ACP Vijayashanti in Netflix’s Monica, O My Darling Is A Breath of Fresh Air
When Johnny (played by Rajkumar Rao) in Monica, O My Darling walks in to give his statement for a murder he (hadn’t?) committed, he sees a moustachioed man in a typical white shirt and gold watch that we associate with policemen in Indian movies. He is sitting on Johnny’s chair and browsing through his files. He introduces himself as sub-inspector Shinde, and we believe him because his demeanour screams “Police” in every way.
The camera then pans to the commissioner who is assigned to the case. A woman sits on the floor, near the window. She has short hair which she holds back with a zig-zag headband. She wears jeans and circular glasses, and she is reading another file.
The camera pans again to reveal what she has written on the white board — Don’t drink alone, don’t shit together — with her name proudly displayed under it. How is this quote related to the case?
It isn’t.
There are very few female characters in Indian cinema like Radhika Apte’s ACP Vijayashanti . At least I haven’t come across many. Off the top of my head, here is a list I put together of female police officers that Indians have seen on-screen:
Rani Mukerji in the Hindi film, Mardaani; Jyotika in the Tamil film, Naachiyaar; Tabu in the Hindi version of Drishyam, and Asha Sharath in both the Tamil and Malayalam versions; and Amala Paul in Tamil film, Cadaver.
There is a common thread that ties these female characters together: their sense of morality is written in connection with other people or the greater good of society.
They are depicted as deserving the title of “good officers” because they do right by the people whom they love. They are mothers trying to save their out-of-control sons, they are wives fighting to rid their innocent husbands of blame, they are daughters who want justice for their poor parents.
They are also depicted as women. They know what it’s like to live as women in India. They are feminists, often to a fault, it seems, by the way these characters are written. They want social justice, and they will change the world. These characters are played as stoic and expressionless. They have to look serious to be taken seriously.
Take Shefali Shah’s character in Delhi Crime and Rani Mukerji’s character in Mardaani 2. Both women are police officers on the run to catch male rapists. We women have to stand up for ourselves, these characters seem to say, and we will set the society right.
Of course, their sense of morality does not end with human women. Vidya Balan’s character in Sherni (a favourite of mine, if I am being honest) wants to do right by the tigresses in the area she has been assigned to.
These are well-played roles in their own right. In fact, I love watching a well-written, rounded female character stand up for what she believes in. Some of these characters are realistic and intersectional: women, queer people, and Dalit people in the force have to juggle more than just the challenges of their job.
The only issue is that, time and time again, these characters are written as women more than as police officers. Their being police officers is written as a political statement. Look at us, these films seem to say, how broad-minded we are for hiring a woman in this role. We will write her as a feminist, and we will give her a mean mother-in-law, you know, for trauma.
What about the women in the police force who are just, you know, police officers? Does every woman in every story have to carry the load of representing all of womanhood, when every man is not burdened with representing all men in their stories?
Radhika Apte’s portrayal of ACP Vijayashanti Naidu in Monica, O My Darling is a breath of fresh air in this regard. She is a police officer whom we know close to nothing about. We don’t know about her family; we don’t know what social causes she holds close.
All we know is that she is laid-back and relaxed, perhaps even a little wacky. Her body language, too, is fluid: she moves a lot, but her movements don’t feel overly thought out. She laughs loudly (and, very weirdly, I must add) in the most uncalled for moments. It’s very clear that she’s having fun, a quality we don’t normally associate with police jobs. And there is ease to her that we don’t see in other female-officer characters.
She is good at her job, too. When Johnny explains how he couldn’t have killed Aravind because he’s afraid of snakes, ACP Naidu laughs her weird laugh before pointing out that a professional killer always leaves leeway for contradiction and doubt, unlike an amateur who holds their fabricated truth tightly with no breathing space.
She says the strangest things too, which, somehow, feel endearing and intelligent. Matlab main tera dushman, dushman tu mera? had me in splits. It roughly translates to I am your enemy, enemy you are of mine. It refers to a famous song from the 1986 film Nagina. The film was about a snake who takes the form of a woman to get back at her perpetrators. And, as we know, snakes are an important weapon in the case the ACP is handling in Monica, O My Darling.
She isn’t serious, but we take her seriously. We know that despite her relaxed, hilarious personality, nothing misses her eye. There is space for us to believe that she has trauma too, but that’s not the only characteristic of her personality.
We have seen a lot of male characters written this way. Many times, a male officer is funny without trying too hard. Take Ranveer Singh’s role in Simmba and Tamil Actor Vijay’s role in every police movie he has ever worked in.
Srikant Tiwari (played by Manoj Bajpayee) in The Family Man ignores his family’s needs, and this plotline is played for the laughs. It has worked. Thousands of people watch this show for this character and his supposedly endearing indifference.
Akshaye Khanna as Chief Inspector Karan is quirky and funny in 36 China Town with the banter he shares with Inspector Ravi (Vivek Shauq).
Despite being “quirky,” these characters are not written as being bad at their jobs.
On the other hand, women in police roles hardly have any “quirks” or even catch phrases. I suppose the writers and filmmakers feel the need to justify a woman being hired for the same role. Why can’t this role be played by a man, like it always is? They ask themselves. Ah, yes, it’s because this a woman’s issue, and she has to be serious to prove how serious an issue this is.
It can get exhausting, though. Sometimes, I just want to watch a woman’s story and not get stress acne from the reality of it. I want to watch a woman be effortlessly funny while being great at her job. And that’s what Radhika Apte gives us in Monica, O My Darling.
I loved that ACP Vijayashanti was just a police officer who also happens to be a woman, but she is in no way one-dimensional. It fills a much-overdue gap in the representation of women in positions of civil power.
Okay, now, where is our male police officer who is not a single father and is still struggling to have work-life balance because he cares for his family and career alike? Or our non-binary police-officer character? We’re waiting.
I do not own any of the images used in this essay. Images have been picked from Telegraph India, Zee News, India Today, The Indian Express, Tamil Now, Filmfare, Hindustan Times, and the YouTube trailers of Simmba and Monica, O My Darling, solely for commentary on and review of movies.
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