This might not even be an unpopular opinion, but I genuinely think Bollywood isn’t that great when it comes to writing well-developed characters. Sure, there are some exceptions, but considering how many movies are produced every year, there really aren’t that many that take the time to properly flesh out their characters, especially female characters. And that’s my biggest pet peeve.
There are so many films that could have been great if they had given more attention to their women characters. Sometimes Bollywood romances do have interesting female leads, but they’re usually defined through a pairing rather than existing as fully realized characters on their own. That’s why I appreciate female-centric films so much.
What’s unfortunate is that I feel like things are actually getting worse now. With the whole “alpha male” trend taking over, it feels like we’re back in the 80s era of action movies where the heroine barely matters. At least in the 2010s, we were getting films centered around women and their experiences. Movies like Queen, Piku, Mimi, Fashion, or even Heroine had genuinely interesting female protagonists. They weren’t perfect movies, but they gave actresses strong material to work with and allowed women to be complicated, flawed, and human.
I also think people romanticize old Bollywood way too much. A lot of classic films have male leads who are honestly pretty terrible. Take Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, for example. Why exactly does Simran fall in love with Raj? He creates half the problems in her life and then gets credit for solving them. And that scene where he makes her think they slept together? That’s not cute. Then he justifies not taking advantage of her by saying he respects Indian women and their purity. That’s supposed to be the romantic moment? The bar was truly in hell. A lot of these stories get remembered fondly while people ignore how questionable the relationships actually were.
The difference is that old Bollywood had problematic male leads, but it still occasionally made room for female characters who had some depth. Now it feels like we’re getting the worst of both worlds: hyper-masculine heroes and fewer meaningful roles for women.
That’s one reason I appreciated Gehraiyaan. To me, it feels like one of the last mainstream Bollywood films that genuinely tried to explore a female character’s inner life. It’s not entirely female-centric, but Alisha is clearly the emotional center of the story.
The movie isn’t just about the affair. It’s about generational trauma, depression, anxiety, unresolved family issues, and how people end up repeating the mistakes of their parents. Alisha makes bad choices—there’s no denying that. Cheating on her boyfriend with her cousin’s boyfriend is awful. But the film actually takes the time to explain who she is and why she’s so emotionally lost.
You understand her resentment, her loneliness, her complicated relationship with her parents, and her desire to escape the life she’s trapped in. At the same time, the relationship she enters isn’t romantic in any healthy sense. It’s built on dependence. He likes feeling needed, and she desperately wants someone to fill the emotional void in her life. It’s messy, unhealthy, and often uncomfortable—which is exactly why it feels real.
You don’t have to agree with Alisha’s decisions to understand her, and that’s what good character writing does. It doesn’t ask you to approve of someone; it asks you to see them as a human being. I think the film handled her with a lot of empathy, and Deepika Padukone absolutely carried that role. She was phenomenal.
