Laila may be wheelchair bound because she has cerebral palsy, but it hardly seems an obstacle to stop this young student at the University of Delhi from doing exactly what she wants to do. Encouraged by her middle-class parents, she never lets her disability stop her getting exactly what she wants in life. That is until she makes a pass at the singer in the band who she writes song lyrics for and who she has a major crush on, and she gets rejected. Like any other 19 year old girl she has a very healthy interest in sex, but it’s just that is not what most people expected from anyone who is disabled.
Laila is remarkably clever though : enough to win a scholarship to study creative writing at New York University, an opportunity she jumps at especially as her mother promises to spend the first few months with her until she settles in. In her new school, she is about to correct a misunderstanding with the Lecturer that is about to make about her physical ability but when she sees Jarad the very cute boy who is proffered as her helper she plays dumb, and very shortly has another big crush going.
Laila is fiercely independent and insists on getting around the city on her own, but one day she stumbles into the middle of an Occupy demonstration and when a fray breaks out she needs to be ‘rescued’. Khanun who saves her is a blind very pretty half-Pakistani half-Bangladeshi girl who has lived all over the globe and is much more worldly than Laila. However the two form an instant friendship and within days become totally inseparable. Laila’s mother is delighted to observe this all happening just as she is about to go back home to India, and encourages Laila to have a study sleepover with her new friend.
Except instead of studying the two young women go to a Jazz Club and Khanun insists that Laila has very first taste of alcohol …. and that is where the movie title comes from. Later that evening much to Laila’s surprise their relationship takes on a physical dimension, and she is over the moon at finally having sex. However as much as she loves Khanun, Laila is also highly attuned to her sexual desires, so one wet afternoon when Jared comes over t0 help with an assignment they end up in bed together.
Life gets more complicated when in the summer recess Laila takes Khanun home to visit to her family in India, and in the middle of their stay, they discover that Laila’s mother has a terminal illness. The prospect of losing the one person that she loves most of all, makes Laila want to reassess who she really is, and what she wants from life.
This second feature from filmmaker Shonali Bose, with co-director/writer Nilesh Maniyar is wonderfully refreshing as it treats Laila’s disability and bisexuality without making a drama out of either of them, and completely avoids the usual pitfalls of patronizing them. Credit is due to the extremely talented Kalki Koechlin who plays Laila with such joie de vivre and exuding optimism and sheer joy, willing us all to want her to succeed in whatever she set her heart on.
It was an uplifting story, compellingly told, beautifully executed, and considering it is partly set in India where homosexuality is still illegal, quite brave too.
