bareilly ki barfi is not just an alliteration
Assuming that you have no idea what Bareilly Ki barfi is, i am going to explain.
Bareilly is a town in the state of Uttar Pradesh in India. Barfi is an Indian Sweet.
Bareilly Ki Barfi is a Bollywood romantic-comedy film, about a somewhat "tomboyish" girl in her late 20's with several failed attempts at an arranged marriage due to her masculine demeanor. The net describes the protagonist as "An independent woman who does not believe in following a patriarchal society's rules".
The film's title literally translates to "barfi of Bareilly". But actually, Bareilly is not famous for barfi, but other things.
The title is so thoughtful and well kept. The protagonist of the film wants to emphasize that not everyone is famous/known for/appreciated for their generic features. If someone's personality and features does not coincide with the stereotype, does not mean that they can not be appreciated.
Ah okay, let me explain this better. If Bareilly is famous for hand embroidery, that means the people there are skillful and creative with hand embroidery. But just because a town is famous for hand embroidery does not mean that the town's barfi cannot be appreciated. I hope this makes better sense. If person A cooks great rice does not mean that their badminton skills cannot be appreciated. We don't have to appreciate a person only for they are talked about, be it negative or positive . Finding a skill/ feature in someone that you personally like and then appreciating that is much better than appreciating what everybody else is admiring . Beauty is subjective, we all know that. This single three-word sentence has many other revelations to it. One of them being the very theme of this post, which is, a person can be appreciated for there other qualities.
In the film, the main character is just a girl who's breaking the stereotypes by doing everything that "typical girls" do not do. Be it drinking, smoking, coming home late at night etc. These traits of hers are the only ones which are highlighted in the society. Therefore, making her the flawed one in the film. The protagonist's character is actually extremely well-written in my opinion. I won't explain the whole plot but, by the end she aims to find a guy who will not only accept her "flawed" self but also discover so much about her that adds to her personality.
Throughout the film, it is evident that the main character empathizes with every character who's "flawed" and "not accepted" by the society. I think that's great.
This epiphany of sorts, came about in stages to me.
Coming back to the name of the film, it's so clever. It's catchy, thoughtful and a tiny insight to the film.
Bareilly ki Barfi is one of my favorite films not just because of the rom-com genre, or extremely well written character arcs but also because of the deeply enrooted message behind that I did not manage to understand. Until now.
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2 posts in under 24 hours, who am I?
But this was a pending draft since November, I did not post it because I thought it made no sense. But posting it anyway because not everything is supposed to make sense.
Yes, evolving much I believe.
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