Bollywood has always taken us to a fantasy land along with the pretty girls, handsome boys, picturesque places, emotional love stories and more. However, today what Bollywood shows us the slice of reality where society’s assumptions decide other’s character especially when it is a character of the woman.

 

Three single, working women in New Delhi. In 21st-century India, that one line is enough to establish a fear on one’s mind. Shoojit Sarkar’s Pink tells a gritty story of our sleazy patriarchy that restraints woman in stereotypes.

 

Here a character is determined by the clothes you wear, what time you come home, how much you smile at men, whether you drink and, of course, your sexual history. Pink gives a solid hit on these feudal assumptions.

 

Director Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury and creative producer Shoojit Sircar powerfully establish that none of it matters — when a woman says no, it means only NO and NOT MAYBE.

 

Three men and three women who meet at a rock concert in the outskirts of New Delhi. Amid the partying, something happens, which is not firstly revealed – we just see the girls seems to be shaken while returning to their house, and the men rushed to the hospital with one of them profusely bleeding.

 

The injured Rajveer Singh is the nephew of an influential politician and his assailant, Meenal, is an ordinary working woman who turned down his sexual proposal, resulted into crushing a bottle on Rajveer’s head. The incident soon twists into a nightmare — for the women, of course.

 

Meenal’s roommate Falak loses her job as her morphed photos went viral on internet. Meenal herself was kidnaped and terrorised. Further the boys followed another girl Andrea and did best to break the women into submission. Deepak Sehgal the retired lawyer suffers from bipolar disorder, often watched the girls from his house or during the morning walk.  He decided to defend the girls.

 

 The film is extremely well cast. Taapsee Pannu as Meenal the one who seems to have hot-headedly caused it all, Kirti Kulhari as Falak, the reasonable, mature one who wants to avoid trouble at all cost. Andrea Tariang is Andrea, who frequently and realistically described as 'North-Eastern,' as if that is all that counts.

 

I walked out of Pink speechless not because it has shown something new. But the film narrates it in a way that your skin started crawling. It’s the detailing: the prying neighbours, the giggling co-workers, the indifferent cops or when the boys kidnapped Tapsee as they want to show her ‘aukad’.

 

There are all kinds of characters in the film: from the loving, caring landlord who won’t evict the girls despite threats; an estranged boyfriend of Andrea who says he can either be truthful or liberal never helpful, a cop who discourages from filing a complaint and the lawyer who goes to any extent, asks intrusive questions and seeks intimate details, to humiliate them to save his clients. Even the biased Haryanvi woman cop is like a toy in the hands of the powerful men.

 

Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury keeps the scenes tight and tense. The writing, by Ritesh Shah, is terrific. So are the performances. The women — Taapsee Pannu, Kirti Kulhari and Andrea Tariang — don’t seem like they’re acting. You and I might know these women, strong and vulnerable, confused and angry. Courtroom scenes are excellent and a special salute to Mr. Bachchan, who infuses his character with a tragic dignity. His impassioned defence of these brave women is both heartbreaking and inspiring.  Piyush Mishra, Dhritiman Chatterjee, Angad Bedi, all have given commendable performance.

 

Overall, Pink is powerful and a must watch film.