Mrs. unveils the silent battles of women bound by tradition, duty, and sacrifice. This Women’s Day, let’s talk about the ones we often overlook.
In a sea of feminist-driven narratives that cover domestic abuse, a woman’s place in society, working women, cultural misogyny, marital relationships, comes a story that, on the face of it, is all about women, the invisible shackles that bind them, once they tie the knot and a society that often does not even acknowledge that they are in fact, culprit and victim at the same time.
In Mrs it is not just the men but even the women who promote the ideology that a woman’s place is inside the home, in the kitchen (unless she’s on her period), and not necessarily one who has a right over her body once she signs on the dotted line.
Sanya Malhotra plays Richa with great believability, as does … Deebikar. We love her and root for her as much as we despise him and call out the male psychology that has made him into a product of our society – as Richa calls out to her parents – main beta nahin hoon, beti hoon. It’s not always about the son.
If Mrs comes off as a regressive take on desi marital relationships it is because the women watching it have either been lucky enough to meet men who are like Richa’s friend’s husband – who loads the dishwasher and lets her carry on with her passion – dancing. Or, they have been these women in another life and thankfully, celebrate the end of an era that still exists for many others.
Richa’s susraal is soft-spoken yet firm, and her mother-in-law carries on a system she has inherited over the years and, in so doing, has become the system herself. Prepping fresh phulkas, attending to the kitchen, cooking desi cuisine with a precision that would put Gordon Ramsay to shame, she and many others like her, fight the modern lifestyle where women work, hire a cook and house help to tend to the housework and enjoy the same privileges as the men folk whom they cohabit with.
These women, like Richa’s mother- in -law also derive powers from continuing the system, because after penultimate years of sweating it out, they know and cherish no other life. They are the life blood upon which their husbands rely for a steaming cup of chai or shikanjabeen done right and they pride themselves in making it better than their neighbour next door.
The kitchen is not only a sanctuary for them from a husband who waits for them to enter the bedroom so he can satisfy his sexual appetite, more like a biological need, but also a place of near worship where they rule – a kingdom no less, where they have full control and sway over the land.
In Mrs it is not just the men who are to blame, but the women who facilitate a certain lifestyle that suffocates young brides, burying them unfathomable layers of housework, till they eventually become pregnant, housebound and then, too busy and too late in the day to really even know how to break free.
So while Mrs is not a new story. It is too.
While many women will see their lives reflected in Richa’s seemingly soft-spoken in laws, a kitchen brimming with flavours, chutneys, hand made delicacies, it is also a place that binds the unsuspecting, and fast becomes a prison where the inmate has to serve jail time by prepping breakfast, lunch, dinner, savoury and sweet snacks, chai and coffee at a moment’s notice without so much as raising an eyebrow – and all this without domestic help because that of course, is tantamount to outsourcing a part of your heart and soul to someone who will cook with know-how but not necessarily love? Questionable much?
The movie also interjects moments of dark truth as Richa’s husband Deebikar ignores her silent yet subtle requests to postpone intimate relations every night or every other night – her husband treating her as his property, he has signed the marriage contract after all, and that allows him right to her body as and when he pleases. At one point, she attempts to explain to him the difference between making love and having sex, foreplay and merely getting to the point, with the result that she is met with a mean, insensitive remark about her appearance and looks – oh well, no man can face rejection especially when it comes from his wife – a woman he feels he has every right to s^%*@ as and when the desire surfaces?
Added to this are Richa’s attempts to restart her dance classes or at least teach dance at an academy – requests that are dismissed instantly by her in-laws and husband as unnecessary and a waste of time and effort, plus dancing is not an activity favored by the respectable at heart. And then the constant remarks by family and friends about her lack of expertise in the kitchen. Despite all of Richa’s hard work, she ends up feeling unappreciated as a wife and daughter-in-law, unfulfilled as a woman and above all, human being. Her smile fades over the days, her eyes hopeful yet despondent at the same time.
If one were to assume the movie might stagger into monotony, it nearly does, but that monotony is merely a representation of Richa’s monotonous life where even a phone call from her friends is a respite and a breather in an otherwise painfully routine life, spaced out between preparing breakfast lunch and dinner.
And then the endless cleaning up.
Mrs makes a point by being brave enough to keep a gradual tempo almost as if one is driving on a road flooded by rainwater, keeping a steady foot on the accelerator, not too fast, not too slow, so that one can make it through the water without the car’s engine seizing midway. It is painful, yet necessary to keep the story relevant and impactful.
The creators have managed to treat audiences to a festival of desi food preps almost as if it were an episode from Master Chef, with the camera lens capturing the best of the best in the painstaking patience and mastery of desi cuisine, balancing flavours, food textures and recipes with skill without making it seem like an all out cooking class.
The scene where Richa preps the Dum Pukht biryani is certainly one for the books, and for the innocent viewer, one might even think her in laws would appreciate the effort.
But at the end of the day, Mrs is merely about men being men and women being women. Except that Richa wasn’t one of those women who could be cast in a mould if she didn’t receive the love, care and attention that every wife has a right to.
Her journey though painful, was headlined by her constant efforts to improve, fix and please till she knew she had thrown everything at it, tried her best and then…decided to try no longer.
Isn’t that what every woman does till she’s had enough? Or, has lost hope. Or, if she’s lucky enough to realize it, is worth more?
Mrs trended in India for all the right reasons. It is a reflection of the lives of countless housewives who follow Richa’s journey but who were not lucky enough to escape like Richa and then, probably ended up being Richa’s mother in law. Countless others probably became pregnant and decided to call it a day.
Some battles are better fought for another day or not at all.
Thankfully, Richa’s was not one of them. To all the women who watched and saw even a tiny bit of their lives in Richa and to all the men who saw Deebikar as even a vague reflection of themselves – hold on to that thought and rewind to the moment Richa and Deebikar hold hands when engaged and try to keep that moment.
It might be the tipping point between happy, fulfilling married lives – a Mr and Mrs ever after. And not one without the other.
Some prisons have no bars. They are built within homes, furnished with expectations, and reinforced by tradition. They are disguised as love, duty, and care—so much so that even the women trapped inside them struggle to see the walls closing in. More often than not, these structures are upheld not by villains, but by families who believe they are doing right by their daughters, wives, and sisters. They are perpetuated by ‘good’ husbands who think providing financial support is enough, by mothers who teach their daughters to serve first and dream later, by entire communities that tell women they are lucky to be owned, rather than lucky to be free. The burden of maintaining a household, of ensuring that meals are cooked, homes are clean, and traditions are upheld, is placed on women—whether they have dreams beyond these walls or not.
Women like Richa spend years believing that care is their currency, that their value is measured by how much they endure. They carry the weight of unspoken expectations, sacrificing their ambitions, their peace, and often their very sense of self in service of a family structure that rarely acknowledges their sacrifices. They are taught to believe that suffering in silence is a virtue, that being a ‘good wife’ or a ‘dutiful daughter-in-law’ means accepting exhaustion as a permanent state of being. And yet, there comes a moment when endurance is no longer noble—it is merely endurance. It is a slow erasure of the self, a quiet fading into the background of their own lives.
But as Richa teaches us, there is a way out. There comes a point where walking away is not giving up—it is choosing oneself. It is refusing to be diminished, refusing to be defined by servitude, and reclaiming the life that should have been hers all along. This Women’s Day, let us not just celebrate resilience but also recognize that freedom is the ultimate act of defiance, and every woman deserves the right to choose herself without guilt, shame, or fear.
