A young woman is visiting her in-laws for the first time. She’s eager to impress them. She cooks, cleans, runs the house. She’s hurt by their jibes but tries not to show it. Her husband is mild-mannered but thin-skinned; she has to apologise for pulling his leg. Their lovemaking is awkward. She puts her interests on hold, but it isn’t enough. Slowly, she comes to a boil. She’s played by Nimisha Sajayan. The film is The Great Indian Kitchen.

Or is it Babita Singh Reporting? It’s a little strange to watch Sajayan, one of the best actors in India today, undergo similar trials and humiliations to ones she endured five years ago, in her most celebrated role. Ambiecka Pandit’s Hindi film is a world removed from Jeo Baby’s Malayalam drama. But Sajayan’s Babita is a close cousin to her unnamed wife in that film, a silent sufferer until all the silence is wrung out of her.

Babita is, to put it kindly, a people-pleaser. A timid, unassertive Assistant Sub-Inspector, she’s pliable enough to take the fall for her superior’s slip, which gets her suspended. She has to spend this time in her hometown of Rewa, waiting on husband Sharad’s (Ashumaan Pushkar) demanding mother (Sunita Rajwar) and pregnant sister (Priya Yadav), as they order and complain and make snide remarks about her weight. No wonder everyone calls her ‘Baby’.

Though it's a bleak social drama at its core, Babita Singh Reporting is also a small-town crime film, a genre that’s been steadily mined, especially on streaming, in recent years. As soon as Babita arrives in Rewa, she runs into Bansi (Barun Sobti), an old friend from school. We can see he’s fallen on hard times from his disheveled appearance, but just as clearly from Sajayan’s distraught face when she sees him. He hands her a trinket he carved for her. Sharad shows up with their luggage—his interruption of their reunion feels heartbreaking even though he’s polite and we’ve just met Bansi. He tells Sharad they were all proud when Babita joined the force. “I’m incapable,” she smiles. “I won’t be of any use to you.” “Neither will I,” Bansi says sadly.

It’s evident from the moment we see him that Bansi's place isn’t among the living. Babita, out shopping with Sharad, sees the police arrest someone, and learns to her horror it’s for the murder of her friend the night before. She attends his funeral, seemingly in a daze, but her wheels are already spinning. Outside, she starts questioning an inconsistency in the police’s version—the junkie the cops arrested is left-handed, but the wound is also on the left. Throughout the scene, there’s a faint, rhythmic knocking in the background, revealed to be a butcher chopping meat. It’s a nice detail from Pandit and writer Amita Vyas: perhaps the sight of a right-handed person with a knife prompts Babita—who’s left-handed—to make the mental leap.

Like the titular character in Santosh (2024), Babita comes by her police job as a compassionate hire, after her father dies on duty. She's as green as Santosh, and even less qualified. But she shares her stubborn tenacity. And the more she talks to people who knew Bansi, the more secrets tumble out. There's his ex-wife, young daughter and alcoholic brother, all caught up in a property dispute. There's a school friend of theirs, whom Bansi met the night of his death, whose cop husband seems unduly invested in blocking Babita’s efforts. There’s even a connection to Sharad’s family, a subplot that doesn’t pay off like I’d hoped it would.

After a point, it’s fair to wonder what’s really driving Babita. Though she was fond of Bansi, her increasingly desperate efforts in Rewa are unlikely to help her career, if they're successful at all. What's more, they're exacting a serious personal cost, putting her in some danger and straining her already shaky relationship with Sharad’s family. The film draws parallels between Bansi and Babita, lonely souls with a desire to protect. But it might also be that the women Babita meets along the way—most of them victims of abuse or patriarchal pressure—fuel her determination to achieve this one goal and not end up a cliche of compromise, leading an unfulfilled life.

The procedural aspect of Babita Singh Reporting, adequate at best, feels like a Trojan horse to tell the story of women trying to survive in a society where everything—jobs, property, security—leads back to men. This is a feminist work, but not a simple one. Instead of an uncritical vision of female solidarity, Pandit shows the limits imposed by self-preservation and circumstance. Sharad’s sister has a hard time at her in-laws, but that doesn’t make her kinder towards Babita. Bansi’s wife keeps shifting shape through the film, a complicated, thorny performance by Priyanka Setia.

Rather than make Babita endearing, Sajayan does all she can to seem ordinary and vulnerable. This is rarer than it sounds: actors tend to gravitate towards characters with strength and unique ability, because that’s what gets praised. There’s some of the combativeness we know from previous Sajayan performances, but it’s buried under layers of hurt and quiet desperation. She revealed recently that she put on 14kg for the role, a remarkable gamble in a film culture where this sort of physical transformation is only expected of male stars, and where female actors have everything to lose by not looking their best.

Babita Singh Reporting stumbles towards the end. There’s a drunken accident, a hospitalisation, a strange denouement, and a showy but unimaginative moment of catharsis. For me, the bitter, sad heart of the film can be found in two earlier scenes. In one, Sharad picks a fight with Babita for teasing him earlier in the day, then starts crying when she doesn’t back down. Babita, the actual aggrieved party, has to console him—a sharp example of how emotional bullying can come cloaked in soft new age masculinity. The other is during a family outing on the lake. When Sharad’s mother hesitates as she’s stepping off the boat, Babita reassures her that she’s right behind. “That’s what we're afraid of,” Sharad deadpans. “If Baby falls, we won’t even find the boat,” his sister adds. In most Hindi films, family is something to cherished or, at worst, endured. In Pandit’s film, it’s something to be survived.

‘Babita Singh Reporting’ is on Amazon Prime.

For more culture coverage, visit Livemint.com/mint-lounge.

A young woman is visiting her in-laws for the first time. She’s eager to impress them. She cooks, cleans, runs the house. She’s hurt by their jibes but tries not to show it. Her husband is mild-mannered but thin-skinned; she has to apologise for pulling his leg. Their lovemaking is awkward. She puts her interests on hold, but it isn’t enough. Slowly, she comes to a boil. She’s played by Nimisha Sajayan. The film is The Great Indian Kitchen.

Or is it Babita Singh Reporting? It’s a little strange to watch Sajayan, one of the best actors in India today, undergo similar trials and humiliations to ones she endured five years ago, in her most celebrated role. Ambiecka Pandit’s Hindi film is a world removed from Jeo Baby’s Malayalam drama. But Sajayan’s Babita is a close cousin to her unnamed wife in that film, a silent sufferer until all the silence is wrung out of her.

Babita is, to put it kindly, a people-pleaser. A timid, unassertive Assistant Sub-Inspector, she’s pliable enough to take the fall for her superior’s slip, which gets her suspended. She has to spend this time in her hometown of Rewa, waiting on husband Sharad’s (Ashumaan Pushkar) demanding mother (Sunita Rajwar) and pregnant sister (Priya Yadav), as they order and complain and make snide remarks about her weight. No wonder everyone calls her ‘Baby’.

Though it's a bleak social drama at its core, Babita Singh Reporting is also a small-town crime film, a genre that’s been steadily mined, especially on streaming, in recent years. As soon as Babita arrives in Rewa, she runs into Bansi (Barun Sobti), an old friend from school. We can see he’s fallen on hard times from his disheveled appearance, but just as clearly from Sajayan’s distraught face when she sees him. He hands her a trinket he carved for her. Sharad shows up with their luggage—his interruption of their reunion feels heartbreaking even though he’s polite and we’ve just met Bansi. He tells Sharad they were all proud when Babita joined the force. “I’m incapable,” she smiles. “I won’t be of any use to you.” “Neither will I,” Bansi says sadly.

It’s evident from the moment we see him that Bansi's place isn’t among the living. Babita, out shopping with Sharad, sees the police arrest someone, and learns to her horror it’s for the murder of her friend the night before. She attends his funeral, seemingly in a daze, but her wheels are already spinning. Outside, she starts questioning an inconsistency in the police’s version—the junkie the cops arrested is left-handed, but the wound is also on the left. Throughout the scene, there’s a faint, rhythmic knocking in the background, revealed to be a butcher chopping meat. It’s a nice detail from Pandit and writer Amita Vyas: perhaps the sight of a right-handed person with a knife prompts Babita—who’s left-handed—to make the mental leap.

Like the titular character in Santosh (2024), Babita comes by her police job as a compassionate hire, after her father dies on duty. She's as green as Santosh, and even less qualified. But she shares her stubborn tenacity. And the more she talks to people who knew Bansi, the more secrets tumble out. There's his ex-wife, young daughter and alcoholic brother, all caught up in a property dispute. There's a school friend of theirs, whom Bansi met the night of his death, whose cop husband seems unduly invested in blocking Babita’s efforts. There’s even a connection to Sharad’s family, a subplot that doesn’t pay off like I’d hoped it would.

After a point, it’s fair to wonder what’s really driving Babita. Though she was fond of Bansi, her increasingly desperate efforts in Rewa are unlikely to help her career, if they're successful at all. What's more, they're exacting a serious personal cost, putting her in some danger and straining her already shaky relationship with Sharad’s family. The film draws parallels between Bansi and Babita, lonely souls with a desire to protect. But it might also be that the women Babita meets along the way—most of them victims of abuse or patriarchal pressure—fuel her determination to achieve this one goal and not end up a cliche of compromise, leading an unfulfilled life.

The procedural aspect of Babita Singh Reporting, adequate at best, feels like a Trojan horse to tell the story of women trying to survive in a society where everything—jobs, property, security—leads back to men. This is a feminist work, but not a simple one. Instead of an uncritical vision of female solidarity, Pandit shows the limits imposed by self-preservation and circumstance. Sharad’s sister has a hard time at her in-laws, but that doesn’t make her kinder towards Babita. Bansi’s wife keeps shifting shape through the film, a complicated, thorny performance by Priyanka Setia.

Rather than make Babita endearing, Sajayan does all she can to seem ordinary and vulnerable. This is rarer than it sounds: actors tend to gravitate towards characters with strength and unique ability, because that’s what gets praised. There’s some of the combativeness we know from previous Sajayan performances, but it’s buried under layers of hurt and quiet desperation. She revealed recently that she put on 14kg for the role, a remarkable gamble in a film culture where this sort of physical transformation is only expected of male stars, and where female actors have everything to lose by not looking their best.

Babita Singh Reporting stumbles towards the end. There’s a drunken accident, a hospitalisation, a strange denouement, and a showy but unimaginative moment of catharsis. For me, the bitter, sad heart of the film can be found in two earlier scenes. In one, Sharad picks a fight with Babita for teasing him earlier in the day, then starts crying when she doesn’t back down. Babita, the actual aggrieved party, has to console him—a sharp example of how emotional bullying can come cloaked in soft new age masculinity. The other is during a family outing on the lake. When Sharad’s mother hesitates as she’s stepping off the boat, Babita reassures her that she’s right behind. “That’s what we're afraid of,” Sharad deadpans. “If Baby falls, we won’t even find the boat,” his sister adds. In most Hindi films, family is something to cherished or, at worst, endured. In Pandit’s film, it’s something to be survived.

‘Babita Singh Reporting’ is on Amazon Prime.

For more culture coverage, visit Livemint.com/mint-lounge.