I was sixteen when I first watched Life in a… Metro (2007). It came on late one night, a grainy TV rerun with kissing scenes snipped out, framed by perfume ads and that strange quiet that falls over a house after everyone else has gone to sleep. I didn’t know exactly what I was watching, but it didn’t feel like the movies I was used to. It felt softer, more still, more inward-looking. The women didn’t break into song; they broke into silence. They cheated, they cried, they waited by windows for calls that didn’t come. They felt tired, complicated, and real in a way I didn’t yet have the language to understand.
When I rewatched it at eighteen, I expected nostalgia. Instead, I felt frustrated. What struck me wasn’t the sadness of the women—it was how much of it they were expected to swallow. Shikha, played by Shilpa Shetty, returns to a husband who didn’t deserve her. Neha, played by Kangana Ranaut, is punished for wanting success and intimacy in the same breath. Shruti, played by Konkona Sen Sharma, whose reward for self-awareness was marriage and a baby. Even the widow Shivani, played by Nafisa Ali, who was brave enough to choose love again, was quietly killed off by the script. These women weren’t weak—but they were still written into endings that prioritized endurance over evolution.
A few days ago, I watched Metro… In Dino, Anurag Basu’s spiritual sequel, set eighteen years later. Right before entering the theatre, I saw the poster. It read: “Your own story in cinema.” At first, I laughed because to me, it sounded like the kind of copy designed to make you feel important just for buying a ticket. But two hours later, somewhere between Sara Ali Khan breaking off an engagement and Neena Gupta walking out of her house with a suitcase and zero explanation, I realized the line wasn’t promotional, it was prophetic.
Life in a… Metro Was Always Ahead of Its Time
When Life in a… Metro released in 2007, it plopped into a landscape still steeped in the ideas of an ideal woman. Hindi cinema loved heroines who were virtuous, self-sacrificing, and more devoted to keeping families together than to their own inner clarity. But Basu’s women were different. Their discontent wasn’t cinematic. It felt radical because of how ordinary it was: Shikha’s boredom, Neha’s ambition, Shruti’s ambivalence. There were no grand speeches, only small betrayals and smaller concessions. The feminist undercurrent was subtle but unmistakable. These women weren’t punished for wanting more, but they weren’t exactly allowed to have it either. The film earned critical praise, but its emotional risk lay in how unremarkable these women were allowed to be. Not aspirational. Just honest.
You can see this thread even in Basu’s other films. In Barfi! (2012), Priyanka Chopra’s character Jhilmil is autistic and completely outside the typical Bollywood heroine mould, yet she becomes the film’s emotional centre. Illeana D’Cruz’s character also chooses heartbreak over comfort, opting for a life that respects her boundaries rather than rescues her. In Ludo (2020), Sanya Malhotra plays a woman trapped in her past but willing to confront it, making difficult choices on her own terms. Basu’s women don’t exist for arc polish, they’re written to feel incomplete in ways that mirror real life.
What Changed in the Metro… In Dino
Metro… In Dino doesn’t reboot these women—it responds to them. It listens to everything they left unsaid and gives that silence a voice. And this time, it doesn’t treat compromise like a supporting character.
Kajol (played again by Konkona, now older, sharper) demands connection instead of pleading for it. Chumki (Sara Ali Khan) doesn’t wait to be rescued; she leaves before she loses herself. Shruti (Fatima Sana Shaikh) debates motherhood without shame. Shivani (Neena Gupta) gets to live the life that the older Shivani of 2007 was denied. These women aren’t aspirational either. But they are no longer afraid to choose themselves. The ache is still there, but it’s no longer confused with virtue. Anurag Basu himself has said in interviews that this sequel was about “how women love differently now, not more or less, just more clearly.” That clarity shows.
Why We Still See Ourselves in These Women
The emotional texture of both Metro films lies in how they map the psychological depth of their female characters—not just desire, but dissonance. These aren’t women who have it all figured out. They’re women unlearning the need to apologize for the things they don’t know. That’s why they resonate. Whether it’s 2007 or 2025, the question isn’t just whether the world has changed. It’s whether women are finally allowed to change without asking for permission. In Life in a… Metro, they waited for men to change, for guilt to subside, and for love to feel easier. In the Metro… In Dino, they move. Sometimes with hesitation, sometimes with grief, but there’s movement nonetheless. That shift from endurance to action is the evolution.
What This Tells Us About Indian Cinema Today
Across mainstream cinema and streaming platforms, we’re now seeing women written with the emotional vocabulary they were once denied. Shows like Made in Heaven, Bombay Begums, Delhi Crime, and Modern Love Mumbai have normalised female messiness, ambition, even selfishness. Even in genre shows like Suzhal or Trial By Fire, female characters are allowed to carry trauma without the burden of moral purity.
But Metro… Dino doesn’t chase what’s trending. It offers continuity. It belongs to the same cultural moment, but it’s in conversation with its own past. This isn’t a reinvention. It’s a reply. An 18-year-long character arc stretched across a city’s skyline. Konkona Sen Sharma’s return anchors this generational loop. She’s not playing the same woman, but she carries the same gaze, only now it’s steadier, sharper, more deliberate. And maybe that’s what’s changed in Indian cinema too. We’re not asking our women to explain themselves anymore. We’re finally just watching them live.
The Metro Moves On, and So Do We
When I saw that line outside the theatre—“Your own story in cinema”, I didn’t expect it to follow me home. But that’s what these films do. They don’t just give us characters. They give us versions of ourselves: who we were, who we almost became, who we’re still trying to be.
In Life in a… Metro, the women stood still. They swallowed their grief, bent themselves into shapes, and called it strength. In Metro… In Dino, they walk. They choose the uncertain, the unfinished, the true. And somewhere between the girl I was at sixteen and the woman I am now, I realised that these films haven’t just reflected our stories, they’ve helped define what we believe is possible. Anurag Basu’s metro keeps moving. But this time, the women choose the direction.
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