I used to be sixteen once I first watched Life in a… Metro (2007). It got here on late one night time, a grainy TV rerun with kissing scenes snipped out, framed by fragrance adverts and that unusual quiet that falls over a home after everybody else has gone to sleep. I didn’t know precisely what I used to be watching, however it didn’t really feel like the flicks I used to be used to. It felt softer, extra nonetheless, extra inward-looking. The ladies didn’t break into tune; they broke into silence. They cheated, they cried, they waited by home windows for calls that didn’t come. They felt drained, difficult, and actual in a method I didn’t but have the language to know.
After I rewatched it at eighteen, I anticipated nostalgia. As an alternative, I felt annoyed. What struck me wasn’t the unhappiness of the ladies—it was how a lot of it they have been anticipated to swallow. Shikha, performed by Shilpa Shetty, returns to a husband who didn’t deserve her. Neha, performed by Kangana Ranaut, is punished for wanting success and intimacy in the identical breath. Shruti, performed by Konkona Sen Sharma, whose reward for self-awareness was marriage and a child. Even the widow Shivani, performed by Nafisa Ali, who was courageous sufficient to decide on love once more, was quietly killed off by the script. These ladies weren’t weak—however they have been nonetheless written into endings that prioritized endurance over evolution.
Just a few days in the past, I watched Metro… In Dino, Anurag Basu’s non secular sequel, set eighteen years later. Proper earlier than getting into the theatre, I noticed the poster. It learn: “Your individual story in cinema.” At first, I laughed as a result of to me, it sounded just like the sort of copy designed to make you are feeling vital only for shopping for a ticket. However two hours later, someplace between Sara Ali Khan breaking off an engagement and Neena Gupta strolling out of her home with a suitcase and 0 clarification, I noticed the road wasn’t promotional, it was prophetic.
Life in a… Metro Was All the time Forward of Its Time
When Life in a… Metro launched in 2007, it plopped right into a panorama nonetheless steeped within the concepts of a great lady. Hindi cinema beloved heroines who have been virtuous, self-sacrificing, and extra dedicated to conserving households collectively than to their very own interior readability. However Basu’s ladies have been totally different. Their discontent wasn’t cinematic. It felt radical due to how strange it was: Shikha’s boredom, Neha’s ambition, Shruti’s ambivalence. There have been no grand speeches, solely small betrayals and smaller concessions. The feminist undercurrent was refined however unmistakable. These ladies weren’t punished for wanting extra, however they weren’t precisely allowed to have it both. The movie earned important reward, however its emotional threat lay in how unremarkable these ladies have been allowed to be. Not aspirational. Simply trustworthy.
You may see this thread even in Basu’s different movies. In Barfi! (2012), Priyanka Chopra’s character Jhilmil is autistic and fully outdoors the standard Bollywood heroine mould, but she turns into the movie’s emotional centre. Illeana D’Cruz’s character additionally chooses heartbreak over consolation, choosing a life that respects her boundaries quite than rescues her. In Ludo (2020), Sanya Malhotra performs a lady trapped in her previous however prepared to confront it, making tough decisions on her personal phrases. Basu’s ladies don’t exist for arc polish, they’re written to really feel incomplete in ways in which mirror actual life.
What Modified within the Metro… In Dino
Metro… In Dino doesn’t reboot these ladies—it responds to them. It listens to the whole lot they left unsaid and provides that silence a voice. And this time, it doesn’t deal with compromise like a supporting character.
Kajol (performed once more by Konkona, now older, sharper) calls for connection as an alternative of pleading for it. Chumki (Sara Ali Khan) doesn’t wait to be rescued; she leaves earlier than she loses herself. Shruti (Fatima Sana Shaikh) debates motherhood with out disgrace. Shivani (Neena Gupta) will get to dwell the life that the older Shivani of 2007 was denied. These ladies aren’t aspirational both. However they’re not afraid to decide on themselves. The ache continues to be there, however it’s not confused with advantage. Anurag Basu himself has said in interviews that this sequel was about “how ladies love otherwise now, not roughly, simply extra clearly.” That readability reveals.
Why We Nonetheless See Ourselves in These Ladies
The emotional texture of each Metro movies lies in how they map the psychological depth of their feminine characters—not simply want, however dissonance. These aren’t ladies who’ve all of it found out. They’re ladies unlearning the necessity to apologize for the issues they don’t know. That’s why they resonate. Whether or not it’s 2007 or 2025, the query isn’t simply whether or not the world has modified. It’s whether or not ladies are lastly allowed to alter with out asking for permission. In Life in a… Metro, they waited for males to alter, for guilt to subside, and for like to really feel simpler. Within the Metro… In Dino, they transfer. Generally with hesitation, typically with grief, however there’s motion nonetheless. That shift from endurance to motion is the evolution.
What This Tells Us About Indian Cinema At the moment
Throughout mainstream cinema and streaming platforms, we’re now seeing ladies written with the emotional vocabulary they have been as soon as denied. Reveals like Made in Heaven, Bombay Begums, Delhi Crime, and Trendy Love Mumbai have normalised feminine messiness, ambition, even selfishness. Even in style reveals like Suzhal or Trial By Hearth, feminine characters are allowed to hold trauma with out the burden of ethical purity.
However Metro… Dino doesn’t chase what’s trending. It gives continuity. It belongs to the identical cultural second, however it’s in dialog with its personal previous. This isn’t a reinvention. It’s a reply. An 18-year-long character arc stretched throughout a metropolis’s skyline. Konkona Sen Sharma’s return anchors this generational loop. She’s not enjoying the identical lady, however she carries the identical gaze, solely now it’s steadier, sharper, extra deliberate. And possibly that’s what’s modified in Indian cinema too. We’re not asking our ladies to elucidate themselves anymore. We’re lastly simply watching them dwell.
The Metro Strikes On, and So Do We
After I noticed that line outdoors the theatre—“Your individual story in cinema”, I didn’t anticipate it to comply with me dwelling. However that’s what these movies do. They don’t simply give us characters. They provide us variations of ourselves: who we have been, who we nearly grew to become, who we’re nonetheless making an attempt to be.
In Life in a… Metro, the ladies stood nonetheless. They swallowed their grief, bent themselves into shapes, and referred to as it energy. In Metro… In Dino, they stroll. They select the unsure, the unfinished, the true. And someplace between the lady I used to be at sixteen and the girl I’m now, I realised that these movies haven’t simply mirrored our tales, they’ve helped outline what we consider is feasible. Anurag Basu’s metro retains shifting. However this time, the ladies select the route.