Film: Let’s drink to that

Margarita, With A Straw (2014), could be called both ‘absurdly inclusive’ and ‘anti-disability’. It is the tale of a young Indian woman with cerebral palsy who falls in love with a blind girl – yet the leads are able bodied actresses.

The film is so charming and lighthearted, however, that at no point does it feel like worthy consciousness-raising or an exercise in political correctness. Laila, the heroine, develops in ways occasionally unconnected to her disability or her naturally overly-sheltered teenage years, but always in ways viewers can understand.

Laila attends Delhi University and lives with her loving family, but yearns for freedom. Unlike most Bildungsroman based around a disabled person, the film is an exploration of sexuality rather than the triumph of ‘overcoming’ a disability, with harsh truths along the way.

There really is a harsh pecking order when it comes to dating

Laila has a close male friend who is in love with her, yet as he is also a wheelchair user Laila has no issues with breaking his heart when a non-disabled musician looks her way. As any disabled person will tell you, there really is a harsh pecking order of ability when it comes to dating – tragic but true. The musician later breaks Laila’s own heart and she leaves Delhi for a Creative Writing course in far-flung New York. It is here she meets blind student activist Khanum, who teaches her many things about herself and the world, including how to order an alcoholic drink; the margarita of the title! Once Khanum reveals that she is gay, the two women begin a serious and special romantic relationship.

The script has a great sensitivity to disability. Neither girl’s disability is ignored, nor the problems they throw up, so as well as facing the same problems as any other young adult, there are issues that I – having been disabled since my mid-teens – could connect with. All who spent their ‘rebellious teenage years’ having to rely on the people we were supposed to be rebelling from can relate to Laila’s longing for independence and privacy.

Director and writer Shonali Bose wrote the film based on a conversation with her cousin, Malini Chib, who was born with cerebral palsy and wrote about her experiences in her autobiography, One Little Finger. The cousins were drinking in a bar when Bose asked what Malini wanted for her upcoming birthday. “She banged her fist on the table and said very clearly, because her cerebral palsy sometimes makes it hard to understand her speech; ‘I want to have sex!’ It hit me that, over all these years, I’d never dealt with her sexuality.” It is rare for any film to deal candidly and compassionately with the sexuality of the disabled, and to have Margarita, With A Straw come from a female Indian director makes it even more of a gem.

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