The reason Sujoy Ghosh's Kahaani, that released 10 years ago on this day, is considered one of the most effective thrillers in recent memory is because its suspense hides in plain sight.
The title, that translates to 'story,' hints at the protagonist's weapon of choice while avenging the death of her husband. Vidya Bagchi [played by Vidya Balan] tells everyone the story of how she's a pregnant woman looking for her missing husband in Kolkata. While in fact, she is on a covert mission to find and assassinate the mastermind of the Kolkata metro gas tragedy that killed her husband, along with many others.
She uses the police, particularly Inspector Rana [Parambrata Chatterjee], to navigate the tricky terrain of bureaucratic and political coverups in order to unearth the identity of her husband's killer. In terms of the outline, Kahaani is yet another revenge thriller or another card in the deck of the avenging angel movies like Khoon Bhari Maang [1988] and Anjaam [1994]. But what makes it fresh is how Bagchi uses the crutch of storytelling to reach her target, instead of resorting to the trope of cornering the mastermind's men one by one to get to the next clue in the trail.
But what also makes Kahaani a riveting story, and not just a soulless thriller, is the mother's beating heart at the centre of the narrative.
While the image of a heavily pregnant woman in search of her husband is in itself sufficient to evoke sympathy, that feeling is turned on its head in the climax, when Bagchi reveals she has a false pregnant belly and that both her husband and unborn child died long ago.
Again, the idea of a woman, having lost her family, in search of justice is also tempting but the narrative never limits itself to that singular aspect. In the final moments, Bagchi, sobbing, tells her ally [Darshan Zariwala] that she had started feeling like a mother again, and started believing her husband is alive, while telling others that story. "I want my husband back. I want my child back," she says, her sobbing turning into wailing. It's right in that moment that you feel for the character the most. She is no avenging angel or a hapless figure, but a thriving mother — somewhere between both the ends.
She is able to sell her kahaani convincingly to others because she herself is completely invested in the story. It's because she wants to be. Telling yourself a story, living it, and then convincing others of the same is not just a counter device as employed in Drishyam, but also a self-defense mechanism to escape your own past, sorrows, and loneliness.
The chanting chorus of Usha Uthup's song 'Aami Shotti Bolchi' [I speak the truth] is an interesting parallel to Bagchi's tactic of repeating the same story to others so that she believes it herself a bit more every time. The kahaani is her weapon to avenge the death of her husband but the weapon eventually acts against herself. It tempts her with a make-believe world, and then crash-lands on her like a truth bomb.
Vidya Balan is a telling choice to play the protagonist. In her past films, Balan had played a single mother, but never the one in search of her husband. In fact, she played the extreme opposite in both Heyy Babyy [2007] and Paa [2009].
In the first one, when her character Isha turns pregnant after a brief sexual encounter with Arush [Akshay Kumar], she hides that fact from him since she finds him cheating. She raises her daughter Angel as a single mom before her father [Boman Irani] gives her away to Arush because "a child also needs a father." Throughout the rest of the film, Balan's Isha displays a steely resolve [and icy glares] in her insistence to raise her child sans a father.
Similarly in Paa, when her character, named Vidya again, decides to keep her child even after her boyfriend Amol [Abhishek Bachchan] refuses to take on the fatherly responsibilities, she loses contact with him, and raises their son on her own. Auro [Amitabh Bachchan] turns out to be a special child battling progeria but even then, Vidya never tries to seek help from Amol, a successful politician. Even when Auro tries to reunite with his father and Amol asks for Vidya's forgiveness, she can't get herself to accept and move on.
On screen, Vidya Balan has always been a fierce single mom, reluctant to share her child with an irresponsible partner. In Kahaani, however, she tells herself a story. A story that paints her as a desperate but determined mother.
But there are flashes where the storyteller's guard drops, and Balan breaks out of character. When Rana tells her what a great mother she will be, she looks away and braves moist eyes. In that moment, one realises how along with Sujoy Ghosh, Vidya Balan has also been co-writing her own kahaani.
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