Women’s World:
Tahira Kashyap Khurrana’s debut feature, Sharmajee Ki Beti looks at a group of women who have nothing in common but their surname—Sharma. She intended to make a film about the problems faced by the urban woman, but then went ahead and made it so simplistic, that it makes even the most sympathetic of viewers wonder: if that is a problem, then these women haven’t lived!
Teenage Swati Sharma’s (Vanshika Taparia) constant grumble is that she has not got her period yet; the other grouse is about her wild curly hair, and that her mother, Jyoti Sharma (Sakshi Tanwar) does not perform the duties of a good mother. Jyoti is a coaching class teacher, constantly in a rush, shouting instructions over her shoulder to her easy-going husband Sudhir (Sharib Hashmi), who has an evening shift job, and is available to do what Swati thinks is the “mother’s job.” The kid growing up in Mumbai, has no clue about shared parenting? Also, she has to be particularly daft not to have heard of anti-frizz conditioners, or a hairdresser to give her a decent style. Her best friend, Gurveen Sharma (Arista Mehta), who has to listen to her endless whining, also has hair issues and a secret she shares eventually.
Gurveen’s mother, Kiran Sharma (Divya Dutta), is desperately lonely after a move from Patiala to Mumbai. Her husband, Vinod (Parvin Dabas) is indifferent, and the daughter cranky, so she has nobody to talk to except the cheeky househelp. Her attempts to get the neighbours to play Tambola are rebuffed—as if that’s the best or easiest way to pass the time! Looking at Kiran’s misery—she has elaborate suicide and murder fantasies– one would think she is the only homemaker in the city. Even her Patiala-based mother has things to do, and gets irritated by her constant calls.
The one who, perhaps, has a genuine problem is Tanvi Sharma (Saiyami Kher), a state-level cricketer, whose boyfriend Rohan (Ravjeet Singh), an aspiring actor, keeps on at her for not being feminine enough. According to her friends, he is rich and cute, so his MCPness is to be overlooked.
Since the troubles of the Sharma females are flimsy, they are also easily solved. After a rant from Swati, Jyoti makes time for home; Kiran finally uses her talents to set up a business (where did the money come from?), and Tanvi gives Rohan a get going speech. Gurveen gets a jar of hair gel from her mother, which she could have picked up herself from the neighbourhood beauty store. Teenage girls these days are not so clueless as to not know about cosmetics or which side of a sanitary pad is up!
The film is straightforward and intermittently amusing; Khurrana may have kept it bland and cheerful so as not to be accused of, gosh, feminism! For all the pro-female posturing, Sudhir is portrayed as a figure of sympathy—poor thing, his wife makes him do all the housework. To prevent him from looking like a wimp, there has to be a scene in which he threatens to beat up the men passing snide comments about Jyoti.
Streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Sharmajee Ki Beti is a pleasant enough, undemanding watch, and the actors are uniformly good. Divya Dutta can be depended upon to make any part her own, but the two young actresses playing the daughters show promise.
(This piece first appeared in seniorstoday.in)
