A Bombay Room With A View A Look at Gender in Kabhi Khushi Khabie Gham

It opens with a dialogue from Amitabh and Jeya Bachchan – “Why is it that a father is never able to tell his son how much he loves him? / But the mother? She keeps repeating it, whether her son listens to it or not.”

This is the first words we hear from the movie Kabhi Khushi Khabie Gham (KKKG), a Bollywood blockbuster marketed to the masses as “all about the family”. Released in 2001, following the path of director Karan Johar’s first movie, KKKG tells a multi-faceted story that is depicted over a long time period. The film centers around a family-driven drama where we track the storyline across 3 different generations. Amitabh Bachchan plays a wealthy businessman and the patriarch of the Raichand family with 2 sons – the elder Rahul, who is revealed early on to be adopted, and the younger Rohan. The crux of the film’s drama is drawn from the eldest son’s marriage to a woman from a lower socio-economic background, against the wishes of his father. Following the marriage, the father disowns Rahul and he leaves with his bride to London. The latter half of the movie is centered on Rohan’s storyline with his love interest, Pooja, and his attempts to bring Rahul and his family back into the family home in India.

On the surface it seems we have entered yet another Bollywood film on family drama but KKKG goes beyond that. From the first few lines we can already witness the beginnings of a gender discourse – why is one gender like this and the other so different? In this review, I will elaborate on how the film establishes itself away from its predecessors and peers by creating diversified gendered identities for its female characters – specifically on the issue of gender roles in families and gender roles in the Diaspora.
Gender Roles in Families
The construction of female characters across 3 generations of the family gives the film space to create a more heterogeneous gender identity amongst its 3 characters. When we identify these 3 main female characters themselves, we can already see these diversified roles. The imagery from the first time we see the characters of Nandini, the matriarch, Anjali, Rahul’s love interest, and Pooja, Rohan’s love interest and Anjali’s younger sister, give us a clear view of each characters’ personality.

(Nandini, Anjali and Pooja in their first scenes respectively)

From the feelings that these images invoke we are able to fit these various characters into the familiar tropes that can be found in the depiction of female characters in Bollywood film such as the devoted mother and wife, shown in Nandini offering prayers for her family or the modern version of the “vamp” seen in Kareena Kapoor’s depiction of Pooja.
The character of Anjali is an example of how the film pushes gender identities within the family. In her first scene, we can see her waving the Indian flag, embodying the spirit of the “ideal” Indian heroine. She is further depicted as filial daughter to her widowed father and a protective elder sister to Pooja. However, being the lead female heroine, we also expect characteristics of the “ideal” Indian wife from her such as chastity, modesty and submissiveness. What we get however is the loud-mouth, clumsy and at times, crass Anjali who breaks away from the Sita-like wife figure who is able to be playful and relaxed around her husband.
In Nandini we also see a break from the submissive, servitude attitude we expect from the traditional Hindu wife as depicted in Bollywood cinema. Throughout the film we see her being constantly shut down by her husband when she offers her opinion but towards the end of the film, we are witness to a reversal of the roles. “My husband is just a husband... Not God” she decries. Here we see how the role of the mother clashes with wifely servitude, creating a more complex and three dimensional female character.
Re-constructing the Vamp
The figure of the “vamp” is largely subverted in the film. We have the character of Pooja who would stereotypically play the overwesternised vamp who “demonstrates uncontrolled female lust and wantonness”. In KKKG however, this character is developed further in that she does not serve as an antithesis to another chaste, idealized woman but is instead allowed to grow as a character while still retaining that “vamp” personality. The film allows us to witness the development of the character from the plain Punjab suit-wearing Pooja to the fashionable, sexy and explicitly Westernized “Poo”. This follows the trend Zeenat Aman set in the 1970s which “allowed the heroine to occupy the space of the vamp, undermining several older boundaries regarding the display of female sexuality”. However, the character of Pooja never receives the moral lesson that most vamp characters are subjected to – even in popular movies released in the same year, vampy female characters such as Preity Zinta’s prostitute character in Chori Chori Chupke Chupke or Bipasha Basu in Ajnabee were all seen to receive moral condemnation in their films. By never moralizing the sexually suggestive and assertive Pooja, the film gives space for a modern heroine to exist beyond the repressive confines that dictate most female characters.
Gender Relations in the Diaspora
The film depicts a marked difference between the romances of Rahul and Anjali, which happens in the context of India, and Rohan and Pooja, a more “modern” romance that happens within the diaspora. When we compare the song and dance numbers of the 2 couples - Yeh Ladka Hai Allah for the elder and You Are My Soniya for the, we see a contrast in not just music and dance but also in the costumes. However, one is never established as better than the other- the traditional but playful gender relationship between Rahul and Anjali is never seen as superior to the more Westernized relationship between Pooja and Rohan where the woman is the sexually aggressive character and the man is the one to feign disinterest. We are also able to further see the effects of the diaspora on the same gender but over different ages. The assimilative younger sister, Pooja contrasts with Anjali who steadfastly holds on to a cultural Indian lifestyle.
Conclusion

To conclude, by developing more diverse roles for women to portray, KKKG pushes the boundaries of Bollywood film to be more accepting and inclusive of different types of female characters beyond its usual tropes. While the film does not always create a progressive female story – the storylines of the female characters as still intertwined firstly with the main hero’s and romantic relationship serve as the main goal of the characters, it still serves as a forward thrust for the gender discourse in Bollywood.

Citations
Kasbekar, Asha. "Hidden Pleasures Negotiating the Myth of the Female Ideal in Popular Hindi Cinema." In Pleasure and The Nation, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Gehlawat, Ajay. "The Construction of 1970s Femininity, or Why Zeenat Aman Sings the Same Song Twice." South Asian Popular Culture, 2012. Accessed September 15, 2014.

Banaji, Shakuntala. "20-25, 55-80." In Reading 'Bollywood': The Young Audience and Hindi Films. Basingstoke [England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

"Sexuality, Sensuality and Belonging: Representations of the "Anglo-Indian" and the "Western" Woman in Hindi Cinema." In Bollyworld Popular Indian Cinema through a Transnational Lens, edited by Raminder Kaur, by Geetanjali Gangoli. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2005.

Khabi Khushi Khabie Gham. Directed by Karan Johar. 2001. India: Yash Raj Films, 2002. DVD.

Uberoi, P. "The Diaspora Comes Home: Disciplining Desire In DDLJ." Contributions to Indian Sociology: 305-36. Accessed September 15, 2014.

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[ 2 ]. Kabhi Khushi Khabie Gham, directed by Karan Johar (2001; India: Yash Raj Films, 2002), DVD.
[ 3 ]. Kasbekar, Asha. "Hidden Pleasures Negotiating the Myth of the Female Ideal in Popular Hindi Cinema." In Pleasure and The Nation, 290-291. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001.
[ 4 ]. Kasbekar, "Hidden Pleasures Negotiating the Myth of the Female Ideal in Popular Hindi Cinema.", 2001
[ 5 ]. Kasbekar, Asha. "Hidden Pleasures Negotiating the Myth of the Female Ideal in Popular Hindi Cinema.", 298-299, 2001.
[ 6 ]. Gehlawat, Ajay. "The Construction of 1970s Femininity, or Why Zeenat Aman Sings the Same Song Twice." South Asian Popular Culture, 2012, 58-60. Accessed September 15, 2014.