Taali Series Review: An honest attempt gets derailed midway

Pretty early on in Jio Cinema’s series Taali, the protagonist, whose character is modeled after transgender activist Shreegauri Sawant, is asked by her fellow companion what she will do if she bags the Miss Universe pageant. To this, Sushmita Sen, who plays the lead, coyly replies, “Surgery”. This particular scene evokes a mixed bag of irony and amusement given how Sushmita's first big moment under the sun was the glamorous pageant. I couldn't stop thinking about how one of the most celebrated cis-het Indian women, especially for her looks, is assuming the role of a trans woman. The series only kept reiterating my battle between enjoying and lamenting Taali.

Taali strives to bring the importance of three rudimentary elements of a human’s life -- identity, survival and equality. Passing through these stages, is Gauri (nee Ganesh). In her first battle for identity, Taali carefully and beautifully evades the route of torture porn, as a teenage Ganesh is shown to be grappling between identifying and expressing his gender identity, and coming out to his stereotypical Indian family. There is no belting; confinements within locked rooms, that Ganesh’s family adopts to “rectify” their son. Instead, the passive aggression of the father is shown by taking the teen to a sex counselor during the transition period. What can you say about a parent who goes lengths not to hurt their child, albeit only physically, while inevitably struggling to accept the child’s rudimentary life choices, causing the pain of unacceptance? Taali does a wonderful job in showing the patriarchal mindset of Indian households of being unable to allow their children to exercise their individual rights as people.

Streaming on: Jio Cinema 

Cast: Sushmita Sen, Ankur Bhatia, Krutika Deo, Suvrat Joshi, Vikram Bham, and others

Director: Ravi Jadhav

But that’s about it. Even as Taali follows Ganesh subsequently leaving his house and reaching the streets of Mumbai and finding a home of like-minded people, Taali goes on to elaborate the second stage, survival. It seems like a hard pill to swallow to see Sushmita as a young adult, while working with an NGO and undergoing the sex change operation. Gauri soon becomes a matriarch of sorts for her community as she soon becomes a nationwide renowned activist, thus fighting for the final element...equality.

Taali, which once cleanly details Ganesh’s struggle of self discovery and acceptance, draws no colour whatsoever while showing the progression of Gauri’s power. We see transwomen around her receive and face the ostracisation, but it looks to be too good to be true when we gloss over a lot of important portions of Gauri's long -drawn fight. But we do see her become an established messiah for her community, attending US conferences, and asking the media to do a better research of her.

While Sushmita puts up an honest show by stepping into the shoes of Gauri, I wished the writers had widened the dimensions of the character. For example, Gauri’s aspiration and longing to be a mother is wonderfully showcased, and it becomes even more profound when we know of the connection to Sushmita's personal life. But do we really get to see Gauri go through the actual rut and toil of being an outcast as she takes more young ones under her wings? But Sushnita carries the series on her shoulder, and embodies the physicality of the character.

Taali, also being a biographical series, had immense scope to cherry pick chapters from the life of the activist to talk about the plethora of pain that transwomen face. While the series does revolve about the fight for rights at the Supreme Court , there are moments where Taali seems to forget the cause it wants to stand for. As much as it takes after the mockery of clapping hands of transwomen to that of a gesture of pride, it derails in making it an engaging drama of sorts.

Should there be a second season, I wish the makers understand their lesson better to keep up with the treatment of the subject on track, while picking moments and chapters from the community’s lives that can communicate their struggle more clearly. We have miles to go before becoming transphobia-free, but we do need to start somewhere, and honestly... Taali is a decent enough first step.