Bombay Begums reverses gender equations
The series packs powerful performances by the cast who battle all sorts of odds to find their space in society
A bank CEO’s son runs over a lower-class boy. The victim’s poor parent spots a get-rich-quick scheme through blackmail. A public scandal could end the CEO’s career and so it is best to pay up, and then pay some more.
Sounds like standard soap opera drama? The bank CEO is a woman fighting to hold onto that position, in an otherwise all-male board of directors waiting with bated breath to bring her down. The victim’s parent is a sex worker, who has incidentally serviced the CEO’s son who will run over her boy, only minutes before the incident takes place.
Alankrita Srivastava’s web series reverses gender equation, which in itself gives the tale a fresh take. Bombay Begums tries working as a manifesto of women battling the odds to find their space in a society where gender politics never ceases to be stacked against them.
The show opens with the self-made Rani Irani (Pooja Bhatt), CEO of a bank who will soon be struggling to balance professional stress with tension in personal space. We meet Fatima, (Shahana Goswami), whom Rani appoints in an important position at the bank. Fatima is pregnant and, though she has no problem, her husband is not too supportive about her taking up a top job in her condition.
Rani’s path crosses with that of Lily (Amruta Subhash) the sex worker. A former bar dancer, Lily struggles to get a better life for herself and her son, and she thinks she might have struck a gold mine when Rani’s son runs over her boy.
Plabita Borthakur as Ayesha Agarwal is a small town girl out to make her mark in Mumbai, without a top B-school degree, but with lots of ambition. When it comes to putting across a feminine standpoint, very few in Bollywood do it with the rage and relish of Alankrita Srivastava — seen in Lipstick Under My Burkha, and season one of the web series Made In Heaven.
Bombay Begums stops short of being pathbreaking fare. It continues an effort to seriously open up conversation about women and their claim for a space that is rightfully theirs, but the story comes across as something you have seen before.
