Shakuntala Devi

Yet again, Vidya Balan strikes a sixer! We really need to see more of this woman. She gets under the skin of her characters so deeply that you forget she is just acting out someone else’s life. From her South Indian accent while speaking Hindi to the unwavering confidence of a self-made woman, the resounding laughter of a happy-go-lucky person and the guts to call a spade a spade I loved every bit of Shakuntala Devi…or was it Vidya Balan…or maybe both?!

Her genius aside, she was a woman to admire in a million ways! Throughout the story she is shown as someone who does not see a difference between man and woman, who repeatedly calls out society’s skewed gender expectations and who keeps screaming at the top of her lungs that self-actualization is just as important as slipping into a role assigned to you by someone else.

The movie tells a full circle story of her relationship with her parents, especially the grudge Shakuntala Devi holds against her mother for not speaking up to save her sister, how she herself becomes a woman with opinions and a voice that is literally heard the world over finally culminating in her relationship with her daughter who doesn’t think much of her mother until she becomes one herself. Very well fitted in between are two extremely well-told episodes of her relationship with a Spanish man who admired her but was intimidated by her success and her eventual marriage and separation from a Bengali man, who was a perfect gentleman.

What I loved most about this movie is that no one was shown as a bad character or – even worse – a villain. Shakuntala Devi’s husband, Paritosh Banerji, was an incredibly great husband and father and likewise she was a wonderful wife and mother but sometimes two perfectly fine people are also not able to lead a perfect life together. Their ambitions were different and they simply could not fit into the others’ life the way they had imagined.

Similarly, the two mother-daughter relationships between Shakuntala’s mother and her and then her daughter and her are beautifully told. Each is right in their own way, yet everything is wrong. It takes a skilled storyteller and director to portray relationships like this.  What a piece of art!

You might have noticed that I did not talk much about why Shakuntala Devi became a global sensation in the first place – her extraordinary math genius. It is present throughout the movie and shown with due respect but what’s really admirable about Shankuntala Devi is her grit and attitude regardless of what the matter is at hand. The way she approaches her relationships, her work, her decisions – this world really really needs more Shakuntala Devis.

This woman was truly ahead of her times! Even in today’s world people would be out to eat her alive but I am confident she would live her life on her own terms. (9/10)