Hindi cinema hardly makes sweet, uncomplicated coming-of-age films anymore. Growing up on screen now requires something bigger than the regular disasters of being young and stupid.
Don’t Be Shy, the new Prime Video film produced by Alia and Shaheen Bhatt, is a welcome exception. It takes the ordinary problems of young adulthood seriously: bad plans, bad decisions, heartbreak, friendship, and what happens when the future you had carefully mapped out suddenly falls apart.
Shyamili ‘Shy’ Das (Aarushi Bajaj) has a plan: marry her rich, popular boyfriend, get into her dream MBA school, work for his family business, and eventually become its CEO. Then, reality hits her in the face. The boyfriend dumps her for another woman, and her life falls apart.
Shy decides to get back at the woman he leaves her for, only to end up becoming friends with her. Her parents are almost unrealistically loving and supportive. Shy simply has to deal with the fact that the plan she was so certain about isn’t going to pan out after all.
Seventeen years ago, Wake Up Sid was built around a young man with a distinct problem. Sid Mehra had no plan at all.
He failed his college exams because he hadn’t bothered to study. He had rich parents, no job, and no particular ambition beyond hanging out with his friends. When his father offered him a job at the family business, Sid lasted less than a week.
He moved out after a fight with his parents, learned to take care of himself, discovered that his interest in photography could actually become a job and, eventually, went home to apologise. His problem was immaturity. The solution was growing up.
Jaane Tu… Ya Jaane Na (2008) was similarly happy to let its characters make a mess of their love lives. Jai and Aditi were best friends who insisted they weren’t in love. So Jai gets a girlfriend, Aditi gets a fiancé, both become green-eyed, and everybody around them waits for the obvious to occur.
Student of the Year (2012) made the stakes even sillier. Rohan and Abhimanyu wanted to win a school trophy. They were also best friends, until competition and the fact that they both fancied Shanaya got in the way. St Teresa’s was an absurd school, but the film never seemed embarrassed that these were the biggest problems its characters had.
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The small-big problems of a teenager
Then there are films that take a slightly serious approach to addressing the problems of the newer generations. Dear Zindagi (2016) put therapy and mental health at the centre of Kaira’s journey as she tried to understand why her relationships kept falling apart. Kho Gaye Hum Kahan (2023) gave its three friends loneliness, childhood trauma, and the uglier parts of living online.
But I adore the light-hearted teen flicks. Wake Up Sid was about work and independence as much as it was about Sid being a brat who just couldn’t care less about adulting. The worst thing that happens to him is he fails his final exams. But his passion and privilege ease his path to realising how the real world works.
Don’t Be Shy understands how enormous the smaller things can feel, especially to the young who don’t know better. Shy is embarrassed by her family and lies about them because she wants to seem richer and cooler than she is. It is almost exactly the lie Mitchie tells in Camp Rock (2008). Mitchie pretends her mother is a successful music executive instead of the camp cook because she desperately wants the cool kids to think she belongs there.
And High School Musical (2006) managed to make Troy Bolton choosing between basketball and singing in the high school musical a genuine crisis.
To an adult, these are ridiculous problems. To a teenager, solving these is central to their world.
By the end of Don’t Be Shy, Shy’s original plan is long gone. She is helping out at her parents’ failing saree shop, which she has refurbished (to look mysteriously like a Sabyasachi store). And she is still going to B-school, just not the fancy one she had planned for.
And she’s happy.
Hindi cinema used to know that growing up was enough of a story. Don’t Be Shy is a reminder that it still can.
Tarini Unnikrishnan is an alumna of ThePrint School of Journalism. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)