If Saand Ki Aankh had been fiction, chances are it would have been dismissed as “improbable” and “typical Bollywood masala”. We know this about the truth yet keep forgetting: it is not just stranger than fiction, it is gutsier, funnier and more adventurous, as this gloriously entertaining film reminds us.
Saand Ki Aankh is based on the lives of sisters-in-law Chandro and Prakashi Tomar who first picked up a gun in their 60s and have gone on to become multiple-medal-winning shooting champions. Now in their 80s, the Shooter Daadis of Uttar Pradesh’s Johri village have riddled glass ceilings with bullet holes and paved the way for more women (including Prakashi’s daughter Seema who is an international champ in the sport) to step out of their homes in a state otherwise notorious for gender discrimination and violence.
Taapsee Pannu, Prakashi Tomar, Chandro Tomar, Bhumi Pednekar |Instagram @taapsee
Two quick points before diving deep into this review: first, Saand Ki Aankh is smashing good fun, as are Taapsee Pannu and Bhumi Pednekar playing the feisty leads; second, however impressive the two actors may be, the casting of young women to play old women subtracts from the impact of the film by placing a question mark on the team’s commitment to its own messaging. This is an industry in which director Rajkumar Hirani and producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra cast a then 44-year-old Aamir Khan, 39-year-old R Madhavan and 30-year-old Sharman Joshi as teenagers in 3 Idiots as recently as 2009, where male superstars for decades have continued to play youth while in their 50s in reality, but women actors beyond their mid-30s are/have been routinely discarded, which is why it hurts so much that even in a progressive film such as this one, women artistes in their 60s have been deemed unworthy of playing women in their 60s.
It is possible to enjoy Saand Ki Aankh and find it inspiring, yet be aware that, however giant a leap it may be for womankind, it is but a small step towards a day when a Bollywood producer might put their money on a project with a Ms Pednekar and a Ms Pannu playing the younger Chandro and Prakashi while the Tomars’ 60-plus avatars are played by a Neena Gupta and a Ratna Pathak Shah (my dream cast for this film) or Shabana Azmi, Hema Malini, Rekha or any one of the numerous talented and gorgeous women who currently grace Hindi filmdom in supporting roles. For the record, this is exactly how the men in the story have been cast: the young Tomar husbands are played by young actors, whereas older actors play them in their later years.
Now that I have let off steam about this disappointment, let me tell you what a rollicking ride Saand Ki Aankh is.
The narrative opens in the late 1990s on the first occasion when Chandro (Pednekar) and Prakashi (Pannu) deceive their husbands and leave their village for a shooting tournament. The story then flashes back to the ’50s when Prakashi enters the household as a bride. She and Chandro instantly connect. Their friendship carries them through a dreary existence that includes unending work in the fields and at home, pregnancy after unwanted pregnancy (unwanted by the women, while their men do not care either way just so long as they get to have sex and sons), and the resentment they harbour against their spouses whose occupations are restricted to impregnating their wives, selling crops the wives have harvested, pocketing the money and lording it over the women.
Plenty has been reported about the Tomars in the media. Theirs is a fascinating tale calling out to be made into a film. Saand Ki Aankh is directed by debutant Tushar Hiranandani whose 15-year filmography as a writer covers a spectrum of comedies ranging from the misogynistic Great Grand Masti to the pleasant Atithi Tum Kab Jaoge. He does not do to this film what Hindi cinema has long assumed should be done to all women-centric narratives: he does not make it a weepie, nor write a male ‘saviour’ into the Tomars’ saga, nor turn the women into violent avenging angels of the sort that have crowded mainstream films about rape survivors from Zakhmi Aurat to Mom
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