Konkona Sen Sharma’s Page 3 clocks
Konkona Sen Sharma’s Page 3 clocks 
20 years .
“Page 3” clocks 20 years of Konkona Sen Sharma in Bollywood: Of cinema, subversion, and beyond.
As Page 3, Konkona Sen Sharma’s debut Hindi film clocks 20 years, a look at how the actor-director extraordinaire has been championing strong-headed individualism and feminine freedoms through her creative choices both in front of and behind the camera, one project at a time.
There’s no such thing as a bad Konkona Sen Sharma performance.
Konkona, along with actors such as Tabu, Shefali Shah, and Tillotama Shome, has been at the forefront of a tectonic change, fronting stories and characters that show women in all their layered, indecipherable complexity, creating a space that spins the popular skin-deep posturing on its head to show the storm that lies underneath.
Right from her Hindi film debut in Madhur Bhandarkar’s Page 3 Konkona has always played author-backed parts, strong women who aren’t afraid to speak their mind, occupy space, and bring their own folding chair if they don’t find a seat at the table. But as she has grown older, the ambition and idealism of her early-career characters, be it Aisha (Wake Up Sid), Sona (Luck By Chance), Shruti (Life in a Metro), or Shubhavari (Laaga Chunari Mein Daag) have evolved into a delicious wickedness.
If the rebellion of her 20s and early 30s was championing strong-headed individualism and feminine freedoms through her roles, the sole mission of Konkona’s late 30s and 40s seems to be shattering the idea and the image of female propriety in Hindi cinema.
Notably Konkona has featured in the last 10 years—Talvar Akira Lipstick Under My Burkha Dolly Kitty Aur Woh Chamakte Sitare Geeli Pucchi (2021),
Kuttey, Mumbai Diaries and Killer Soup. Each outing more audacious than the last, each testing your idea of womanhood, each forcing you to confront your prejudices.
In Neeraj Ghaywan’s incisive Geeli Pucchi, she plays Bharti Mandal, a homosexual Dalit woman who, ignored and battered, rejects her place in the world and maneuvers her way to dignity. In Alankrita Shrivastava’s Dolly Kitty Aur Woh Chamakte Sitare, Konkona is the eponymous Dolly, a woman stuck in a love-less marriage who embarks upon an extra-marital relationship only to find out that her not being able to experience sexual pleasure with her husband is not her fault.
In Aasmaan Bhardwaj’s Kuttey, she is a Naxal who is incarcerated and gang-raped in the film’s opening scene. In Abhishek Chaubey’s Netflix series Killer Soup, she is Swati Shetty, an outsider who plots, kills, cheats and swindles, all for acceptance and respect, but never finds either, no matter how desperate her attempts.
Susurrating at the seams and deeply discontent with the lack of diversity in the roles she was being offered, Konkona decided to take matters in her own hands. She turned director with the heartbreakingly poignant A Death in the Gunj. Featuring Vikrant Massey at the centre of a family vacation at an eerie hill town, it’s the story of an adolescent boy struggling with melancholia, trying to find himself, and make sense of life.
Her next directorial project was the Netflix anthology short film, The Mirror Featuring Tillotama Shome and Amruta Subhash, it’s almost obscene in the way it looks you in the eye and dares you to look away. Cutting, unapologetic, it’s Konkona Sen Sharma at her blistering best—asking uncomfortable questions and providing no answers.
Despite 20 years of incredible, enviable work behind her in Hindi films alone, it feels as if Konkona has only just begun. If her first act is this explosive, one can only wait in feverish anticipation at everything that lies ahead.
News Edit KV Raman.
