Trisha's 'Brinda' & Female Cop Dramas On OTT

Zero Tolerance For Cop-Outs

Trisha's crime thriller series Brinda is the latest in a wave of streaming titles that have centred narratives on nuanced depictions of female cops. Neelima Menon writes.

BRINDA’S SLEEP IS ALWAYS DISTURBED by nightmares comprising blurred images of people, screaming and writhing amid a dense forest. She is on medication for anxiety, and during one particularly low phase, is displeased when her therapist refuses to up her dosage. At the police station where she is a sub inspector (SI), male colleagues wary of her stoicism try to cover it up by downplaying her efficiency. Not that she is prone to outbursts. On most days, she navigates the daily drudgery of her office work (assigned to collect data) without fuss, almost as if she has privately shut herself off from the outside world. Brinda, directed by debutant Surya Manoj Vangala and starring Trisha, is a crime thriller headlined by this quiet, insomniac cop who carries with her the emotional scars of the past and present. Running across eight episodes, the narrative shifts gears with a murder, and an investigation pointing towards a serial killer on the loose. The investigation also serves as a rabbit hole into Brinda’s past as she is forced to confront her repressed demons.

But Brinda is more than a whodunit; it is an incisive social commentary on the violence and cruelty of religious superstitions and their far-reaching consequences on society. More crucially, it delves into the horrors of childhood trauma, abuse and neglect. Watching the unravelling of human consciousness is compelling, as many cannot heal from the deep emotional wounds left from a very young age. Their learning, memory, perception, and absorption of the world arise from a space of discrimination and wrongs, and they have chosen to hit back using the same dispassionate lens.

Trisha, who makes her OTT debut as the titular character, takes her own sweet time to slip into Brinda’s psyche. For the actor, who has displayed a willingness to push the envelope in the past few years, this has been a period of reinvention. The first signs of the “actor” were visible in C Prem Kumar-directed 96, in which she essayed a woman who still carries a torch for her school sweetheart. When Janu realises that Ram (Vijay Sethupathi) is still living in her memory, she is almost shaken up by his unconditional love, yet powerless to reciprocate as she has already moved on in life. Trisha absorbs Janu’s predicament, torn between duty and love with a delicacy that’s almost moving to witness. In Ponniyin Selvan 1 and 2, the regal, proud, and manipulative Princess Kundavai was smoothly transcended by the actor, as she held her own with some of the stalwarts of Indian cinema on screen. Even in Leo, a Vijay film, some heft was provided by Trisha’s Sathya, who rises above the stereotypical female presence in a superstar film.

Brinda is easily Trisha’s best-written character after Janu. But here it is her “presence” more than her performance that keeps us invested. A lot of what Brinda conveys is somehow reflected in Trisha’s body language, including her earnestness and intelligence. There is a lot of pent-up anger in her — evident in her occasional flare ups. Largely though, she prefers to be non-confrontational. At work when male colleagues snigger behind her back, she chooses to ignore them and let her work do the talking. At home, she never responds to the open hostility of her step-sister.

She is also someone who comes across as distant. There are no friends anywhere in the picture. Her world revolves around her home and work, where she doesn’t socialise. When she is on a case, however, Brinda can be relentless and persuasive. The narrative gives a clear-eyed picture of gender discrimination and misogyny in the police force. Despite knowing that it was Brinda who cracked the case, her superior chooses a male colleague to be part of the team; yet she shows no emotion.

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Brinda shares her obsessiveness with Deputy Forest Range Officer Mala Jogi (Nimisha Sajayan) from Richie Mehta’s Poachers. Assigned to nab poachers, Mala is also efficient, plain-speaking, prone to outbursts. She even comes across as borderline abusive in all her relationships, though her perennial anger doesn’t have enough history to back it up like that of Brinda. Poachers' narrative prefers not to address the everyday misogyny that’s often witnessed in such organisations: Mala’s gender, unlike Brinda's, is treated as inconsequential in her line of work — and you know that it can't be true.

Turning our gaze to the crime thriller series Dahaad, we have 30-something SI Anjali Bhaati, stationed in a small Rajasthani town. Like Brinda, she is the first to link a series of missing persons cases to a serial killer. The town is so steeped in patriarchy, feudalism, caste and religious bias that Anjali is already at the receiving end of discriminatory taunts. Her mother would rather see her settled in domesticity than witness her nab serial killers. Anjali remains resolute, not allowing the obstacles to wear her down, and also takes the caste barbs and misogyny head-on. In the town, Anjali’s occupation is looked down upon by the other women as they believe that it would keep their daughters away from the marriage market.

It is significant to note that Anjali, Brinda and Mala are all in their 30s, unmarried, obsessively efficient at work, which in turn perhaps keeps the other obvious dynamics associated with their gender (family, childcare, work-life balance et al) at bay.

Delhi Crime 1 & 2 had dramatised depictions of two real-life crimes, with DCP Vartika Chaturvedi (Shefali Shah) in the thick of things. By the time she makes an appearance, Vartika — who has a college-going daughter with her spouse — has already weathered various storms in her career and family and learned to manoeuvre the challenges that come with both. Vartika is formidable, feared by her subordinates, and constantly under pressure from her higher officers. The narrative is more concentrated on the police procedural aspect, along with offering a glimpse into the occupational pressures of the force than applying the filter of gender.

Two more characters deserve mention here: The first is Aranyak's SHO Kasturi Dogra (Raveena Tandon), who revokes her yearlong sabbatical when a Himachali hill station wakes up to the rape and murder of a teen. Unlike Vartika, who has a kinder support system back home, Kasturi is struggling with an indifferent, insecure husband and daughter. Even this aborted break was an attempt to regain marital harmony. She is also a stereotype disruption in several ways — uncouth, rude and ruthless, frankly unpleasant to her replacement (as she takes offence to his sophistication and English-speaking skills). Besides she isn’t yet ready to let go of her fiefdom as she feels no one knows the town as she does. When her male colleague sympathises with a mother who has lost her daughter, Kasturi prefers to judge the woman for being irresponsible. But there are times she isn’t afraid to be vulnerable.

The second character is police constable Bhumika Pardeshi (Aditi Sudhir Pohankar) from Netflix’s She, who battles daily with her impoverished existence. Being a cop doesn’t alter her misery — she is battling an abusive spouse, an impending divorce, a bedridden mother, a badly-behaved sister. However, when she is forced to disguise herself as a call girl to crack down on a drug racket, her life takes a dramatic turn. This double life begins to take a toll on her, as it haunts her morality and conscience. Though the narrative is relentless in catering to the male gaze, Bhumi’s life-altering journey, which includes reluctantly exploring desire within the realm of her job, is fascinating and profound.

Hitherto, female cops in Indian cinema have oft been slotted in binaries: either demonised as arrogant and vindictive, or as subservient to male authority. While cinema may have fallen back on stereotypes, rarely addressing sexual harassment and gender discrimination at work, a lot has changed with the arrival of OTT platforms. They not only offer well-rounded female characters to headline long-format narratives, but a lot of thought and research goes into such representations. That’s perhaps why we are seeing cops like Brinda, Vartika or Anjali, who can be unapologetic about their capabilities, unlike their big screen counterparts.

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