Laapataa Ladies: A Small Film with a Big Message

“It began with Aamir (Khan) actually telling me the story in one line,” said Kiran Rao, director and co-producer of Laapataa Ladies. Based on a story by screenwriter and director Biplab Goswami, which was the first runner-up in a script contest by Cinestaan Film Company, Laapataa Ladies was made during the Covid pandemic and marked Rao’s return to cinema after Dhobi Ghat (2010). In sharp contrast to the moody, urban romance critically-acclaimed debut film, Laapataa Ladies is a sparkling comedy set in the dusty rural heartland India. While the film may not have broken records commercially, it has the distinction of being in cinemas at the time of its OTT release. In the fiercely competitive world of theatrical releases, that Laapataa Ladies has held on to slots eight weeks after its release is remarkable. 

With stellar performances by a cast that cleverly combines newcomers (Nitanshi Goel, Pratibha Ranta, Sparsh Shrivastava) and veterans (Ravi Kishan, Chhaya Kadam), Laapataa Ladies is as feelgood as film gets. Romance, rebellion, tenderness and hope are woven together to create the tapestry of this story, which emphasises the importance of enabling women to pursue their dreams. Although it had the advantage of being backed by a producer like Aamir Khan — Rao has repeatedly said that Laapataa Ladies was made possible because Khan has been dogged in his support of the film at every stage — the film faced other challenges, like shooting during the COVID pandemic and showing up on location to find an entire bridge had disappeared.  

Omicron Vs Laapataa Ladies

“I think it was in late 2019 that we got the rights from Biplab, or early 2020. We were toying with who to get on as a writer. It was around March when we decided that Sneha Desai would be a great writer for this. It happened right during the first lockdown, when we spoke to Sneha and sent her the story. She liked it a lot and we basically started working on Zoom together — a very new concept at that point. There were many glitches, we had to battle lagging internet and you-are-on-mute kind of situations,” said Rao, laughing.

“Writing it during the pandemic had its own share of ups and downs,” said Desai. “I could write in complete isolation. There was no clutter. There was no distraction. There was no other work or deadline that was piling up. It is a dream come true for any writer to have a time like that. But communicating whatever was written to Kiran and to Aamir sir, was difficult because it is hard to convey the nuances on a Zoom call.” 

Desai’s first narration of the film to Khan and Rao had to happen on a Zoom call because Desai hadn’t been tested for Covid and Khan was in a bio-bubble shooting Laal Singh Chaddha (2022). “I was very, very excited,” remembered Desai, who had initially hoped to do the narration in person. “I had taken pictures of the locations that I had visualised while writing the scenes — the kind of bus stand, the kind of crowd that I saw in the general compartment of the trains in Jharkhand …  Then I got all decked up and got my hair blow dried and was ready to go to Aamir sir's place.” At this point, she learnt that without an all-clear result from an RT-PCR test, she couldn’t meet Khan. So a Zoom link was set up and Desai got down to her narration. “Ten minutes in, Aamir sir stopped me, and I thought he wasn’t liking the draft. He said, ‘How soon can you come here?’ I told him I could reach in 20 minutes but I don’t have a negative RT-PCR. He said, ‘The first narration can’t happen like this. Get here as soon as you can, forget the test.’ And suddenly I had his permission, and I rushed to Bandra and that’s how we started working on this.” 

Fiction and Facts

The final script of Laapataa Ladies has contributions from Rao as well as others on the writing team. For instance, it was Rao’s idea to have the character that would ultimately become Manju Maai (played by Chhaya Kadam). “It was actually Sneha who brought Manju Maai (Chhaya Kadam) to life. I told her I needed someone there with Phool (Nitanshi Goel), and she wrote this beautiful character,” said Rao. “Then we brought on Divy (Divya Nidhi Sharma) to work on the flavour and the Bhojpuri additions. In fact, he even changed the Shyam Manohar (Ravi Kishan) character and added that twist at the end,” Rao said. The film also has a distinctive dialect that was developed as native to the fictional region of Nirmal Pradesh, where Laapataa Ladies is set. The accent sounds rustic and borrows on a number of North Indian dialects, which give it a familiar cadence, but without straying too far from Hindi.  

The roots of Nirmal Pradesh are very much in real-life north India. “Because I am from UP (Uttar Pradesh) and my father was a cop, my initial years were spent in police stations. I know the milieu, I know the people,” said Sharma. “Apart from adding the authenticity to the lingo and a dash of humour here and there, the way Manohar’s character developed was because I have seen that world up close and personal. That's what I brought to the table. … These are incidents that I’ve heard in my personal life. Like Bela-ji from sports quota, the woman who sings ‘Rangi Saari Gulabi Chunariya’ to the inspector, they are moments I have picked up,” added Sharma.

Adding to the credibility of Nirmal Pradesh is the cast, led by Goel, Ranta and Shrivastava. “When we started the casting process, Kiran gave me character sketches in the form of spirit animals. For Jaya it was a cat, for Phool it was a deer, and for Deepak it was a loveable dog,” said Romil Modi, casting director for Laapataa Ladies. Because of the lockdown, a majority of the auditions were via self-tape. “It was after we got Nitanshi for Phool that it sort of clicked for us. When I sent that audition to Kiran, I wrote ‘Humari Phool (this is our Phool)’ and she was locked,” added Modi. Rao had specific demands for what she wanted to see in the girls. “She told us ki humko toh poster wali ladkiyaan chahiye (we want girls who would work on the poster),” said Modi. 

Modi was very convinced that he was not going to cast any known faces, he wanted fresh talent. “I can proudly say that I have auditioned Aamir Khan sir. But having a star like him would take the limelight away from the story we wanted to tell. Every character has a destiny and Ravi Kishan sir was destined to play Manohar,” said Modi. 

Zoom with a View

“It was a big challenge to shoot this film with all the provisions and a small crew,” said Rao who was determined to shoot at actual locations and on real moving trains. “We went on what my DOP (director of photography) called ‘too many recces’ because we wanted to get that authenticity,” recalled Rao. 

Part of the challenge was the decision to set Laapataa Ladies in 2001. “It’s  far enough in the past for it to look different, but it can’t look very different, you know?” said Rao. “We found our villages in MP (Madhya Pradesh) but we didn’t find our stations. Finally we found the stations in Nashik district near Shirdi. Murti and Pateela — which are fictional stations in Nirmal Pradesh. We were all set. Life was looking good.”

And then Omicron raised its ugly head just as the team of Laapataa Ladies was about to start their first schedule, which had all the “hard stuff”. “Around the 3rd of January, we leave for Shirdi. We're going to start shooting on the 5th,” said Rao. “Me and my producer Tanaji Dasgupta were in one car and Vikash Nowlakha, the DOP, was going to follow in another car. We were all really happy because we'd all done our RT-PCR and whatnot. All clear. While we’re on the way, Vikash calls and says ‘Boss, I'm positive’.” 

Even now, the random unfairness of that moment seems to rankle Nowlakha. “Just before the shoot I was going to go on a surfing trip to get energised. Everyone told me to not take that risk because I might get COVID. It was the safe thing to do. So, I cancelled my trip, stayed home, and I STILL GOT COVID,” said Nowlakha. 

Shooting on a tight budget, Rao couldn’t afford delays. After some fretting and hand-wringing, she turned to Srinivas Achary, who had been Nowlakha’s assistant in the past. They called Achary on the 3rd, he agreed, they sent him the script on the 4th; and he reached Nashik by the night of the 4th. “Srinu had barely read the script and had to shoot these moving trains and multiple characters,” said Rao, remembering the first day of shooting. “He had no idea who was which. He was such a genius, such a great collaborator. He was a lifesaver, I mean, in proper, practical terms,” said Rao.

Achary and Nowlakha’s history of working together held Laapataa Ladies in good stead.  “If I have my eye on the viewfinder and I put my hand out, Srinu knows exactly what to put in it,” said Nowlakha. “It is a very precious relationship. There was a lot of panic initially, but I knew that what I can do, Srinu can do. We both see things exactly the same way. We have both grown together in the last 20 years. We both light the same way, we respond to things the same way, we walk on a set together, and we both have exactly the same idea of what to do.” 

When asked about his experience shooting that first schedule of Laapataa Ladies, Achary said, “I think I was destined to be a part of this film.” Achary stayed on as the second camera on the shoot, but before that, he had to try and bring to the screen what Nowlakha had imagined. “We were trying to get the internet on the railway station so that we could show Vikash the takes on Zoom because he was sitting in a blanket with a fever, shivering just contributing whatever he could,” said Rao. “Because of our connection, after the first couple of days I knew what Vikash wanted. I would show him the shots at the end of the day and it would work,” said Achary. 

Crossing the Bridge (and Losing it)

“During Phool’s vidaai (parting ritual) sequence, they cross a bridge which wasn’t there initially,” said production designer Vikram Singh. The village they were shooting in had a concrete electric slab laid flat, which was the only means villagers had to reach their homes. “Kiran and I decided to build a wooden bridge that was wider so that we could shoot the scene, but unfortunately due to COVID delays the schedule got pushed by a month. When we came back a month later, the bridge was missing,” said Singh, chuckling. The makeshift bridge they’d made had been stolen, possibly because the wooden parts could be sold to make some extra cash. “Then we had to make another bridge, and this time we made it stronger because Kiran wanted that bridge to stay there so that the villagers could use it even after we were done shooting,” he said. 

The bridge is not the only token from Laapataa Ladies for that village. “Kiran insisted that we do permanent work when we were remodelling Deepak’s house,” said Singh. “We usually use ply to make temporary sets, but she asked us to use good quality construction material so that it could be used by the people who were living there.”

A small film about two women getting lost and finding themselves in the process, coming out in a time when the Indian film industry seems to be obsessed with alpha males and pan-India hits — somehow Laapataa Ladies subverted expectations with hope and optimism. “It was serendipitous because I was, in my own way, a little bit lost,” said Rao, pointing out how few of us, especially women, are encouraged to prioritise themselves. The film’s message felt poignantly relevant to Rao herself and Rao summed it up like this: “To say that it’s possible to choose your happiness. You can take the leap, the hard decision. We're not able to because we can't disappoint people or we can't let somebody down and we'd rather disappoint ourselves, because that's easier. I think I found that strength to put myself first and my hope is that anyone who watches this film will find it, too.”