bollywood films go, though this time there is only side-cleavage for the slavering dudes. (I can only imagine how many coins would have been thrown at the screen in a Bombay theater by this point in the film.)

 Sadly, the brother is fatally wounded that night while fighting off the guy who thought he was going to marry Ganga, so there are no living witnesses who can vouch for Ganga's wedded status. And Naren, like Shakuntala's prince, waltzes back to Calcutta, promising to return for her with his grandmother's blessing.

Not to spoiler, but Granny dies before she can give that blessing, and guilt overwhelms poor Naren so much that he takes an awfully long time to come back for Ganga. An awfully long time. More than a year, in fact. When he does make his way back, he has run off without his father's permission, and the authorities are on his trail. This entertaining paagal subtitle shows one of the obstacles in his path: an outhouse.

In the US, an "outhouse" is an outdoor toilet, in case you're wondering why I find this hilarious.

Meanwhile, Ganga has grown tired of waiting for the father of her infant son (you knew there was a son), so she gets on a bus and starts her journey toward Calcutta. When she gets off the bus to transfer to the Calcutta train at her first stop, she lets a hard-looking beggar woman guide her to her destination, which is a big mistake.

Don't trust the beggar woman, Ganga!

The beggar woman takes her straight to a brothel and claims a fee from the evil madam for this luscious new girl, but Ganga flees. A bit later she asks a priest for help, and he takes her to his home and tries to molest her. I swear, every man in this film shows a psychotic lack of empathy, perhaps driven mad by the always-already-visible breasts.

At last Ganga catches the train. She's thirsty, but no one will give her water--a woman carrying a pot of water from the Ganges even refuses her a sip. A blind man offers sympathy for Ganga's starving child's dilemma (less coherent in the subtitle than in Hindi, but you get the drift).

We know he's telling the truth because we have just watched sadly as she tried without success to breastfeed her child. Raj Kapoor does an excellent job of getting the audience to empathize with the plight of this distraught young mother who cannot feed her hungry baby. No, that was sarcasm; Raj Kapoor instead does an excellent job of getting the audience to focus on Mandakini's almost entirely bared breasts. Alas, poor Ganga! Hubba hubba!

It turns out that the blind man isn't really blind, and he (like everyone else in the audience) has actually been staring at Ganga's breasts even when she thought she was unseen. He pretends to help her, then drags her to yet another house of prostitution. Poor Ganga. She doesn't escape this time because she knows there's nowhere to run. The people who want to make money off her bounteous breasts are absolutely everywhere.

(Ganga is the middle one.)

It's suggested that Ganga's singing is so lovely that the madam focuses on training her to sing and dance rather than calling on her to sleep with paying customers (at least at first)--so thank goodness she can sing. Therefore, in the end Ganga is sufficiently Umrao Jaan-ified to be called upon to perform at the wedding of a young Calcutta nobleman. Guess who? Yes, it's Naren! And there is something very familiar about that nautch girl. What is it? Neither her face nor her breasts are visible during the dance, so he doesn't quite recognize her at first. But he does finally know her voice. And so Naren and Ganga/Shakuntala are finally reunited, the baby boy gets to meet his daddy at last, and all is right with the world.

Happy ending. See how happy they look?

So Ganga finally gets to take her rightful place as an honorable married woman, which is what passes for a happy ending to the story. Now that she is safely ensconced in her husband's house, there will be no more public displays of cleavage, I'm sure. And we have all been sensitized to the plight of young women who find themselves on the road without male protection, haven't we? Haven't we?

Well, no, we haven't. In fact, I'm not sure that "we" have done anything, since as a non-male viewer I don't know whether Raj cared that I was watching. But I watched, and I wondered what on earth I was supposed to feel. Pity for Ganga? Disgust at the men (and women) who take advantage of Ganga's innocence and helplessness? Outrage that a young woman on her own is regarded as little more than a prize buffalo to be  milked (sorry!!) for whatever money she can bring in? Irritation about the "dirty Ganga" metaphor in the title? I'm terribly conflicted about being asked to stare and snicker while I'm supposed to be fearing for Ganga's safety, so I guess the answer is "all of the above."
 
I wish someone would do for Shakuntala what Anurag Kashyap did for Devdas. This woman needs to arrive in a new century.

*Go ahead. Titter.

CHENNAI EXPRESS: Stardust

"There's a personal me, there's an actor me, and there's a star me," Shah Rukh Khan observed in Nasreen Munni Kabir's fascinating 2005 documentary, The Inner and Outer World of Shah Rukh Khan. In his new blockbuster Chennai Express, there's not much of that inner world on display, but SRK's "star me" seems to be the entire point of the movie.

Having suffered through Ra.One, Jab Tak Hai Jaan, and director Rohit Shetty's Bol Bachchan, I wondered if planning to see Chennai Express indicated the triumph of hope over experience. I am happy to report that there are no videogames or otherworldly supervillains as in Ra.One, no unnecessary bargains with God as in JTHJ, and just a couple of Shetty's favored slow-motion shots of vehicles flipping end over end (preferably while on fire). There is a lot of mugging and fourth-wall-breaking, along with some of the most color-amped footage of filmi-rural South India I have ever had the pleasure to ogle. If you’re in the mood to enjoy a tongue-in-cheek snapshot of SRK’s outer world--and if you're not unduly bothered by an ending that talks all feminist and then vigorously backpedals*--then you may have fun hopping on the Chennai Express.

Here we find SRK playing yet another character named Rahul. (“You must have heard that name before,” he says, in Chennai Express's nod to Om Shanti Om's nod to SRK's many Rahul roles.) Orphaned in childhood and raised by his grandparents to take over their sweet shop, this Rahul is forty years old and in dire need of romance, so his dear friends** concoct a plot to sneak him off to Goa for a holiday. But Dada Ji dies just before Rahul is to leave, so instead of vacationing, he's expected to deposit Dada Ji’s ashes in the waters of a southeastern Indian temple town. Dadi Maa sees Rahul off on the Chennai Express. He intends to hop off at the first stop and ditch the remains in Goa instead, but his plans immediately go awry.

Deepika ponders her escape

The train of the film's title is, naturally,  an excuse to kick off an SRK retrospective. Winking at the camera, Rahul grasps the hand of a beautiful girl (Deepika Padukone, but you knew that already) running in slow motion to catch the departing train while “Tujhe Dekha Ko” swells on the soundtrack. Then he performs the same rescue four more times as the tune continues to play, hauling on board a series of increasingly large lungi-wearing thugs, who are in pursuit of Deepika’s character, Meena.

These jokes amuse me, but such constant exposure to the outer world of SRK rather obliterates the inner world; Shah Rukh Khan doesn't seem terribly focused on acting the part of the sweet-shop guy who has never had a girlfriend when Rahul is boasting to a damsel in distress about his $700 mobile phone. Still, I enjoyed the familiar quotations from the hits that made SRK a multiplex superstar and household name.  (If I had grown up with these movies, I might be rolling my eyes at all this broad, self-referential humor, but I didn't grow up with them, so I enjoy the fact that the jokes are so very meta.)

The goofball let’s-put-on-a-show aspect of Shah Rukh’s comic performances often makes him quite likable. Maybe we believe we're getting a glimpse of the "personal me" when SRK seems to hold his own stardom at arm's length, like the middle-class boy from Delhi he used to be. But there’s no denying that the Khan humor can slide toward meanness. Not to take unnecessary umbrage--I find it very silly when a film has to, say, change its completely inoffensive name thanks to manufactured outrage--but the Tamil-speakers in Chennai Express are the butt of an awful lot of these-guys-talk-funny jokes. There is also a pointless and mortifying scene with a cross-eyed, speech-impaired dwarf that made me want to cover my eyes and ears.

Back to the plot involving Deepika and all those lumpen South Indian guys on the train: Meena turns out to be a Tamil godfather's runaway daughter, and the men are bringing her home to marry a local bigwig's son in whom she isn't interested. Meena pretends to be in love with Rahul for no convincing reason, which lands Rahul in hot water with the don and the outsized fiancé. The couple escape the village together thanks to Rahul grabbing a motorcycle and proving to have unexpectedly Dhoom-level biking skills. For the next hour, he and Meena bicker, pretend to be married, fall in love, and end up on the run again.

During this perfunctory romp, much of the scenery is surreally gorgeous. I'm quite sure there is no actual village anywhere on earth as clean, as idyllically situated, or with as many eye-popping colors as the one that exists in this film to be a backdrop for Meena's realization that she actually does love Rahul. Deepika and SRK, both in hot pink, swirl past baskets of searingly orange and yellow marigolds. Plastic containers in vendors' carts in the bazaar are enticingly candy-hued--yes, this village even has attractive Tupperware! The musical number "Kashmir Main, Tu Kanyakumari" features elephants with gleaming gold headgear and people dressed in vivid yellow tiger suits, Kathakali dancers, SRK in his DDLJ hat and jacket, and much, much more, posing before a backdrop that lacks only the Lonely Hearts Club Band. Ahh, who needs reality? An overload of egregious, flagrant, pulsating color makes me throw my hands in the air and say, "I concede. You're right. Total awesome WIN."

And oh, how I admired Deepika's clothes. Her sarees are a sumptuous feast of deep oranges and blues and vast swaths of gold embroidery, in which she is absolutely stunning. And she's also appealingly game, barreling through grimaces and funny voices in a sleepwalking (or, rather, a sleep SRK-pummeling) scene. "Single-screen humor," sniffs Rahul, but at the screening I saw it was hard to hear him over the guffaws from the audience.

After the interval we're in another film all of a sudden. Instead of poking nostalgic fun at those old Rahul/Raj characters who helped middle-class striver Shah Rukh Khan morph into Superstar SRK, the film actually turns into an old Rahul/Raj film. Rahul and Meena have escaped her father's grasp, and they're going their separate ways. But wait! They realize they're in love! Well, that means they can simply escape together to a sweet (-shop) future, right? Um, no. Instead, Rahul makes a detour and heads straight back to the village without telling Meena what he's up to. Why, you may ask, would he return to the place they've been on the run from for 90 minutes? Because he has to win her father's approval or he won't be able to live with himself, obviously. (The leather jacket in that Kashmir number isn't the only thing borrowed from DDLJ.) Rahul makes an affecting speech about the importance of women in independent India. Hooray! Then the hulking fiancé delivers the obligatory last-reel pummeling, by the end of which Shah Rukh is, as in days of yore, weeping and stammering and covered with blood and snot. And, as in days of yore, his perseverance naturally wins over Meena's father, who has been restraining Meena during the beatdown. He releases her hand so she can run to Rahul's side with daddy's blessing.

Sigh. I have seen this scene so many times before that I might have accepted it as retrograde and annoying yet par for the course had it not been for, you know, the big speech Rahul has just delivered (literally seconds before!) about respecting a woman's right to her own choices. What happened to autonomy? Why bring it up just to abandon the whole concept? If it's so essential that Meena be allowed to choose her own path, then why are the men fighting? How about you keep your hands to yourselves, boys, and let her decide?

A minute or so later, the film concludes with a tribute to Superstar Rajnikanth performed by, I kid you not, Honey Singh. I'm guessing that a bow to Rajnikanth was necessary to prevent people from fretting over the South Indian jokes. (And I'm pretty sure that SRK owes Rajnikanth one after putting him in Ra.One.) But did the tribute have to come from this guy?


Oh, hey! Look over here! Bright colors! Dancing! Self-effacing humor! And MONSTER SUPER HIT!

You know, if I squint just so and tilt my head at a certain angle, all I can see is stardust.

*I find that more and more, I have a hard time not being bothered by this. Can't we all just grow up and be OK with women being people too?

**Never to be seen again.

BHAIRAVI: Goodbye to All That

Bhairavi surprises by not being sentimental in the end about the things it seems to start off being sentimental about. Director Aruna Raje’s film is a Bollywood fantasy that makes a sharp turn into  parallel cinema, setting up intriguing questions about what we want, expect, and need from a romantic love story.

Ashwini Bhave (who was apparently considered quite the hottie in the mid-1990s) stars as Ragini, the blind daughter of a well-known classical musician. She and her singing are both beautiful, but this being India, she’s pretty nearly unmarriageable because of her disability. (The question of where this is in India seemed puzzling to me, as the people speak Hindi—not obviously dubbed—but the landscape and clothing look southern. Ah, well; what do I know?)

Her mother dies shortly after a last-ditch suitor turns tail on learning of Ragini’s blindness. And then her father dies in an accident, leaving Ragini alone. Well, not really alone—again, this is India, so the family retainer loyally stays on, doing the cooking and cleaning and putting the needs of her charge over those of her own (grown, greedy) kids. And although Ragini’s mother was pinching pennies at the start of the film, it turns out that the money Maa put aside for Ragini’s wedding festivities, combined with Pitaji’s savings from all the singing, has left their daughter with enough to keep the household running just fine. So Ragini teaches music to children, sits by a waterfall in a rainbow she can’t see, and goes out  on the river in coracles rowed by old fishermen just to enjoy the spinning sensation. The love she experiences is of the fond, not the romantic, variety.

Then along comes Rajan Swamy (Shridhar), a young man who, as a boy, had studied with Ragini’s father. When he learns that the father is dead, he asks Ragini to teach him to sing. And well is he named Swamy, for soon he is teaching her about Love. She resists, but not for long—he’s from a family known to her, and the retainer says he’s handsome. They get married.

This film seems not to have much of an online presence, but this sweet love song from the enjoyable Laxmikant-Pyaarelal score turns up, inevitably with the description “Ashwini Bhave HOT”:

The blissful interlude that follows offers a charming (and rare) filmi glimpse of a honeymoon spent in bed. Nosy auntie-jis storm in, intending to shame the couple for staying shut up in their room in broad daylight; since the couple are unshameable, the aunties end up fleeing with hands over their eyes. Still PG rated, but pretty bold for Bollywood!

A year flies by. One evening Rajan seems withdrawn. Ragini coaxes the truth from him: he has to go away again (he’s some kind of traveling salesman), and for a whole week—not just a day or two, as he apparently does regularly. She’s sorrowful, but she knows that he’ll cut the trip as short as possible, as he also apparently does regularly. He tells her that he’ll buy postcards when he arrives at his destination and send her one every day. She sees him off at the door. And because we’re conditioned to expect that something bad will happen after that setup, we worry along with Ragini when the postcards don’t arrive—and then, after a week and then two, neither does Rajan.

I remember reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder books as a child and thinking about how terrible the waiting would be if something had happened to Pa on the prairie or in the big woods. Who would tell the pioneer family, out in the wilderness with no telephone? The not knowing would be terrible. So I felt for Ragini as she waited and worried, unable to contact her beloved. (How cell phones have changed the world—and the plotlines.)

Finally, an uncle goes to Rajan’s office to inquire whether something has happened to him. O-ho, says the office manager pleasantly, were you taken in by that scoundrel too? No, no, the uncle patiently explains. He’s married to my niece. Well, he’s a scoundrel nonetheless, the manager says, and off goes the worried uncle to break the news to Ragini. She shakes her head: there’s a simple explanation. He loves me. He will return.

Conditioned as I am to Bollywood movies where people badmouth Our Hero but Our Heroine remains steadfast, I waited patiently, Ragini-like, for the revelation. But logic niggled at me. Is he dead? Well, why wouldn’t his office know that? Maybe some scoundrel is masquerading as Rajan. Perhaps, but where is the real Rajan in the meantime? Uh-oh, the jewelry is missing. Well, surely Ragini has just mislaid it. I do that all the time, even with the advantage of sight.

The uncle and the loyal retainer are convinced that Rajan has been a louse from the get-go and has taken advantage of the poor blind girl. They insist that Ragini should go to the bank and see whether anything is left of her savings. Indignant, off she goes. And the bank employee says, Oh, dear, I was so worried about letting him cash all those certificates. But you didn’t come in yourself, and he said it was all right. Umm, you still have 150 rupees…. Then Ragini, uncle, and retainer troop off to the police station to report the crime, and Rajan’s name elicits nods of recognition. Yes, that scoundrel! Ragini declines to press charges, and the policemen insinuate that it’s because she’s his wife and knew all about his schemes.

And still I waited for the explanation that would make everything all right. I figured Ragini needed to hit bottom in order to make the happy ending really sing. Come on--when have you ever seen a love song like that one figure in a story with a guy who really did turn out to be a scoundrel? At last, the uncle is told that Rajan has been arrested on one of the many charges leveled against him. Back to the police station goes Ragini to clear up this little misunderstanding. We see Rajan (it’s him, all right) behind bars, yammering on at the unseen copper about how his wife will bail him out because she’s a woman and she loves him and that’s what women do. Of course she’ll take him back. And Ragini enters, unseen by Rajan, and hears exactly what’s what. Ouch.

The simplicity of the explanation makes it hit a little harder. He is a louse. He doesn’t try to pretend that he loves her, or ever loved her. He’s stolen her nest egg. And he still expects to be bailed out.

And finally Ragini's eyes are opened to the truth. Instead of playing the loyal wife, she does what many a Bollywood heroine should have done before her: she tells the rotten husband that he is dead to her, wipes the sindoor from her forehead, and heads for home to start over. We see her, widow-like, handing her sarees out one by one to beggars along the path. The end of the romance really has the feel of a death scene—deliberate and wrenching.

The film concludes with one final scene of Ragini singing onstage before a rapt audience, intercut with shots of our heroine in the coracle, asking the fisherman to row her out into the river once again as in the old days. The song she's singing says, “The boat escapes the maelstrom.” The coracle goes with purpose, not spinning in circles, to the middle of the river, where Ragini solemnly removes her wedding necklace and sets it floating away on a lotus leaf. The crowd wah-wahs appreciatively.

I guess Ashwini Bhave closing the door on romance for good and all isn’t hot enough for YouTube, because nobody seems to have posted this song. Thwarting the romance-seekers among us, though, seems to be part of the movie's grand plan. Like its heroine, Bhairavi works to turn heartbreak into art.