What in the world made Pradeep Sarkar make a socially unacceptable film like Laaga Chunari Mein Daag? It isn’t just the offensive message that an unqualified girl can make a living only through the age-old route. It is ridden with flaws as deep as Mumbai’s potholes. Topping the list was Jaya Bachchan playing the moth-eaten mother sobbing over a sewing machine. And then she goes and unwittingly greenlights her desperate daughter’s decision to resort to the oldest profession in the world. Worse still, barring a half-hearted attempt to ring her up, Jaya makes no move at all, right through the movie, to correct that wrong.

Considering they are essentially an educated, respectable khandaani family fallen on bad times, whatever prevented the mother from making a trip to Mumbai city and putting a stop to her daughter’s downward slide? On the contrary she compounds it by exhorting Rani to keep away from her sister’s marriage — the message is, your money is welcome, not you and your stigma.

No wonder Shabana Azmi flatly refused to do Laaga Chunari Mein Daag when Jaya Bachchan’s role was first offered to her. She found the mother’s complicity unrealistic and unacceptable. That itself should’ve been a warning to Pradeep Sarkar that he was treading on offensively illogical territory.

If the mother’s track is way off the mark, Rani Mukerji is equally inexplicable. For a girl so desperate for money, she spurns the 30,000 rupees she’s given after being ‘deflowered’. That momentary display of self-respect is incongruous with her willingness, the very next minute, to go down the ancient path to riches.

Equally eyebrow-raising is Suchitra Pillai’s role in grooming her to be the best high-society escort girl. When Suchitra is not shown as a madam, and there is a sympathetic Ninad Kamath to help her, why isn’t Rani simply groomed to be a model or a receptionist?

Pradeep Sarkar’s answer to the financially-vulnerable girl is, use your body. And the solution to getting out of it is, get a man (in this case, Abhishek Bachchan) to marry you. The anti-woman, anti-progress tone of Laaga Chunari Mein Daag makes you want to go back and re-examine Parineeta to check if his time-worn ideas about women showed up there too, but went unnoticed.

Essentially, Sarkar’s film is a story about losers. The mother is a loser with nil moral values. The father (Anupam Kher) makes the unpardonable (but yes, oft-heard) remark that if his first-born had been a son and not Rani, the financial problems of the family would’ve been (magically?) solved. How? By educating him and not Konkona? But all the men in this family are shown to be useless anyway. Anupam himself is of no practical use in this chauvinistic setup, his brother (Tinnu Anand) and his nephew (Sushant Singh) who’re established very early as no-gooders, do nothing but live off Rani’s earnings while they wait for their share of the khandaani property. In other words, none of the men in Laaga Chunari Mein Daag has it in him to put in an honest day’s labour. Losers, the whole bunch of them.

The main heroine, Rani, is, of course, a loser all the way and not simply because she traded favours for money. When the protagonist in a story rises in angst against a situation (in this case, the father’s barb about her not being a son), and steps out to prove herself, you cannot have her ultimately fail in her mission and establish that the barb was not misplaced.

When a story is strewn with such losers, the film has to be a loser too. Dada, we’re disappointed.

The winner, by the way, is clearly Vidya Balan who did not get carried away with a misplaced sense of loyalty. When Pradeep Sarkar offered her the second lead in Laaga Chunari Mein Daag, she was hurt. How could he offer his Parineeta a secondary role to Rani? Vidya wisely turned down his offer, even if it meant a miffed-with-his-muse Dada.

Coincidentally, Vidya Balan did reach the theatres on October 12. In Bhool Bhulaiya, released simultaneously with Laaga Chunari Mein Daag, Vidya excels in a dignified, powerful role. There’s even an electrifying classical item she does, and she’s not a trained dancer. Bhool Bhulaiya is no classic, no blockbuster either. But it does establish Vidya’s impeccable credentials as an actress you can’t sideline à la Guru.

Bharathi S. Pradhan is managing editor of Movie Mag International