Angie asked on Monday if there were any female Devdas-type stories, and we couldn’t come up with something exactly right. So obviously, I have to write it.
Straight-Up Devdas, But Modern and Gender Flipped
Devdas (Devdasi?) is Rani Mukherjee. She grew up next door to a little boy two years younger than her, Aamir Khan (maybe?). He was always sweet and sincere and kind. She was the slightly wild one. Her parents sent her to study overseas living with her aunt and uncle when she was a teenager and they lost touch. She came home to discover he had grown up handsome and the parents started talking about maybe getting them married. Only, before it could move forward, his parents overheard hers talking about how she would never marry a poor younger boy and decide not to move forward. Instead, he is married off to a very wealthy woman while Rani, lonely and miserable, goes off to the city.
In the city she meets Aditya Roy Kapoor, a young male dancer and part-time prostitute. Her friend from college (Lisa Haydon) takes her to a male strip club to distract her, and she is distressed when Lisa invites Aditya to join them for a drink, ending up by throwing her wallet at him and running back home. Only to find that Aamir Khan has just been engaged to someone else. She is angry and strikes him, forever marking his face.
She returns to the city to stay with Lisa Haydon at first and spend more time hanging out with Aditya, but slowly begins to drink more and more. She tries to forget herself with Aditya but, even after she comes to love him in her own way and knows he truly loves her, she still can’t sleep with him. Instead she just gives him long drunken monologues.
(Aditya would be an awesome male stripper dancer character)
Meanwhile, Aamir discovers that his new wife didn’t want a husband so much as a replacement father. Her father died recently and she felt threatened and controlled by the rest of her family, didn’t know what to do with the massive company she inherited. She is also naturally childlike and sweet, would never have been able to handle a “real” marriage. So she turns to Aamir to run the company and head the family and take care of her. Aamir becomes old before his time, turning into a boring authoritarian type with his passionate youthfulness hidden away.
Rani travels the country with her old servant Waheeda Rahman, the only person who ever seemed to really care for her. Aditya has quit his job and gone back to a small village with his savings to live a simple life. In the end, Rani has drunk herself close to death and takes one last journey, to Aamir’s huge highrise apartment because she promised to see him one more time before she died. She can’t get inside, and dies slowly outside on the pavement as the various drivers and guards and so on gather around. And Aamir only finds out when it is already too late and her body has been taken away.
Lesbian Devdas
Why has no one thought of this before? It makes SO MUCH SENSE!!!!! Vidya is Devdas, she is in love with Kalki (she already played Chandramukhi, why not Paro?). When their families catch them kissing as young girls, Vidya is sent overseas. She comes back, but as soon as the families realize they are getting close again, Kalki is married off to an older man with kids who doesn’t want a “real” marriage. Meanwhile, Vidya goes to visit Lisa Haydon, her fellow lesbian friend from college. Lisa takes her to a gay bar, where she meets Rani, sexy headliner dancer.
Vidya can’t forget Kalki no matter how much she drinks, or how attracted she becomes to Rani. She takes off on an epic journey through India to get away, while Rani quits her dancing job and takes a “Straight” boring job and moves into a respectable woman’s hostel. But then, because I hate the tragic Lesbian trope, everything changes and everyone gets a happy ending!
Kalki bonds with her stepkids and tries to live the “proper” life but is dying inside. Vidya, after ALMOST dying, realizes that she shouldn’t let what everyone else thinks change how she feels and runs to Kalki. She stands outside her building and makes a huge scene, yelling out her love. Until, finally, Kalki (with the blessing of her cool step daughter even if her husband doesn’t understand) breaks free from her family and runs down to her and they embrace and kiss.
While Vidya was on her journey, Rani was living her straight life and bumped into Lisa Haydon. Lisa kept her secret, her sexuality and her past as a bar dancer, from her new employer and just asked for a dinner as a thank you. At dinner, they start really connecting, instead of just the over the top flirtation they used to indulge in. They get more and more real with each other, Lisa admits that she has enough money from her dead parents to live on her own but she still misses the family which rejected her when she introduced them to her college girlfriend. Rani admits that she has never had a real relationship. And, eventually, they fall in love and finally share one magic kiss.
The happy ending is Vidya and Kalki getting married on the beach while Lisa and Rani hold hands and watch, and Kalki’s stepdaughter is there too, and so is Vidya’s old servant Waheeda Rahman, the only one who ever loved her for who she is.
Okay, that’s all I got, but I really think filmmakers should get on it, especially the Lesbian version (but only with a happy ending)
dontcallitbollywood 
Haha now I actually want to see this on the big screen and can we also add John and Akshay for the male stripper dancers! 😀
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I wanna see them as the bosses! If you want “private time” with one of their dancers, you have to talk to them. They’ll help you pick out someone “nice”.
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I want some “private time” with the bosses 😉
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You have to pay extra for that.
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Oh, and in case you missed it, here is the fanfic in which a woman does get “private time” with the boss of the agency, Shahrukh: https://dontcallitbollywood.com/2017/09/24/silly-sunday-shahrukh-as-a-male-prostitute-alia-as-sabrina-the-teenage-witch-amitabh-in-a-sci-fi-film/
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Not sure what ill do if SRK was my boss :O
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I guess I will be HAUNTED by images of middle aged boring Aamir Khan tonight 😀
So, exposé no. 1 was good, Rani being a dream Dev. Kangana oc comes to my mind as well, but maybe that’s a bit too obvious a choice?
But exposé no. 2 was better!
(Although I really support a female character’s right to self destruct.)
But what I wanted MOST while reading was Lisa Haydon and Waheeda Rehman ending up together, and never mind the age gap.
And finally, to provide YOU with haunting images: just imagine, just for a sec, a Kareena Kapoor Devdas…Sorry not sorry 😀
Don’t get me wrong, I like Kareena, but still a horrid thought.
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But that’s the Paro story, right? She marries and becomes old before her time, known for her charity and as a devoted mother to her stepchildren.
Lisa Haydon and Waheeda Rehman are reminding me of Sarah Polley and Holland Taylor, which is indeed delightful.
Wasn’t Heroine kind of Kareena as a female Devdas? And of course it flopped.
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The simplest way around the name would be Devika Das. 😁 Devdasi is the what they called temple girls. That’s a mess for another story though 😁
Ok so how about this.
Devika Das is the daughter of a top ranking army colonel. She’s an army brat. Complete with the army brat lifestyle. One of the guys in her gang of army brats is the son of a low ranking infantryman who happened to be a part of this group because they went to the same schools. They grow up together and they’re desperately in love. Dude even makes it to defence academy and he’s all set to become a commissioned officer. Of course things get serious and he proposes and she is like I don’t wanna settle down but if that’s what you want ok whatever have your family come over with the former proposal.
But this is where the difference between their families becomes obvious and her mother mildly insults his mother and her father doesn’t let his father forget the difference between their ranks.
The boy is heartbroken and when he asks her why she let her parents do that to his family, she just rolls her eyes and goes well you did know there was a class difference between us already. She tells him he should marry someone who would kill to be a servant to their parents for the rest of her life. So he does that. She is stung but her friends tell her she would never have been able to meet his family’s expectations or adjust to his lifestyle.
So she returns to her army brat life but she begins to miss him. A lot. There’s lots of falling out of bars drunk and drug fuelled parties at “destinations” but she can’t get over him. She stalks his social media and it makes it worse.
One day her friends take her out to this army wives’ do to take her mind off the guy. IRL, these things do get rather raunchy and so it does in the story too. Too drunk to walk, she ends up in the gents’ loo and she’s throwing up in a stall when the stripper for the evening (can it be Vidyut or Tiger?) storms in almost in tears wiping Lipstick off his body. He tells the other guy he’s with that this is the last one of these events he’s going to. But the guy tells him to shut up, down a drink and get back to work because nobody was going to give them this kind of money because of the court case against them. (the backstory would be that he got framed for selling steroids illegally at the gym he used to work at)
He tries to use the stall and finds Dee there. She’s passed out with no wallet on her and the club they’re at is all but closed. So he brings her back to his room at the chawl. He nurses her back to health but she’s abusive and forces him to get her booze and pays him to sleep with her.
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Love it! And have you seen Solo yet? The last story in the film is kind of sort of similar to this. Only a little bit, but the same army brat romance idea.
The one thing I would add is the meeting between Dee and Vidyut (why not!) before she starts spiraling. Because that’s what made Dev different for Chandramukhi, someone who was uncomfortable around her instead of attracted. Maybe at the start of the return to the army brat life she is at some other party, all the other women are sticking money in Vidyut’s belt and she is so uncomfortable that she just puts her whole wallet in there and then runs away, disgusted. He remembers her since then and it is part of the reason he is sick of this life, and then he sees her again when she is in bad shape like you described an so on.
Question: what is the ending for this one? Does she drink herself to death? Does she survive and realize she loves Vidyut and can move on? Or does she go back and win over her ex?
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Meh, let her die. I’m sick of happy endings in all our fanfics
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But that’s the purpose of fanfic! To force happy endings. And now poor Vidyut will be left sad and heartbroken, along with whoever is her buttoned up old-before-his-time Paro.(Shahid?). Oh! Could they find each other? Vidyut goes to Shahid to deliver a final message, they bond in their grief, realize they are boy, and start up a thing-thing that gives Shahid the satisfaction he needs outside of his marriage and gives Vidyut the emotional and financial support he needs to break free of his life?
On Sun, Mar 18, 2018 at 4:15 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Maybe the film ends with vidyut telling the story of this crazy girl that he loved to his baby daughter whom he names after her and his wife who’s expecting again is taking a stroll with him in their normal middle class suburban Street and she’s one of the older ladies he met during his stripping days and she’s somehow a witness to all that he went through with dee
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I kind of want to combine this with my idea of Chandra ending up with the friend who first brings Dev to meet her. I’d like it if Dee’s good friend from school (maybe a couple years older) was married off to an older army officer, Dee was sent to visit her to get over her heartbreak, she is the one who brought Dee to the raunchy party, and she is kind of in the background while Dee is falling apart, like we see Vidyut call her for help at one point and she comes over and is sympathetic and kind to both of them. And she drops hints like how she likes going to the stripper parties because she can forget her life while she is there, or how she was happy to come help Vidyut deal with Dee’s withdrawal symptoms because cleaning up vomit is more fun than having dinner with her husband. So at the end it isn’t totally out of the blue for her and Vidyut to have developed a bond, and we are also happy that she got out of her (clearly horrible) marriage.
On Fri, Mar 23, 2018 at 9:16 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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She could be Dee’s father’s junior’s wife so they both know each other very well from their army circle. She could be like 10 years older than Dee and perhaps childless for which her husband blames her and abuses her. Clearly it wasn’t a problem with her just that her former husband’s ego was too big to ever get the tests done
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Yes, perfect! And because she is older and married, but childless, she doesn’t really fit in anywhere, which is why she and Dee bond despite the 10 year age difference.
On Fri, Mar 23, 2018 at 9:32 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I had this real life older army wife friend. She had a tween boy and everything. She was short and sported a bob so she looked much younger than she was. Poor thing, this once she was hanging out with us people in our 20s at this young bollywood aspirant’s house and she greeted her mother with a nice “hello aunty” and the aunty who was like just a few years older than the army wife told her sharply to stop pretending she was a girl just because she was hanging out with some!!
Moral of the nasty comment being army daughters and wives are sort of ageless.
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I like both versions. But I think it should be Kalki the one who searches Rani. She realizes she doesn’t want live with her husband, leaves, and finds Rani in very bad shape. But it’s still not too late to save her.
@Asmita I’ll pay for seeing Vidyut as innocent boy turned stripper.
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I like that, an active Paro for once. And it would also be a powerful coming out moment, turning her back on a life of security and secrecy, where she could have hidden her sexuality indefinitely to announce that she has to be herself and be true to herself or else she won’t be happy.
Vidyut, the simple farm boy who doesn’t understand the big city, taken in hand by a seemingly kindly older man who teaches him to dance and sells his virginity to the highest bidder.
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