BEGUM JAAN ( Hindi Movie ) Review , Director : SRIJITH MUKHERJI, Cast : Vidya Balan, Gauhar Khan

Feminism, women empowerment, being true to oneself etc are a few words and sentences which are unfortunately being misinterpreted all the time and its true meaning still lies subdued. ' Being unapologetic' is one way of getting empowered. Being true to one's own reality is another way of getting empowered. Begum Jan is both.

The message is clearly conveyed when the protagonist says ' the brothel is ours, the body is ours and the rules are ours'. Though sex workers, we cannot see any victims there. They might have been victims at some point in time in their lives, but once they came under the safe roof of ' Begum Jaan', they ceased to be victims. Director Srijith Mukherjee has clearly drawn a demarcation line for the protagonist from becoming a larger - than size character.

She is strong but vulnerable too. As usual, you cannot see a single trace of Vidya in Begum Jaan.
The characters lack hypocrisy and it is well conveyed too.
The movie opens with an incident that shows a striking resemblance to the gruesome Nirbhaya case. But unlike the real incident, the girl is saved by an old woman who strips herself in front of the miscreants. Proved to be a knock on their conscience, they leave the girl unharmed.

From there, we are taken to 1947 when India was about to get freedom. Cyril Radcliff, who was utterly clueless on the diversity of India was called by the last viceroy Mountbatten to have the final cut on the country - perhaps, the most brutal atrocity which the English had ever committed in the country.

When Radcliff completes his task successfully by drawing the infamous ' Radcliff line', there stands a brothel as a major bottleneck in the border of Punjab and Pakistan.
For the Radcliff Line is paasing through ' Begum Jaan's brothel and to evict her is not an easy task. The crux of the story is how the two officers from the Congress and the Muslim league ( Rajat Kapur and Ashish Vidyarthi) who also happens to be friends become successful in their mission. Will they be able to revel in their success once the mission is accomplished.

Begum Jaan is an unrelenting opponent - a woman shaped and moulded by the scars of her life. She is running a brothel with 12 sex workers from all the castes. Though a brothel, it is a close-knit unit. Though they have their personal woes, they are happy at the moment.
Right from the outset, we understand that things are not going to end on a happy note.But how they deal with their reality makes the story.

Of course, there are many loud outbursts and use of expletives. But you cannot expect refined use of language from a brothel and its inmates. The partition is being used just as a background and you cannot see any worse ramification of the holocaust as you are watching the whole story either from the view of Begum Jan who is least bit bothered about the partition. " Partition is only for men. For us, everything is same once the light goes off," she says or from the officers' viewpoint who are only witnessing the Begum Jan's story.

Perhaps, this was how the people of India at the time of partition might have felt too. They had to bear the brunt for something they had not done. Unfortunately, the situation has not changed one bit.

Besides, it's the loudness which made me connect to their traumas and tribulations.
The two officers - Rajat Kapur ( Iliyaz and Hari Prasad) are also caught in the dilemma. They too had to sacrifice a lot due to partition. Unlike Begum Jaan and her girls these are two characters who are trying their level best to run away from their realities. Though ruthlessly quelled, Begum Jaan and her girls emerge victorious and these two men puts themselves in a state of being where even their success becomes their failures.


Ila Arun's character recites the story of Jhansi Rani, Padmavathi, Meera Bhai. I don't believe those narratives have sidetracked the story, instead, it is an attempt to reinforce the resilience of Begum Jaan and her girls.

Every actor in the film deserves special mention especially Chunky Pandey who played perhaps one of the best roles so far in his film career

Begum Jaan is the remake of Srijith Mukherjee's Bengali movie Rajkahini which was a major hit in Bengal.

Loved Begum Jaan

Agatha Christie quotes 1

The legend of Lakshmi Prasad by Twinkle Khanna

Years ago, I was waiting at the Le Meridian hotel, Kochi to interview one of the guests who had come to participate in a conference. All the while, there was a man with nondescript features sitting beside me, giving occasional smiles. Other than smiling back at him, I did not attempt to ask his role in the conference. If I had asked, I would not have missed one of the best stories – the story of the ‘ Sanitary Man’ – Arunachalam Muruganantham . 

It was this feeling of ‘ sheer loss’ that made me go for Twinkle Khanna’s second book, but first work of fiction – The legend of Lakshmi Prasad as one of her stories in the book featured him.

Speaking about the book, the author’s intention was good. The ideas were perfect, but unfortunately, it failed to strike the right chord. To be precise, the tempo of emotions were fluctuating.

 For instance, the first story, after which the book was named talk at length on women empowerment and how a young girl made an entire village stand up for women’s rights. But even after the story ended on a positive note, the reader was left wanting for that single spark of revolution. Though feminism was the all pervading element in the story, sadly it could not be felt.  

With least expectation when you move on to the second one – ‘Salaam, Noni Appa’, there comes a barrage of emotions which could leave you longing for many things. This one was my favourite – a beautiful story of two Ismail sisters straight from the heart. It talks about a woman in her sixties who found love at the fag-end of her life.

When the tempo of your expectation was at its zenith, the author takes us to a dark story - the story of a Malayali woman who did not have a goal of her own. Contrary to the author’s claim  “ Here lies Eliza, she briefly belongs to many, but truly to herself, I think the woman just went with the flow of life. Though belonged to a privileged family, she did not even raise a finger to straighten out the mess, she had made of her life.There exist many people like Elisa. But I am just wondering how her lack of commitment and running away from life could be regarded as finding herself.

The story of the Sanitary man was the longest and last in the list. Sadly to say, there are many areas in the story which made the book a little dragging which was otherwise a light read. Long and short, I felt the stories were short of emotions.

Most of the time, the narration had shifted to a non- fiction mode. The systematic style – intro, content and conclusion squashed the creativity out of them. If the author had not rushed and shifted to a more creative style, all these stories could have been beautiful.

Though intermittently, her streak of humour popped its head in the story, she was trying hard to shackle them. If she had unleashed it, the stories would have left an indelible impact on the readers. ( That's just opinion)for I believe when thinks presented with humour can hit the bull's eye.

But I think I like the book primarily for Noni Appa’s story and also that I did not leave it half – way.