JOURNAL

When we are first introduced to Sushmita Sen’s titular Aarya (Hotstar), she’s a South Delhi yoga mom, hanging upside down, with a resting outraged face. It's the shot that packs all the foreshadowing of inevitable murder, mayhem and gun-toting-air-kicking hijinks to come.

Fire up your OTT platform of choice and you’ll be stared down by countless renditions of Aarya and this brand of feminine badassery. The archetype of a 40-something female protagonist who’s up against the world. She’s taking on governments, fighting crime, building her empire, going undercover, being a corporate superstar and building her own genre of content in that process.

The idea of celebrating ‘strong women’ is not new - it’s quite literally mythological. And like most things, these narratives are cyclical. OTT of the 2020s sometimes feels like a repeat telecast of television of the 90s. Of Swabhiman and Shanti and Tara and Rajni (only 80s kids will remember, or well, maybe not even them). It was Indian television’s first desperate, beautiful leap towards the future that was eventually thwarted by daily soaps of the 2000s. Which, in turn, seem to have birthed power women of this decade.

But in our cultural imagination, women continue to be defined by their circumstances and their challenges, rather than their unique personalities or their humanness

It's telling too, that the faces are familiar. So many of these stories are important ‘comeback’ vehicles for glamorous movie stars from the 90s. A generation ago, female actors met early retirement in their 30s and only emerged again a couple of decades later to play the hero’s mother. Fortunately, today there are new platforms and new opportunities for storytelling. One would hope that in the intervening years, there would be an evolution in the characters too. 

But in our cultural imagination, women continue to be defined by their circumstances and their challenges, rather than their unique personalities or their humanness. 

Rage, steadfastness, incorruptibility - are all reactions to the male-dominated environments these women are in. The expression of empowerment imposed on these women often dons a masculine expression, and in that, it creates new challenges.

Women are expected to be extraordinary. Women are expected to be infallible. Women are expected to be better than the rest of humanity.

Feeling the pressure yet? Me too. We may have broken one mold, only to carve out another.

This is further underscored by contrasting stories of increasingly ordinary men that dominate both OTT and the movies. It’s 2023, and we’re here for men who cry. Or for those who are sensitive or fearful or awkward or don’t know how to fire a gun or have erectile dysfunction. We’re here for men who may be RAW agents by day, but also buy bhindi later that day. 

In Paatal Lok, Jaideep Singh Ahlawat’s cop character has a strikingly ordinary name - Hathiram Choudhary and a deeply relatable dad-joke - ‘Shaastron mein likha hai, lekin maine whatsapp pe padha hai’. In his ordinariness, he seeks our empathy and our favour. There is liberation and joy in this, and more importantly, there is entertainment.

Maybe it’s time we permitted female protagonists to be human too. And wrote characters defined by who they are, and not just by what they are up against. These older, wiser and more secure women freed from a seemingly exhausting and permanently outraged existence. Women who can exhale, be silly, make non-grievous mistakes, or just be. Maybe it’s time for us to rethink what empowerment means, and what it looks like in our everyday lives. 

Maybe we need more women who have the audacity to be ordinary.

For women, on screen and in our lives, ordinariness shouldn't have to be such a luxury. Through the generations of content in India, women’s characters somehow remain torn between the extremes of meekness and temerity. Where do we look to see ourselves as we are?

A note about the Journal

For us at Thought Over Design ‘Creativity’ isn’t an end product. It’s an ongoing journey of inspiration that comes from fresh observations of the world, headlong dives into curious obsessions, explorations of art and culture, listening to diverse voices, and a million more places we’re still discovering.

The Journal is an experiment in sharing these musings with the world. It’s a mixed bag of scribbles from our research, inspiration sessions, lateral think pieces, work from designers we admire, pop-culture takes and often our own agenda-free creative pursuits.

The stories and ideas we share here are an attempt to not just gather our own thoughts but also leave the world a little more inspired than we found it.