Old Cocktail in New Glass

Bollywood still struggles to break stereotypes

Watching Cocktail would have been a fun experience for our khaps. After all, though director Homi Adajania made a glamorous movie supposedly about ‘friendship’, what it succeeds in doing is what Bollywood has done for years—stereotype women. The one who dresses sexy and sleeps around is screwed over in the end, and the God-fearing, salwar-wearing one eventually gets the guy and the moral higher ground. It feels like Adajania was channelling the khap’s definition of an acceptable code of conduct for women.

So even though it’s made in 2012, and packaged like the romance of the times, Cocktail sets us back many years. Deepika Padukone, in her sexiest avatar ever as Veronica, the party girl, almost appears like a scary vamp from yesteryear when she realises that Saif’s character Gautam doesn’t love her after sleeping with her. He loves the holier-than-thou roommate, Meera (Diana Penty). Sexy girls have always suffered this fate—one was reminded of the taut Karisma Kapoor in Dil Toh Pagal Hai who gets tossed aside for goody-two-shoes Madhuri. Or else, they just appear in roles that filmmakers think are acceptable to Indian society—as the slutty boss or the secretary who traps the hero, or the one who gets to gyrate to the item numbers, or the gangster’s moll.

It was also surprising to see Padukone, who appears to be a thinking actress who loves and lives without much duplicity, agreeing to playing such a character. Maybe looking hotter than ever and shooting the one scene in the movie that’s of any consequence (where she breaks down in a club as she realises everyone thinks she is a slut) was reason enough. What gets our goat is this—why can’t a cleavage baring woman have any values and why can’t a soft-spoken conservative girl want a good time in bed? Why does Bollywood force us to believe that the two facets of one’s personality just can’t co-exist? It would have made sense if Saif had eventually realised that Deepika was the one for him. After all, she is exactly like him.

It was heartening to see the reaction in the theatre and outside. Women remarked wryly, “I have a girl crush on Padukone. But that must mean I am a dirty girl, right?” It’s time for Bollywood to realise one thing—girls have both the good and bad inside them, and they love it.

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Aastha Atray Banan