Ziddi Girls

Ziddi Girls, the web series on Prime was in the news for all the wrong reasons. About a college Matilda House, another with similar initials went hammer and tongs demanding a ban when the promos aired accusing the producers of showing their institute in bad light. Happened to see the trailer and found it so wanna be that I decided to let go in want of something better but the keeda to see how bad it can get got the better of me...and trust me, there was no looking back.

While it would be most obvious to slot it in the "Feminism" category, there are so many layers of emotions embedded within, giving it shades of black and white and all possible grays in between.

An all girls college backdrop brings with it the evil cliches but it also adds energy and vibes of a new generation rearing to soar. The principal story revolves round acts of defiance against an establishment eager to chop the wings thus ensuring adherence to inertia.

Been there...seen that.

But then I'm a sucker for tales of valor. The courage to fight for basic necessities of dignity and self respect. Protest with a purpose.

An ensemble of hugely talented girls,their bonding and camaraderie will infect you with warmth and positivity. Overcoming cultural, financial, social and personal stigmas, crying on each other's shoulder, standing hand to hand against adversity of highest order, treasuring memories for a lifetime. What a blessing.

Lending solid support to the young ones are actors of fine caliber. Revathy makes her presence felt as the beloved principal in the first episode. Short and sweet.

Nandita Das as the feisty prof leads the battle of ideology, always at loggerheads with the archaic attitude of the management. She definitely should act more. When I saw Revathy make way for Simran as the new princi, I felt disheartened. What an unfair swap both in terms of talent and likeability. I have no qualms in admitting an error in my jaundiced judgement as Simran aces Ms. Bakshi effortlessly. A stickler for rules, authoritative without being despotic, misguided intentions without any ulterior motives, she makes sure you dislike her but not enough to disregard her position.

She tows the fine line between insubordination and disrespect with a great sense of purpose. Fantastic job.

Jointly Directed by Shonali Bose, Vasant Nath & Neha Sharma, full credits to this trio for creating impactful content. Point in case being the climax which is so emotionally charged without being violent. The last scene has made a permanent home in my mind.

The background music packs a punch with its peppy contemporary flavours.

Final words of caution if I may add.

It's going to be an unpopular watch for many and you might think twice before pressing the play button on your remote.

Get a little ziddi with yourself and go for it. You'll definitely find something which will resonate within.

After a long time i saw something absurd with weird script, poor editing and screenplay is just lot of A rated dialogues, abuses and revolution on petty topics. 1st year graduate girls (means around 17-18 years) having full exposure to heavy drinking, frequent A rated stuff and chain smoking. Funny part is college professor/ principal, staff and even parents encourages. Hardly there is any scene or reference where there is slight point of study or career coaching. This is cheap version of SRK mohabattein where except for study, student used to do everything :) :).

From pure acting per-se, there are some good performances and some girls will work wonder in entertainment industry. But this show is just big pain to watch.

Avoid it at all cost. Senseless Show. Waste of time.

Very honest and nuanced portrayal of a lot issues young Indian girls face.

Kudos for showing girls from different backgrounds, with their individual worries, first time away from home. And their unique moral struggles in the face of "freedom".

It's uniquely Indian, with the attachment of daily phone calls to parents, scrutiny of society, expectation for studies over everything else and our own unique definition of good girls.

It's not always easy to watch, but it's also not always easy to be a woman in India, and all the events are modelled on real incidents, including the balloons.

Amazing to see the female Indian gaze of humanities/arts college on screen. High Time. Dare I say, the characters feel so relatable they almost feel cliche. Especially the part where 90% of their lives revolves around friendship, not romance.

Seeing such normal struggles of college women on screen, is like a big hug. Hope we get to have more such genuine, messy, female stories that aren't just trying to 'feel good' or be pretty or end up with guy.

Well, we have another show which is an absurd waste of time. I would have taken it seriously, if the story was not senseless & boring. The story writing lacks substance, often reducing complex issues in society to some wrong messaging, in the hopes that it sounds cool & gets viewers. The characters in this show are five women who have misguided ethics & consider misconduct as a way of expressing their dissent.

The dialogues in this show are juvenile & crass. Sometimes, it sounds like they are being spewed by characters in hopes to add relevance to their supposed "just" cause of rebelling against the institiution where, they are enrolled to get themselves get educated. But, they do everything but, focusing on their education. In fact these women are quite obscene in their thinking & their actions at times. There are scenes where, these women plan to screen a pornographic film on the institution's premises for some misguided need to look & sound "cool" & to protest against the Institute. Naturally, there is an action taken by the institution's authorities against such deviant behavior which, is twisted into a basis for these girls to instigate a rebellion, claiming it's a fight against oppressive societal norms. All I could take away was the story writer's desperation to justify this aberrant behavior as normal & acceptable in these women, on screen. However, the story writers seem to have taken some unnecessary liberties in trying to make these scenarios real for the sake of patching up a faulty narrative. Normalizing aberrant behavior on screen has become a fixation with the Bollywood these days unfortunately. This show is no different.

I didn't find it remotely entertaining or amusing, to see the antics of these women in the show. The only thing I could summarize is that the show was badly scripted, senseless at times & too juvenile to be called entertaining. This show just tries to add panache to irrationality and fails miserably while trying to accomplish it. I'll just conclude by calling it a waste of time.

I was in tears by the end of the show, because it explores the struggles of women and their fight against society in such a BEAUTIFUL way. Also the theatrical ending.

Activism, revolution, self-expression. I loved how the girls fought. Also I noticed how the show discreetly presents a dilemma: duty or morality? You'd pick up on it only if you're sensible enough. The bad reviews are from men so I'm not shocked. The point flew over their heads.

Ziddi Girls just convinced me to be a little more ziddi, for myself and my fellow ladies. My only complaint(spoiler alert!!) is that the ending was slightly inconclusive and we didn't find out what happened to Bhasin, PICA, Paro or MH.