Why Bollywood Must Transform

The recently released film Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui portrays transsexuality with a fresh empathy, but much like its other Hindi film counterparts, it fails to offer India’s trans communities the dignity and representation they deserve

- Poulomi Das

ON PAPER , ABHISHEK KAPOOR’S Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui follows commercial Hindi cinema’s template of modern romance: Girl meets boy. Sparks fly. They fall in love and have sex. But on screen, the same story is underlined with a long-overdue narrative subversion—Maanvi (Vaani Kapoor), the film’s svelte, zumba trainer heroine is a transgender woman. Naturally, the revelation is tough to digest for Manu (Ayushmann Khurrana), the film’s protein-ingesting, keto-dieting, bodybuilder hero.

Kapoor’s film, co-written by Supratik Sen and Tushar Paranjpe, attempts to upend conventional romantic iconography in Hindi cinema, habituated to traversing the length and breadth of cis-gender, heteronormative romantic anxieties. Over its two-hour runtime, it tackles themes of hyper-masculinity, gender identity, social discrimination and equality with sincerity. Even its empathetic gaze toward trans identity feels revolutionary—one scene features a montage of trans women, there are matter-of-fact scenes in which Maanvi is seen taking pills in the morning, and sex reassignment surgery. Still, written by three men and featuring a character essayed by a non-transgender actor, Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui’s noble intentions remain weighed down by narrative conditioning. For instance, the film’s protagonist isn’t its transgender heroine—it’s the man falling in love with her.

In many ways,