Udan Patolas(Amazon MiniTV)
Starring Apoorva Arora, Poppy Jabbal, Sukhmani Sadana and Asttha Ssidana
Rating: ****
Udan Patolas,I love the title, has quite a lot of going for itself. It has four strong women at the forefront. These women are smalltown wannabees in Mumbai with one agenda: to make it big in Mumbai. No matter what it takes.
“Tu kitni jhooth bolegi apne aap se?” a male friend asks Lovelle, alias Lovely played by a Tabu lookalike Sukhamni Sadana.
I think that line coming from a male character who has chosen to remain true to himself in spite of all temptations to assume aliases in the metropolis,sums up the series’ thrust towards an illusory existential self-denial where partying is such sweet-sorrow, checked and controlled by a script that slows the quartet of heroines with just enough rope to hang their vanity and vanity cases.
Udan Patolas displays flashes of witty sparkling writing everywhere. My favourite episode is the one where the nerdy but influential finance writer who is a huge fan of actor Amol Palekar catches the attention one of our protagonists Noor (played with a bubbly sparkle by Aasttha Ssidana) .
The romantic charade that follows includes a delightfully droll karaoke session where Noor impresses her Palekar-driven prey by singing ‘Suniye kahiye kahiye suniye’ from Basu Chatterjee’s Baaton Baaton Mein Offkey , of course. But it’s the (avaricious) thought that counts.
Sometimes recalling the vivacious female bonding in Sex & The City, Udan Patolas is an unabashed joyride,where for a change the female gaze is given the same prominence as the male. For decades we have watched the men drooling and leching at women and singing songs like ‘Badan pe sitare lapete hue oh jaan-e-tammanna kidhar jaa rahi ho zara paas aao toh chayan aa jaye.’
Ok then. These four girls are constantly checking out the guys, and finding them wanting.
Spiffy and smooth, Udan Patolas is the shot-in-the-ars….I mean in-the-arm that the web space needs to accentuate the need for serials that address female appetites.
These women talk of s*x and self-pleasuring with more confidence than Sonam Kapoor in her chick flicks Ayesha and Veere Di Wedding. These films got bogged down by the responsibility of adhering to the moral codes of Hindi cinema’s heroines.
The four women in Udan Patolas will stop at nothing.And we love them for their appetites.