Ai Ladki
A classic story by any standards, Hindi or English, it works at many levels. It is the story of a mother and her single daughter, the only one of a large brood who is there for her at her deathbed. It’s also a story of two conflicting aspects of womanhood: the urge to submerge her identity in her family and the urge to be defiantly individual, rejecting domesticity for greater freedom. More than that, it’s about the pull of opposites: the urge to connect with the world at all levels and an equally compelling desire to detach from it with all its pain and love. The resolution of this dilemma, coming with an almost unbearable intensity, is almost perfect, giving the mother the strength to die and the daughter the courage to live.
