Alankrita Shrivastava’s web series Bombay Begums has five principal female characters and a queen among queens. She has a mole on her left...
Alankrita Shrivastava’s web series Bombay Begums has five principal female characters and a queen among queens. She has a mole on her left cheek, a serrated tongue, flexible hips and a bearing that demands and earns the one thing that she wants the most in life – respect.
“Call me Lily, short and sweet,” says the woman whose real name is Lakshmi Gondhali. A former bar dancer who has taken to sex work to finance the education of her only son, Lily has a lifetime of hard-earned experience in the ways of men. When a woman is confused about whether her boss is being friendly or predatory, Lily clears the air: I have a PhD in non-consensual sex, she says.
The mole on her cheek belongs to the actor, but everything else about Lily is Amruta Subhash’s interpretation of Shrivastava’s creation. Sassy and brittle, vulnerable and wise, pragmatic and romantic, Subhash’s Lily reigns supreme over Bombay Begums. Subhash’s ability to shift registers subtly and swiftly trumps the strong efforts of the other performers, which include Pooja Bhatt, Shahana Goswami and Plabita Borthakur.
Bombay Begums traces the intertwining lives of five women: a banker and two of her employees, the banker’s stepdaughter, and the bar dancer. All the characters multi-task...
