Bombay Begums
ボンベイ・ベイガム －私たちのサバイバル－
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
A bank CEO in menopause, a sex worker, a young employee and a sexual assault complaint; India's child-rights body demanded it be pulled.
Five women in present-day Mumbai, their stories braided through one private bank over six episodes, narrated by the youngest of them.
Rani Singh Irani has just become chief executive of the Royal Bank of Bombay. She has hot flushes in meetings, which her deputy guesses are the menopause and Rani waves away; board members are circling, and at home her husband Naushad's teenage daughter, Shai, keeps her at a distance. Rani's son Zuvi, driving home from a sex worker, Lily, injures a boy who turns out to be Lily's son. Lily turns the accident into leverage and Rani pays. But Lily wants more than money: respect, a good school for her son, and a small factory funded by the bank's new welfare scheme, which is handed to Ayesha Agarwal, a young employee from Indore.
Rani's deputy, Fatima Warsi, loses the baby she is carrying, agrees to try again through a surrogate to please her husband, Arijai, and begins an affair. Rani begins one too, with Mahesh, a senior banker at another bank, and a video of them becomes a scandal. Ayesha, sleeping with her colleague Ron and falling for a singer, Chitra, is sexually assaulted by a senior executive, Deepak Sanghvi, when he gives her a lift home. At first she calls it consensual; then she files a complaint. The women above her press her to drop it, Deepak's wife calls it a crush, and Shai, heartbroken over a boy, collapses after taking drugs at a party.
In the final episode the women close ranks. Fatima finds another woman Deepak assaulted and apologises to Ayesha. Rani, who tells Shai that her own boss abused her early in her career, reports Deepak to the police, and he is arrested. At the opening of Lily's factory Rani tells the press that she too was sexually assaulted and asks women to raise their voices together. Fatima confesses her affair and Arijai leaves. Ayesha tells Ron she likes women and finds a flat of her own. Rani and Naushad reconcile. Then Deepak tells the police about Zuvi's accident and Rani's payments to Lily, and the season ends as the police arrive at Rani's door.
Starring
Pooja Bhattas Rani Singh Irani
The new chief executive of a Mumbai bank, guarding her position by any means while her marriage and her stepdaughter drift away.
Rani Singh Irani’s story
With the board circling, Rani hides the hot flushes that drive her out of meetings, makes Fatima her deputy and pays off Lily when her son, Zuvi, injures Lily's boy. She begins an affair with Mahesh, a banker at another bank; when a video of them goes viral and the board wants her out, she threatens to take the bank down with her. She presses Ayesha to keep her complaint quiet. Then, after Shai lands in hospital, she tells her stepdaughter that her own boss abused her when she was starting out, and that she kept silent to get ahead. She reports Deepak to the police, tells the press that she too was sexually assaulted, and makes up with Naushad, just as the police, told about Zuvi by Deepak, arrive at her door.
Shahana Goswamias Fatima Warsi
Rani's ambitious deputy, whose marriage gives way under a miscarriage, a surrogacy plan and an affair.
Fatima Warsi’s story
Fatima is heavily pregnant, and her husband, Arijai, expects her to stay home once the baby comes, when Rani makes her deputy; she accepts without telling him. She loses the baby. Under pressure she contradicts Rani in front of clients, and Rani threatens to fire her unless a deal goes through. She and Arijai agree to try again through a surrogate, but her heart is not in it, and she begins an affair with a businessman. When Ayesha accuses Deepak, Fatima doubts her story and urges her to drop it, until Deepak's wife shrugs that men will be men and another woman tells Fatima he did the same to her. She apologises to Ayesha and helps bring him down. Then she tells Arijai about the affair: it happened more than once, and she felt hollow inside. He leaves.
Amruta Subhashas Lakshmi 'Lily' Gondhali
A sex worker and former bar dancer raising her son alone, who turns a car accident into a way towards respectability.
Lakshmi 'Lily' Gondhali’s story
Lily makes Rani pay for Zuvi's accident, then asks for more than money: a good school for her son and a factory of her own through the bank's welfare scheme. She tells her fellow sex workers she is quitting for respect, and they laugh. Her son gets his school place. Then someone leaves a warning on her wall, the municipal corporation blocks the factory, and her son is teased out of school. From a taxi she sees Deepak sexually assault Ayesha in his car; she tells the others what she saw, and urges Ayesha to fight back, not to be a slave. When a lover asks her to come to Dubai, where she could be Laxmi instead of Lily, she asks Rani for money one last time. In the end she chooses the factory, and it opens with Ayesha's help.
Plabita Borthakuras Ayesha Agarwal
A young banker from Indore, discovering her attraction to women, who reports a senior executive for sexual assault.
Ayesha Agarwal’s story
Fired by Fatima and thrown out of her flat, Ayesha gets a second chance from Rani: the bank's welfare project, and Lily's factory with it. She drifts between her colleague Ron and Chitra, a jazz singer, and asks Deepak for a promotion he laughs off. One night, driving her home, he sexually assaults her in the car. At first she calls it a consensual kiss; he arranges a transfer for her; she writes about it anonymously online. A reply from someone who knows about Deepak tells her she is not alone, and she turns down the transfer and files a complaint. Fatima doubts her, Rani presses her to keep quiet, Deepak's wife calls it a crush. She will not withdraw. After his arrest she tells Ron she likes women too, and moves into a place of her own.
Aadhya Anandas Shai Irani
Rani's teenage stepdaughter and the series' narrator, lonely and awkward, whose first heartbreak ends in hospital.
Why it matters
Bombay Begums sets five women on different rungs of one city's ladder and shows how much of their strength goes into surviving rules men wrote, and how often they enforce those rules on one another. Its central thread is a junior employee's sexual assault complaint and the instinct of the women at the top to protect the bank, the man and themselves, until one of them admits that she once stayed silent too. Around it the series makes room for a chief executive's body in midlife, a bisexual woman's desire, a sex worker's hunger for respect, and a wife who finds that motherhood is not what she wants. In the month of its release India's child-rights commission asked Netflix to stop streaming it, citing its depiction of minors' drug use and sexuality. The question it leaves is the one each woman at the top must face: what she had to stop seeing to get there.