The lives of wives

Illustration/Uday Mohite

Season One of The Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives bored me, because I've never been into the so-bad-its-good thing.

I found Season Two riveting, thanks to its magnificent artifice. Seema Sajdeh's desire for a "cause" to help the planet, Neelam's prudishness, Maheep's accent, Bhavana's businesses, all are played out by the women with delight and self-awareness. They are not just in on the joke - they are making the joke. This means we the audience often (not always) laugh with them instead of only at them. The subjects act as themselves with entertaining exaggeration. Yaniki, Bollywood Wives has flamboyantly embraced its identity as a drag show.

Such artifice reveals truths in its own way. The women claim to be in their forties. This seems so ridiculous that it makes the idea of "real age" irrelevant. How does it matter how old they really are? They perform boldness by talking menopause and filming cosmetological treatments featuring needles, golden blood and face yoga. In itself this is overdone and banal. But it does foreground the tremendous anxiety about ageing - an anxiety many women feel in a culture where older women are made visible only if they look and act youthful. Because these concerns are presented without moralising - either as justification or as critique - they help us understand this anxiety. We may or may not empathise, but we don't simply judge.

The show deals with marriage interestingly. Seema, no longer vague about being divorced, is refreshingly candid in her search for romance. She meets Sima Taparia (who is the campiest of them all, mirror?), a set-up used to mildly diss matrimonial conservativeness. Maheep Kapoor mentions an infidelity of Sanjay Kapoor's that made her leave. She returned, she says, for the children and they have made things work. It's an adult conversation, rare in our public culture, discussing the messy truths of marriage. Perhaps the most interesting tension arises from the airing of grievances between Seema and Neelam. Seema feels that Neelam, once her bestie, dumped her after marriage. Neelam contends that she had to prioritise her family. Seema scoffs "we can prioritise both", giving friendship an important status. Yet implicit in Neelam's response is that marriage came after many hurts, and she was anxious about making it work. Her husband trivialises the fight. He views dumping as a concept that only applies to heterosexual coupledom. The entire chapter reveals the way marriage narrows the definitions of intimacy - especially for women. A frivolous show about wives, germinates the serious question in our minds: what does it mean to be called a wife?

After all, why are these women and Gauri Khan (much obeisance is paid to her in the show) "Bollywood wives" and not Deepika Padukone or Kareena Kapoor? People criticise the show for being about rich people, but that is its most telling element. Because, sometimes for rich-ness to exist, some women have to be "just wives"? The women in the show may be centre stage, but they are also a "supportive" vehicle to promote various Bollywood properties and star kids who feature in these properties - Bollywood's Wife anyone? What is more revealing than that Bhavana Pandey - wife of a famous husband, mother of a famous daughter - can claim importance only through a wedding (a renewal of vows). Her wedding is the day the wife gets to play the heroine's role. Isn't that the patriarchy's sweetest
trap, honey?

Paromita Vohra is an award-winning Mumbai-based filmmaker, writer and curator working with fiction and non-fiction. Reach her at paromita.vohra@mid-day.com