Farhan Akhtar’s upcoming Jee Le Zaara sparks real conversations on women travelling and seeking adventure

As Farhan Akhtar returns to the director’s seat with Jee Le Zaara starring all-female leads Alia Bhatt, Priyanka Chopra, and Katrina Kaif, netizens are curious whether the travel film would reel in the real hassles of road tripping as women, especially in India (the first teaser hints at domestic travel destinations). 

The boys may have had it easy in films like Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara when they traipsed around Spain, letting go of their fears and finding themselves.

But what really happens when girls take the car out and hit the road? 

Mumbai-based Sonia Mariam Thomas kicked off an exhilarating conversation around this when she tweeted, “Jee Le Zaraa needs to have at least one scene where the girls are struggling to find a clean bathroom because what's a road trip without realising roads were not made for women.” 

The tweet unleashed a stream of comments that ranged from women endorsing each other's various road tripping experiences to “ROFL” funny to helpful solutions like using stand-and-pee products for women. 

Bengaluru-based travel enthusiast Barsha Sharma has found solace in travelling for as long as she could remember but lack of washrooms on long highway stretches has been a perennial problem. “I have often made purchases at restaurants just to use a clean bathroom. Sometimes, I hold it if the destination is nearby, or find a petrol pump station and manage to get there somehow. It is even more difficult on days I am having my period,” she tells HerStory, as the ‘women on the road’ discussion rages on.

The lack of hygiene on the road actually led Vikas and Srijana Bagaria on the path to entrepreneurship. 

“In 2013, Vikas and I were on a road trip from Delhi to Ahmedabad but when I came down with a high fever, we abandoned the trip. I was then hospitalised and diagnosed with UTI,” Srijana shares, adding that the doctor said public toilets may have caused it. 

The entrepreneur duo has since made it their mission to ensure road-tripping does not come at the cost of intimate health problems and founded Pee Safe that has helped millions of women globally to prevent UTI and other infections.

It is perhaps a sign of good times that such femtech brands have only grown in number and prominence.

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Facing stereotypes on the road

Rashmi Chadha, Founder of Wovoyage, a women-focused travel tech startup, recalls taking a trip to Goa with a group of friends (all girls) as college students in 2004. 

This was not long after the release of cult classic Dil Chahta Hai (2001) that glorified friendship and road trips, as they should be, but the impact on women’s travel was not far-reaching.

Rashmi and her girl gang returned to be known as “the girls who went on a trip to Goa”. “It was a huge thing at the time as there weren’t many women touring Goa,” she adds. 

During their time in Goa, Rashmi and the girls had a hard time trying to rent scooters. “Because of the stereotype that women are not good drivers, they would not rent us scooters or cars easily and ask many questions on our ability to drive. It took a lot of convincing but in the end, we had a lot of fun,” Rashmi says.

With more women taking to the road over the years, solo tripping has become a huge trend. According to Google Trends, 2017 saw 10 million women around the world searching sites for solo travel.

During one solo trip to Thailand in 2018, Rashmi had booked a private dining area just for herself to bring in her birthday. She says, “It did not seem quite acceptable. People just wondered how and why I would do that. A man doing the same thing would not face this question,” she adds.

For India’s first female motovlogger Vishakha Fulsunge, safety is the biggest concern when zipping through the roads. Her wish is that she didn’t have to worry about being a girl or have that fear in living her passion.

Problems like unavailability of clean restrooms and finding accommodation has become even more problematic during the pandemic.

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“So far, movies have only captured boys taking road trips, where they experience scuba diving and bungee diving. With portrayals of women enjoying themselves and people accepting it, I have huge expectations from Jee Le Zaara and the potential impact it can bring on the society’s mindsets that frowns upon women travelling by themselves,” says Vishakha, who holds the record as the first female rider to cross the Bay of Bengal and ride across Andaman Islands. 

As Anita Desai wrote - wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow - a wanderlust would continue to live their dream, whether or not the journey is captured on the silver screen. The unanimous call seems to be that a little normalisation can go a long way.