In one of the more interesting scenes in the recent Bollywood film Tanu Weds Manu Returns, Tanuja Trivedi, played with aplomb by Kangana Ranaut, walks into the courtyard of her family's home in Kanpur to join a groom-meets-bride session, clad in just a towel. Unsurprisingly, she manages to drive the groom's party out, much to her family's embarrassment. The scene is delightfully subversive, not for Ranaut's sartorial choice but for the freedom with which she bursts out in gleeful laughter, goading the elders into a fine rage. Women laughing in this way, with agency and with abandon, is a relatively rare thing in our films. As a measure, consider this – the Filmfare Award for 'Best Performance in a Comic Role', a category established in 1967, never went to a woman; the award was dropped in 2007 in a pristine mens-only condition. The Screen Awards, which have continued with a similar category, fare a little better with three women on its list since 1995. Even here, the only woman in a leading role on this list is the feisty Richa Chadha, unlike the male roster which includes the likes of Saif Ali Khan and Abhishek Bachchan. All of which seems to beg the question: just what is it about funny women that scares Bollywood?
At the best of times, comedy has been a risky business for leading ladies. Perhaps they are hesitant to look ridiculous or to inhabit the vulnerability that clowning around involves. Perhaps directors and writers prefer to invest their best gags in the male stars. This makes less sense now than it did in the past, when aspects of the heroine's persona that were unpalatable were outsourced to other female characters, like the wicked vamp and the funny saheli, the heroine's female friend. The first lady (in more ways than chronologically) of women in comedy, Uma Devi Khatri, established the tone that prevailed for years. She was the quintessential Fat Lady (her film credits actually list her that way), the irrepressible Tun Tun who provided comic relief in over a 100 films, from Mr and Mrs 55 (1955) to Namak Halal (1982). Back in the days when a rented VCR and video tapes were our weekends, I would watch old Hindi films with my grandmother, who adored Tun Tun. She roared with joy at her entries, and rocked with laughter as her characters attempted antics no 'decent' woman could support. That was part of the freedom the laughs gave Tun Tun, and also indicated that you had to be bizarre in some way – in her case, her large physique – to be able to indulge in such capers.