Shabana Azmi's musings on marriage in Shekhar Kapur films: From Masoom to What's Love Got To Do With It?

Role Call: Shabana Azmi struggles with the idea of love coming in the way of marriage, as a wife in Masoom and as a mother in What's Love Got To Do With It?

If Shabana Azmi's character Indu from Shekhar Kapur's directorial debut Masoom (1983) is asked the eponymous question of his latest directorial, What's Love Got To Do With It? she'd say, “A lot.” Shabana's character in the latter, Aisha, is seen advocating arranged marriage, something another character of hers bore the brunt of, 40 years ago.

Shabana Azmi in Shekhar Kapur's Masoom and What's Love Got To Do With It?

Indu's dilemma

Aisha Khan doesn't go all Seema Taparia on her kids, prohibiting them to step outside the realm of ‘assisted marriage.’ But she imposes the regular filters of matrimonial websites like same community, soft-spoken, and sanskari while picking her prospective daughter-in-law. She even disowns a daughter who flees with a Britisher. But this is Aisha, a member of the British Muslim diaspora, asserting her Pakistani roots on her susceptible children.

Indu was a different woman, in a different country and a different time. She had a happy, stable marriage with DK (Naseeruddin Shah) with two daughters in Delhi of 1983. When she learns of her husband's affair that took place during her first pregnancy, she can't wrap her head around it, even though it happened 10 years ago. And his insistence to adopt his illegitimate child after the mother's death is a grave, constant reminder of the cracks in their marriage.

She snaps at Rahul, the nine-year-old, with full knowledge that he is masoom (innocent). She's not Pooja from Mahesh Bhatt's Arth (1982) who walks out on her husband Inder (Kulbhushan Kharbanda) after his affair with Kavita (Smita Patil). Indu in Masoom has two daughters and wants to make it work, and the hopeful eyes of Rahul make her relent and not abandon her home and family.

If Shabana played Jennifer Kapoor

When Shabana appeared on Koffee with Karan Season 1, she confessed she'd have loved to play Jennifer Kapoor (Jaya Bachchan) in Nikkhil Advani's Kal Ho Naa Ho (2003). Interestingly, Jennifer was an update on Indu from Masoom. Once the mother of her husband's illegitimate daughter Jia gives up on her, Jennifer adopts her and makes her a part of her family. She maintains the lie that she was the one who adopted Jia in order to save her husband shame from his mother (Sushma Seth).

It's her husband who's wrecked with guilt with Jia around, while Jennifer continues to raise her like she does their children. Her husband dies by suicide, leaving Jennifer to soldier on as a single mother of three, despite her mother-in-law blaming her for her son's death. When she discovers what Jennifer had been upto all this while, she embraces her, as Jennifer says, “Wo bure nahi the. Unse ek chhoti si galti ho gayi thi. (He wasn't a bad person. He just made a small mistake).”

Had Shabana played Jennifer, it would've surely been a casting coup. Just like it was when Naseeruddin Shah played Shekhar (no prize for guessing who he's named after) in Farah Khan's Main Hoon Na (2004). He brings his illegitimate son Ram to the family, but unlike Indu in Masoom, his wife Madhu (Kirron Kher) walks out on him with their son Lakshman if he continues to keep Ram with him.

Jamini's backseat driving

If there's another recent character that's an antithesis to Shabana's Aisha in What's Love Got To Do With It?, it's Jamini in Karan Johar's Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani. A progressive Bengali, she continues to live in an abusive marriage, even when the abuse is directed towards her son. Years later, when her granddaughter Rani (Alia Bhatt) accuses her of cheating on her husband through a week-long affair with a stranger, Kanwaljit (Dharmendra), she says she wished she'd have stepped out of the marriage sooner and for good.

Aisha in What's Love Got To Do With It? isn't the one who'd warn her kin that the family does backseat driving in a marriage. Because she's doing all the driving for her son while looking for his prospective wife. Even when she tells him that she just wishes for his happiness, it comes with a caveat: he must adjust in the arranged marriage because that's how it lasts. On the other hand, Jamini would tell her kin – or her younger self – to step out of a toxic marriage as soon as one can.

From coaxing her son to marry within the community, disowning her daughter for marrying outside of it, kissing a married man in order to rekindle lost love in old age, walking out of an ungrateful marriage to raise her adopted daughter alone, and embracing the illegitimate child of her husband – Shabana Azmi has played a full spectrum of women torn between their various domestic roles.

But her most powerful one would remain Radha in Deepa Mehta's Fire (1996), when she walks out on her disdainful husband who blames her for not giving him a child, gives up on rubbing talcum powder on her paralysed mother-in-law's back, to pursue a life of sexual adventure with her sister-in-law Sita (Nandita Das). Because love is masoom, what's marriage got to do with it?

What's Love Got To Do With It? is streaming in India on Lionsgate Play.

In Role Call, Devansh Sharma decodes inspired casting choices in films and shows.

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