‘Aap Jaisa Koi' doesn't wage war on patriarchy. It asks it to listen

Indian Express

15-07-2025

In Indian cinema, patriarchy rarely announces itself with a clenched fist. It arrives as habit. As inheritance, and politeness. It lingers in the pauses of male entitlement — in who gets to interrupt, who is expected to adjust, who walks ahead on the street, and who apologises first in love. Netflix's new film, Aap Jaisa Koi, directed by Vivek Soni, doesn't wage war on patriarchy. It does something rarer — asking it to sit down quietly and listen.
The film explores what equal love might look like — not as ideology, but as everyday practice. In doing so, it touches one of Indian cinema's enduring blind spots: The inability to portray intimacy without hierarchy.
Patriarchy in Indian cinema has often been dramatised as violence — a father opposing a marriage, a man slapping his wife, or an overt villain controlling the heroine's choices. But its most persistent form is subtle, woven into affection, justified by culture, and disguised as care.
Aap Jaisa Koi understands this deeply. Its male protagonist, Shrirenu Tripathi (played with affecting restraint by R Madhavan), is not a patriarch in the classical sense. He is soft-spoken, educated, even kind. But his kindness comes with conditions. His affection arrives with hesitation. His silence, as the film shows, is not always humility — sometimes it's avoidance, sometimes entitlement.
In one of the most telling scenes, Shrirenu delays expressing his feelings for Madhu Bose (Fatima Sana Shaikh), even as she meets him halfway emotionally. When she finally says, 'Don't make your hesitation my burden,' it's not a line crafted for applause. It's a quiet resistance — the kind women are forced to offer in relationships built on unequal emotional labour.
What distinguishes Aap Jaisa Koi is its commitment to subtlety — not as aesthetic, but as politics. The film resists loud feminism or confrontational drama. Instead, it offers something more intimate: A portrait of negotiation. Between two people. Between tradition and selfhood. Between care and control.
Shaikh's Madhu is not a cinematic 'strong woman'. She is not angry, argumentative, or radical in the traditional sense. Her strength lies in her refusal to bend quietly. She asks questions. She sets boundaries. She is warm, but unyielding when needed. And crucially, she does not 'fix' the man — she waits for him to meet her on equal ground, or not at all.
That itself is a disruption of cinematic convention. Indian heroines have long been expected to absorb — the anger, the indifference, the delay, the distance.
Madhavan's portrayal of Shrirenu is particularly moving because it shows a man struggling not with love, but with unlearning. He is not cruel; he is conditioned. Raised in a family where men withdraw rather than speak, where decisions are made on their behalf by well-meaning elders, his emotional language is half-formed. His journey is not about transformation, but about recognising that passivity can be a form of control, too.
In one key moment, when Madhu offers him affection and clarity, he withdraws, calling himself 'not ready'. But the film does not applaud this honesty. Instead, it holds him accountable. Readiness, it suggests, is not a virtue when it leaves someone else waiting in uncertainty.
The film's point here is profound: Emotional withholding, when unacknowledged, becomes its own form of power.
Director Vivek Soni and cinematographer Debojeet Ray craft this story with warmth and quietness. There is no spectacle. A raised eyebrow, a pause, a half-finished sentence become tools of power and protest.
One such moment comes when Madhu, returning from a frustrating family visit, confronts Shrirenu not with anger but with clarity. She says what women are often expected to leave unsaid: That love without equality is not romantic — it is exhausting.
And the film listens.
We are living in a time when mainstream Indian cinema is haltingly turning its gaze inward. Aap Jaisa Koi is part of that shift. It doesn't deliver a lecture on gender. It models a conversation — one where silence is interrogated, not celebrated; where love is offered, but not at the cost of self.
In doing so, it asks: What does a truly equal relationship look like in a culture still learning to name its biases? And what happens when we stop applauding the bare minimum from men, and start expecting more?
The film doesn't offer easy resolutions. But it offers something better: The possibility that if we can acknowledge our conditioning, we can change it. Gently. Daily. Together.
The writer is an actor, educator, filmmaker, and public policy advocate