Alia Bhatt's Safeena from Gully Boy Decoded: Ambitious but blinded by her impulsive actions

Ranveer Singh and Alia Bhatt's Gully Boy has been one of the finest films of 2019 and well, it was good enough to make it to the Oscars that year as well. While the movie narrates the story of a rapper, Murad (Ranveer Singh), who lives in the slums and finds his way to the top, his girlfriend Safeena (Alia Bhatt) holds an equally significant role even though not making big changes, but representing so much about people, we might not know a lot about. 

With so much that the movie does, it brings various shades of women to the fore and everything that Safeena stands for seems to stand out. With so much time at hand not a lot to do, we thought we will take this time to decode a character that is as layered as hers while understanding why it is the way it is. For one, there are too many firsts about this film, and so, we decided to start our new series with it too. Among other things, the Zoya Akhtar film seems to have absorbed so much from this part of the overcrowded world that Safeena lives in.

Safeena is a lot of things, but most of all, she is AMBITIOUS. She has her eyes set on a dream that she wishes to achieve, and for that, she strives just hard enough. This ambition corresponds to a sense of FREEDOM she just can't wait to embrace, and this freedom has multiple associations. For example, irrespective of who she is or how much she loves Murad, she knows that he wants her for who she is, and that, is liberating just enough.

While she does long for all those things and has her set goals to achieve, she is IMPULSIVE, rather, she is the ANGRY YOUNG WOMAN that Bollywood seldom shows as the heroine. What many feel is her violent streak because is actually a result of not thinking things through, not just when she is looking to get her anger out, but also when she is giving forgiveness. She is POSSESSIVE and TERRITORIAL, yes, but one cannot stereotype her by putting her into a box of what a love story looks like.

Safeena EXPRESSES openly and even if it means stealing a kiss from Murad, she wants it when she wants it and it is these habits that often cause us CONFUSION about who she really is. On one hand, she is this staunch woman who knows what she wants and how to get there, but on the other, she also has a soft spot when it comes to Murad, probably much like every girl, and yet, nothing like every girl.

Much like a lot of people will have it, there is LOVE in Safeena's heart but that is not all there is. While she would go to extents to ensure that Murad is hers, she is not obsessive and it is only one of the colours of her rainbow, incomplete, but not the entire rainbow. Safeena's impulsiveness is balanced out by the PRACTICALITY of things and how she deals with what comes after that moment of weakness for Murad. 

Even when I say that Safeena is not someone you can put in a box and tick off the bills you think she fits, but she is one that freely flows between multiple things, and probably that is where her impulsiveness stems from. One might call her an INSECURE girlfriend and someone that is not very LIKEABLE at all times, but we cannot deny how this is the closest to what reality feels like when talking EMOTIONS. 

Safeena is flawed not just because of her AGGRESSIVE behaviour or the VIOLENT streak that there is, but she is also flawed because it is a depiction that can and must be the reality, because there is this woman inside of all of us, even though we don't quite acknowledge it by doing things, but at the back of our minds, there is a bit of Safeena that is waiting to roar out, and once she does, there can be no stopping her.

While Safeena might be so many things and not be an ideal depiction of what we see, voicing her existence was essential, and now that it is done, one can get over the image of the quintessential woman, she who fears and gives up too soon.