Let’s make it clear that Teri Baaton Mein Aisa Uljha Jiya is not an Indian equivalent to Spike Jonze’s heart-wrenching love story between a human and machine, Her. So, we shall not compare the two. Teri Baaton Mein Aisa Uljha Jiya (TBMAUJ), however, encashes on a female robot’s lack of agency and presents a near-impossible love story.
It is an out-of-the-box love story between an engineer called Aryan (Shahid Kapoor) and a robot SIFRA (Kriti Sanon). Even if the concept is novel for a Bollywood film, and the comic treatment provided to it overshadows some of the misogyny embedded in the subtext of the film.
The moment Aryan brings SIFRA home to meet his family, you keep on anticipating the moment when the dramatic irony is revealed to the rest of the family. You keep on predicting the moment when the family will get to know that this porcelain doll of a woman is actually a robot. You believe that it would be any moment now but your expectations are pushed down the drain when you realize that that moment is never going to arrive. The family’s reaction to finding out that their would-be daughter-in-law is a robot powered by artificial intelligence is never revealed. Moreover, the leading man Aryan who is SIFRA’s admin and lover explains her strangeness by calling her an ‘orphan from America’ and even a ‘mental patient’. There is misogyny packed into every layer of the film.
The Plot sets up Room for Mechanised Misogyny
The film begins with a strange dream sequence where Aryan’s family forcefully marries him off. He eventually discovers that it is a robot. This man is completely devoted to his machines and would rather spend his life married to his machines. He is unaware that he will be falling in love with another robot. Aryan works for a robotics firm based in America and as it turns out it is headed by his own aunt. The remnants of Kabir Singh emerge in Aryan. In one of the initial scenes, we see Aryan firing his new maid.
In a subsequent turn of events, he lands in America to meet his aunt Urmila (Dimple Kapadia). Urmila leaves Aryan in the hands of SIFRA for an office trip. SIFRA is supposedly Urmila’s assistant with expertise in cooking, cleaning, and organizing clothes. She is also a multilingual expert. But you never see her use her language skills. Her sweet demeanor, her subservient nature, and her flawless beauty charms Aryan. He galivants around SIFRA and in no time has sex with her. But he never once suspects that SIFRA is a non-human.
He learns that Urmila had made him a pawn in her experiment of envisioning the feasibility of SIFRA in the real world. According to Urmila, SIFRA is a state-of-the-art technology that can help people ward off their loneliness and take care of daily chores. She is programmed in a way to gage her admin’s feelings but she does not have feelings of her own. Neither does SIFRA have a mind of her own. Aryan learns about her non-human status yet could not resist himself from falling for her.
Aryan decides to take the experiment a step further. He wants SIFRA to face the real world and by that he wants her to marry him. Aryan takes pride in teaching the robot how to smoke. He also teaches her Hindi slang. By no means does he ever occur to be a good influence on that poor robot. He continues to be in love with her until one day he finally realizes that she is a machine with emotions programmed into her. It takes a malfunction to snap Aryan from his fairytale. It becomes difficult to understand if he was in love with SIFRA or with how perfect she was at everything.
His list of criteria for choosing a wife, included touch points that proved he was in dire need of not just a wife but a girl who would take care of him. When you put things into that perspective the laughter and stupidity associated with the concept of the film and Aryan and Ranvijay from Animal seem to be the same person.
The Performances Add The Real Gloss
The Plot from its beginning was improbable. Therefore there was no endgame for SIFRA and Aryan. As an audience, you are aware that they do not have a future together. Aryan too loses hope at the end and never once tries to make this ridiculous experiment a success.
Kriti Sanon with the limited material she is given delivers a stiff and robotic performance. She looked like a porcelain doll throughout the film and effortlessly did some of the literal heavy lifting.
Shahid Kapoor as Aryan finds himself in a character that is more suited to actors like Varun Dhawan. Shahid is innately aware of the experimental nature of the film but tries to be the captain of the ship with full conviction.
The best part of the film, however, is its music. The foot-tapping numbers and the music videos make a great contribution to your theatre-going experience. Apart from that Teri Baaton Mein Aisa Uljha Jiya is a film that somehow celebrates a woman’s lack of agency and totally misses the basic tenets of Feminism. But in a country that celebrates misogyny and violence, it is a fun film that does not fail to represent the neighbor as a loafer who would treat your would-be wife as a sex doll.
Teri Baaton Mein Aisa Uljha Jiya is running at a theatre near you.
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