Writer Sabrina Dhawan’s (Monsoon Wedding, Kaminey, Ishqiya) very first screenplay, Monsoon Wedding, won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival for director-producer Mira Nair. Raised in Delhi, Dhawan is Professor and Head of Screenwriting at NYU/ Tisch School of the Arts in New York. In Monsoon Wedding, “the niece, Ria, played by Shefali Shah, is based on me, and the revelation about sexual abuse is autobiographical. However, I didn’t get the happy ending shown in the film, I guess it was my way of coping through fantasy… Writing about it helped me take back my power,” she says.

Commenting on the female gaze, she says: “The female characters in Vishal Bhardwaj’s screenplays are always fading; I have fought for them to have a voice and agency. When I got the draft of Ishqiya, which Abhishek Chaubey and Vishal had initially written, the two male characters (Naseeruddin and Arshad Warsi) were driving the story. Vidya Balan (Krishna) was just reacting to situations and was the object of their lust. The big change I brought was to show that it was she who was playing them.” Wow, I didn’t know. She also adds that in the US, she’s part of a union that protects the writer’s credit and their entitlement to residuals, royalty, net profit participation, health insurance and retirement benefits.

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Writer-director Tanuja Chandra (Zakhm, Tamanna, Sangharsh, Dushman, Dil Toh Pagal Hai, Qarib Qarib Singlle) is objective about her work: “Tamanna was closer to my own sensibility than Dil Toh Pagal Hai (DTPH)… [but it] was tougher for me to write, because I had to dig deeper into my heart and mind… I had to walk around in dark areas. DTPH was frothier.” 

Among the few politically fearless women writers, Urmi Juvekar’s (Darmiyaan, Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!, Shanghai, I Am, Leila web series) Shanghai, based on the Greek novel Z by Vassilis Vassilikos, “emerged out of the despair that you cannot make political films any more; you cannot make people feel miserable.” She reflects, “There is no cinema for women. In Bollywood, women-oriented cinema is either parallel cinema or middle cinema, never commercial… More than focussing on women, we need a nuanced portrayal of men, which only women can do.” She’s been Head of Development and Production with NFDC Screenwriting Labs for eight years, and says, “I never judge a script by simply reading it; you have to hear the script. Audio is the closest a writer can ever get to cinema. That was the big discovery I made at Binger [screenwriting programme in Amsterdam].” Yadav notes that Juvekar won a landmark judgement in the Bombay High Court after she sued CNN-IBN for plagiarism via the Screenwriters’ Association. And also that a #MeToo incident on set disturbed Juvekar so much, she moved to making documentaries instead for a while. The book is packed with these rich insights. Now, if only someone would do a book on women screenwriters in all major Indian languages, we will finally understand how much women have actually shaped Indian cinema.

Meenakshi Shedde is India and South Asia Delegate to the Berlin International Film Festival, National Award-winning critic, curator to festivals worldwide and journalist. 
Reach her at meenakshi.shedde@mid-day.com