Tanu Weds Manu: The Kangana-Swara BFF Relationship We Still Relate To

Tanu Weds Manu sisterhood: It's been ten years since Aanand L Rai's film brought to life two friends, Tanuja and Payal, who were unlike anything Bollywood had ever seen as far as female duos were concerned. In their brazen laughter and sharp mouths, we could see ourselves and our girlfriends and the easy candour of sisterhoods.

A lot has changed since Tanu Weds Manu released in 2011, including, one can safely argue, the dynamics between Swara Bhasker and Kangana Ranaut, the real-life duo behind Payal-Tanu. Their reel life chemistry cemented a decade ago, has, however, sustained the split in ideology and perspective of these two women.

The Tanu Weds Manu sisterhood still holds?

One of the first impressions the friendship between Bhasker's Payal and Ranaut's Tanu had on perhaps most viewers was the understated ease with which things flowed between them. The conversation, always with a caustic hint that is only found in the best of partnerships, was always easygoing, never self-conscious. Much like the raw energy with which real women talk to their girlfriends.

The sunshine-and-daisies trope, otherwise, has been a popular one in Bollywood to exhibit exchanges between friends that is exaggerated to a point of disbelief, even caricature. Read: Rani and Kareena in Mujhse Dosti Karoge! or Deepika and Diana in Cocktail. 

In the representation of such girlfriend duos, there has always been a motivation inherently driving their track forward. These friendships are never just... there. And isn't that what the best sisterhoods are? Just there when you need them without an overburdening pressure to keep addressing them. There when you look, as also when you don't.

What The Tanu Weds Manu Sisterhood Brings To The Table

This is not to say our films would have been entirely alien to the concept of regular girl best friends if not for the Tanu Weds Manu sisterhood portrayal. There have been mature friendships of a different kind between women in films like Dor or Pink or Axone, which carried profundity that exceeds far beyond the Payal-Tanu duo.

Even the weight of Rani and Vijay's friendship in Queen had an unexplainably immense weight. (Also, Ranaut seems to have done her fair share of films on female friendships that are bearable to watch.)

But what makes the Tanu Weds Manu &t=696s">sisterhood stand out then is perhaps the fresh spunk of youth their characters brought on. Tanu and Payal are whole without each other and yet, in their back-and-forths overrun with friendly jibes, scathing honesty, roaring rebukes and unparalleled affection, a sisterhood shone through that could never have been complete without either.

Views expressed are the author's own.