HYDERABAD : Life is a journey of finding yourself. Before becoming a writer-director, Tahira Kashyap Khurrana had dabbled in various professions. Hailing from a middle-class family in Chandigarh, where nobody, “even remotely”, had any connection to the film industry, the only creative outlet she had was theatre. “I did it for ten years. I tried to turn my amateur group into a professional one but still nobody came to buy our tickets,” she says with a chuckle.
Then came the straight path, the corporate gigs (including one where she was the programming head for Big FM) and teaching jobs at various colleges in Mumbai. “But somewhere deep down, I always wanted to tell stories,” says Tahira. “And I was always trying to find mediums to do the same.” Presented by her actor-husband Ayushmann Khurrana, she pieced together her first short, Toffee in 2017. It depicts a day in the life of two adolescent girls, in a marginalised neighbourhood, trying to break out of patriarchal shackles. The film made the rounds at various film festivals including Taiwan International Film Festival and the homegrown MAMI Film Festival and garnered audience appreciation. “Apart from yourself and your loved ones, when a third party applauds your work, that means there’s something there. Maybe a scope to make a career out of it,” says Tahira.
She followed it up with Pinni (2020) and Quaranteen Love (2021), short segments in anthologies Zindagi InShort and Feels Like Ishq, respectively. A feature was still far away. “It’s difficult to make a film with five women in the cast,” says Tahira. Her debut feature film Sharmajee Ki Beti, which is all set to release on Prime Video this Friday, is a story of five women (all with the surname Sharma), across generations, juggling family, love and career in the metropolis of Mumbai. Sakshi Tanwar plays Jyoti Sharma, a teacher who is trying to balance her career while having a disjointed relationship with teenage daughter Swati (Vanshika Taparia), who herself is dealing with pubertal imbalances. Divya Dutta essays the role of Kiran Sharma, a bubbly Punjabi homemaker, dealing with loneliness in the big city. She too has a daughter named Gurveen (Arista Mehta), another confused teen who is close friends with Swati. An ambitious cricketer Tanvi Sharma (Saiyami Kher), with an unsupportive partner, is also part of the narrative. “Through these stories, what I am trying to convey is that women and their lives do exist before 20 and after 30. We are not just mothers or a revolutionary going on a march. We exist across the spectrum and have compelling, engaging and quirky stories to tell.”