When Meenakshi first meets – or smells – Surya, that drawing of breath is almost meditative, a break from the frenzy of her eccentric house and the pressure to ‘convince’ prospective grooms into marriage. Surya presents the idea of romance itself, which is a dream shared by most people, particularly middle-class women like Meenakshi. “Shaadi ke pehle pyaar toh hona chahiye na (one should fall in love before getting married),” she laments on the day she’s to be ‘seen’ (at 6 pm and 9 pm, much like show times for movies in cinemas) by suitors. Like an average woman, she dreams of having some money, a small room to read books and listen to the radio and of finding love, but this is a tall order. “Itna sa toh khwaab hai mera,” she says. “Magar meri jaisi ladkiyon ko har chhote chhote sapne dekhne ke baad unhe paa ne ke liye jhagana padta hai (My dreams are modest, but girls like me have to fight for every tiny dream in order to achieve them).”
Surya becomes a heady and necessary escape for Meenakshi, much like her filmi daydreams. The closer she gets to marrying a man she isn’t interested in, the more brazen she becomes around Surya, following him and even entering his house under pretences. Aiyyaa disguises very real pain under what looks like the silly fancy of a melodramatic woman. It acknowledges that making a film about a woman’s sexual desire would be impossible without addressing the larger issues around women desiring anything at all. Mukerji brings all of this and more into her performance of Meenakshi, pulling off a magic trick when she makes us forget she’s one Bollywood’s biggest stars. Even when she’s dressed in outlandish costumes for the song sequences, Mukerji is always that middle-class Marathi mulgi who dreams of romancing Shah Rukh Khan, starring in shampoo ads and sitting on the couch of Koffee With Karan. All of which we’d seen the actor do around the time Aiyyaa came out.
Perhaps as a subtle hat tip to the fact that it’s almost impossible to prioritise women’s desire in our everyday lives (built as they are upon patriarchal foundations), the universe of Aiyyaa is entirely whacky. Every character has their own set of quirks and every scene is packaged in unlikely details in an effort to disguise some very real truths about prejudices that we’ve held on to in Indian societies. Under the escapist madness of Aiyyaa is a question that no one wants to answer: Is a next-to-impossible world of suspended disbelief the only place where an Indian woman’s desire may be considered natural instead of transgressive?