Margarita with a Straw
マルガリータで乾杯を！
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
A Delhi student with cerebral palsy goes to New York and discovers she wants women and men both.
Laila Kapoor, a student at Delhi University who has cerebral palsy, writes lyrics for a campus band called Tribe and has a crush on its lead singer. She swears, plays chess, fights with her mother, whom she calls Aai, and wants love and sex like anyone her age. Her friend Dhruv, who also uses a wheelchair, is in love with her; the singer turns her down, and she is heartbroken. When the band wins a contest and a judge credits the win to the lyrics of a 'disabled' girl, Laila answers with a raised middle finger.
A scholarship takes her to New York University for a semester, and her mother, Shubhangini, goes with her to Greenwich Village. Her creative-writing class assigns a British classmate, Jared, to help her, and she is drawn to him. She also meets Khanum, a blind activist of Pakistani-Bangladeshi descent, fiercely independent, and falls in love with her. The two look after each other, and Laila moves in with her. Still unsure what she is, she sleeps with Jared once, regrets it at once, and says nothing to Khanum.
For the summer the family invites Khanum to Delhi. Laila comes out to her mother while helping her bathe, and Aai is confused and angry. Laila confesses the night with Jared to Khanum, who feels betrayed, ends the relationship and flies back to New York. Then Shubhangini's colon cancer, treated before, returns in an advanced form. Laila looks after her in hospital, the two find their way back to each other, and her mother dies. At the funeral Laila tells how much she loved her, the only person who ever understood her. The film ends with Laila out on a date with herself, drinking a margarita through a straw.
Starring
Kalki Koechlinas Laila Kapoor
A Delhi University student with cerebral palsy who writes lyrics, wants love like anyone else, and finds in New York that she is bisexual.
Laila Kapoor’s story
Laila falls for her band's lead singer, is turned down, and answers a judge who credits the band's win to a 'disabled' girl with a raised middle finger. A scholarship takes her to New York University with her mother. There she is drawn to Jared, the classmate assigned to help her, and falls in love with Khanum, a blind activist she meets at a protest; she moves in with Khanum, then sleeps with Jared once and regrets it. In Delhi for the summer, she tells her mother about Khanum while helping her bathe, and confesses the night with Jared to Khanum, who leaves her. When her mother's cancer returns, Laila nurses her in hospital and they are reconciled before she dies. Afterwards Laila cooks her own breakfast, and takes herself on a date: a margarita, with a straw.
Revathias Shubhangini Kapoor
Laila's devoted mother, Aai, who goes with her to New York and struggles to accept the daughter she comes to know.
Shubhangini Kapoor’s story
Shubhangini, Aai to her daughter, bathes Laila, sings with her and fights with her. When the scholarship comes she takes Laila to New York, over her husband's doubts, to find her a place and settle her in. Knowing nothing of the relationship, she is the one who invites Khanum to spend the summer with the family in Delhi. There, unwell, she lets Laila help her bathe, the way she once bathed Laila, and hears her daughter say that she is bisexual and loves Khanum. She is confused and angry, but does not break down in front of Laila; she crumples later, before a mirror. Her colon cancer, treated once, has come back in an advanced form. In hospital, nursed by Laila, she makes her peace with her daughter before she dies.
Sayani Guptaas Khanum
A blind activist of Pakistani-Bangladeshi descent in New York, fiercely independent, who becomes Laila's lover.
William Moseleyas Jared
A British classmate assigned to help Laila in her writing class, who sleeps with her once.
Why it matters
Margarita with a Straw gives one young woman two things Indian cinema had rarely allowed on screen together: a disabled body, and desire that does not ask permission. Laila wants sex and says so, falls for a man and then a woman, and behaves badly in love, and the film never offers her up for pity. Shonali Bose based her on her cousin, the disability-rights activist Malini Chib, and wrote in her own experience as a bisexual woman. Kalki Koechlin's performance won a jury award at India's National Film Awards; the film opened in India in April 2015 and in Japanese cinemas that October. Its warmest thread runs between Laila and her mother, who cannot accept what her daughter tells her and cannot stop loving her either. The question it leaves is simple and large: who gets to be treated as a sexual adult?