It’s easy to suggest that a low-key dramedy about girlhood feels refreshing because it’s written entirely by women. But that’s a generalisation of sorts. We’ve seen women-led shows behave like their sensationalist counterparts in an aggressive tit-for-tat way; they tend to be reactionary — a statement to all testosterone-driven productions — rather than natural.
The reason Matargashti works is because it refuses to look like the defiant story of a 19-year-old girl. It doesn’t pretend to be the unapologetic female (or feminist) version of those sex comedies featuring funny boys trying to lose their virginity. If anything, it reclaims the diversity of middle-class conflict from the clutches of male-created TVF family universes. You almost don’t expect the setting to be Lucknow. It unfolds like a lightweight antidote, not a conscious subversion, to a genre largely dominated by men.
Most shows would’ve staged the young and motherless protagonist as a rebel, and her arc as a coming-of-age one. But the design is never apparent here. Over five short and sweet episodes, we see this girl, Dhara (Adrija Sinha), succumbing to peer pressure without ever making it seem like she’s acting out or proving a point. She’s just a studious student who’s woken up to the temptations of the opposite sex; she’s also just a daughter who still resents her father for sending her away after her mother’s death. The single dad, Prakash (Rajesh Kumar), struggles to understand a daughter he barely knows; he’s also just a man who misses the wife that offset his distance as a parent.
The first few episodes are playful and montage-ish. Dhara conspires with her best friend Charu (Saumya Uniyal) on how to find a non-creepy guy to get it done: college fests, dating apps, old-fashioned meet-cutes. Simultaneously, a worried Prakash is onto them; he spends his days comically following them, thwarting their plans, and tracking down every potential match. The cartoon-sound-effects score aside, the show doesn’t overcook the awkward situation. Every now and then, slice-of-life bits emerge — like Dhara and Charu making a porn-derived list (thongs, lipstick and condoms included) for the special night. The two friends are sick of being teased by the others at school for being prudes, and Dhara’s mission becomes a high-stakes one. These scenes don’t ‘flaunt’ their audacity because girlhood is a normal and lived-in experience for the writers, and not something that needs to be presented as an exotic condition. The gaze matters.
At no point does it feel like the story is appropriating the lives of conservative college kids turning to pop-culture for help. It doesn’t try to provoke the viewer; the ideas and personalities are organic, and nobody is judged. The bite-sized episodes, all less than 25 minutes, are much more watchable than the stretched attention-seeking ones of characters saying scandalous things in such shows. A breezy soundtrack (‘Ae Zindagi’ in particular) preserves the levity.
Matargashti also does well to humanise a familiar template. Dhara remains eager to explore her sexuality, while most shows would’ve centered the stigma of an alternative sexual identity in a smaller town. The father, Prakash, is pursued by a ‘friendly’ divorced woman (Tulika Bannerjee) who might have been reduced to a desperate gag in most cases; here, however, she becomes a reflection of Dhara’s future and Prakash’s follies as a patriarchal parent. The boy that Dhara finds for the deed is flirty and rich, but the track is more alive to the mishaps of a social media generation. I especially like the show’s take on the romcom airport-dash climax.
When things get serious, it never loses track of the fact that the adult sees control and strictness as a form of attachment and ‘care’ for a stranger he cannot connect with. Similarly, the girl sees an escape from adolescence — sex is perhaps her shortcut to womanhood — as the only way to grow up and fill the void of the nurturer in the house. It’s not the most comfortable or crowd-pleasing theme, but it’s an authentic one.
Adrija Sinha’s performance as Dhara keeps things simple; the actor has so much character on her face that the series can’t be ‘snackable’ (or whatever the algorithms aim to churn out) even if it strives to. She allows Dhara to be an average young person rather than a rousing symbol or messy hero.
Rajesh Kumar’s been around for a while, but playing Aneet Padda’s father in Saiyaara seems to have opened the floodgates of like-minded roles. His Prakash follows in the footsteps of many clueless single dads on screen (Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and We Bought A Zoo, to name a few), but his anxious gentle-giant vibe grounds the aesthetic of these middle-aged male archetypes. As a result, the title of the series — which loosely translates to “timepass” — goes beyond its popularity as a Hindi song lyric (Tamasha) and acquires its own identity. After all, a father-daughter bond is often only shaped by the passing of time. Characters like Dhara and Prakash must forget before they become memorable to each other.