Content Warning: Contains spoilers for the Amazon Prime series Big Girls Don’t Cry!
Big Girls Don’t Cry (BGDC), directed by Nitya Mehra (she is recently famed for the Indian web series Made In Heaven) is a coming-of-age story that situates seven girls in the messy world of a boarding school life filled with warmth, heartbreak, teenage love, painful friendships and mistakes made along the way. Nitya Mehra, who herself grew up in a boarding school, says that it was important for her to portray the experience authentically. “We’ve only read boarding school literature that is American or English, like Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers series,” she shares, “There is hardly any authentic representation of boarding schools in Indian literature or cinema. So, I wanted to get it right because it’s a window into a place that many people haven’t seen before.”
The story starts with Vidushi‘s character in the show, Kavya Yadav, the new girl in school, anxious about fitting in with her peers. Thrown into the deep end, Kavya pretends to be the gimmicky disruptful teenager. She knows this is going to earn her brownie points with the ‘cool gang’. As Vidushi says of her character Kavya, “You want to fit in any time you’re in a new environment or even in environments you’ve grown up in.” The gang Kavya aspires to fit into has Noor Hassan, the school captain; Leah Joseph, the Basketball team captain; J.C., the princess of Methang; Pluggy, the ‘virgin sex-guru’; and Roohi Ahuja, the unruly squad leader. As they all try to fit into the big and scary world of growing up, facing the consequences of their own choices (even fallible for their actions), they make their acquaintance with all the little heartbreaks of life.
The outsider, the “anarchist”, the one who isn’t trying to fit in but actively rebelling against the system, is Dia Malik. Dia has the heart of a typical teenage rebel who is out to break every rule in the book. She believes that she is raising her voice against a system that threatens to squash away her individuality only to realize later that she is coming from a position of privilege to have this space and that her misplaced activism is only hurting people who haven’t grown up with the same privilege as her. What Dia seems to need is kindness and some company because, at her heart, she is still a teenager who is trying to take on all the worries of the world and not tip over.
Roohi and J. C. have been best friends since they were kids. They have their worlds wind up in each other, they are each other’s ‘home’. When her own home did not feel safe for Roohi, she would climb under her bed to escape her parent’s fighting. J.C. built an entire trove of treasures under Roohi’s bed so that she could feel safe in her little world. Roohi and J.C. embody the true essence of a platonic relationship. Their sisterhood alone could outweigh a thousand romantic relationships.
Noor, the junior school captain, wants to drop her last name because of the persecutions that come simply by associating herself with the legacy of her activist father. Leah, the sports captain, grows through a similar crisis in faith when she is de-badged from her responsibilities due to an accusation placed on her of having violated the Student Code of Conduct. Noor and Leah have always built the dream of being the captains together but their dreams are put on hold when their faith is tested. Can they abandon themselves and their friends, their freedom to be who they are all in pursuit of their dreams?
Noor and Leah decide that the world doesn’t get to tell the path to their dreams, the means do not matter as long as you accomplish your goals. “We will decide on the means later. First, we win and then we decide on how we win.” But can you do that? Can you remain true to yourself if you abandon your ideals to win? Can you encompass your entire being and reframe your identity to fit within the palm of your “dreams”? Are your dreams, then, a part of you or is your body too small to fit your enormous ambitions? Everyone at some point in their teenage years loses themselves to the idea of the dream, of making something of yourself that is bigger than your being, that will amount to more than the room your bosom can occupy. We tend to lose ourselves in the dimensions of these dreams, of fulfilling them. Noor lives to dream and she wants to fathom them to reality so very much that she acquires an insensitivity, a bias towards her understanding of what she feels to be ‘wrong’ or ‘right.’ Noor is haunted by her father’s voice. “Do not let what others think of you define yourself to the point that you lose sight of yourself, that you fall on your regard.” Noor feels fallen. She is a teenage girl navigating the thought of being perceived and thus prejudiced by her identity, and her culture in a world that is nothing but brutal to ones who own her names.
Leah is persecuted by the school for her very existence, her identity is suppressed and she is made to feel ashamed for simply loving someone. Societal shame and the feeling of rejection can eat you from the inside out and thus begins Leah’s game of ‘play pretend’. Leah will go to any lengths to follow in her mother’s footsteps and get the sports captainship. She is willing to relinquish everything and everyone on her side to have an untainted reputation. Leah gives up love and acceptance. She sacrifices for her ‘dream’ at great personal cost to herself. Leah experiences the isolation that every queer kid might have felt at some point in their life. Feeling distraught over people telling them how to be or not to be, how to feel, and how not to feel, she thinks her best bet lies in denying all accusations and focusing on what she set out to achieve. In the end, it does nothing but take her further away from herself and her friends. Her anxieties take over. Her demons win. The ‘society’ wins over.
As these girls experience trials and tribulations growing up in a society that already does not view women as worthy or capable of telling their own stories, they realize that the only way to make it is to speak the truth and fight for who they are. The most important thing is to not lose sight of your morals because your morals guide you to what kind of a person you want to be and where you want your life to lead you. Young women have all the stories in the world to tell, they just need the space to carve them on, a stage to yell them from. The series tells us that as long as you believe in your truth, you can do whatever you want and you can do it all by yourself. Believe and trust yourself!
Judi tore daak shune keyo na ache, tobe ekla cholo re.
(If no one responds to your call, then go your own way alone).
An excerpt from “Ekla Cholo Re” by the legendary Rabindranath Tagore