Shabana Azmi recalls 20-year-old crew member didn’t recognise her, asked her, ‘Are you Shibani Dandekar?’

Dabba Cartel is a crime thriller show directed by Hitesh Bhatia, and created by Shibani Dandekar and Gaurav Kapoor among others. The Netflix India show marks Shibani’s debut as a writer. She’s Farhan’s wife and the daughter-in-law of veteran screenwriter and lyricist Javed Akhtar, who’s married to Shabana Azmi. Shabana, impressed by the number of girls and young women employed on a film set across departments today, also described in the episode of Khane Mein Kya Hai how Javed joked about the absence of ‘dumb blondes’ on film sets these days.

“He said, ‘Yar, I’m fed up with all these people who are no longer girls. Itne efficient hain, aa rahe hain with files, crew bhi sari ladkiyon ki (They’re so efficient, they come in with their files, the entire crew is full of women). There are no longer any dumb blondes, fluttering their eyelashes, and saying, ‘I don’t know anything.” I said, ‘Joote khaoge (you’ll be smashed with shoes).’ But I know he was just trying to rile me up,” said Shabana, laughing.

Javed’s views on feminism and the modern woman, however, are quite contrary to his statement on ‘blonde women.’ He’s often spoken about how filmmakers are struggling to define the modern young woman in Hindi cinema today, as we’ve come a long way since the Main Chup Rahungi days, the 1962 film starring Meena Kumari. Javed has championed his daughter Zoya Akhtar as one of the few filmmakers who accurately portray the modern Indian woman, whether it’s Katrina Kaif’s Laila in Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011), Priyanka Chopra’s Ayesha in Dil Dhadakne Do (2015) or Safeena (Alia Bhatt) in Gully Boy (2019).

Javed has even criticised former frequent collaborator, late filmmaker Yash Chopra’s 2012 swan song Jab Tak Hai Jaan for how it misrepresented Anushka Sharma’s ‘feminist’ character. Her goal to sleep with a man from every nationality before getting married didn’t sit well with the veteran screenwriter. He also slammed the audience for encouraging Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s 2023 blockbuster family crime drama Animal for showing a scene in which Ranbir Kapoor’s alpha-male protagonist asks his love interest (played by Triptii Dimri) to lick his shoes in order to prove her love and loyalty. Javed maintained that he hasn’t seen the film, but that scene indicates the audience’s misogynistic mindsets.