“Maja Ma” is a perfect “desi social comedy-drama.” It starts with the most depressing middle act and ends on a happy note, but the makers make a lot of messes along the way. To be honest, it’s neither a good nor a bad movie. Anand Tiwari and Sumit Batheja worked hard to include a lot of social problems into a two-hour film, which might be the only issue with the film. See, what makes Ayushman Khurrana different is that each of his movies deals with a single issue. Anand Tiwari tried to put the LGBTQA+ issues at the center of the story, but he mixed them up with cancer and hyposexuality. So, the script of the movie was a mess, and there wasn’t much the actors could do to make it better. But Madhuri Dixit, Sheeba Chaddha, and Simone Singh gave a performance that will not be forgotten easily.
Spoilers Ahead
What Happens In The ‘Maja Ma’ Film?
Tejas Patel (Ritwik Bhoumik) lives and works in the United States who eventually falls in love with a girl named Esha Hansraj (Barkha Singh). Esha is Bob (Rajit Kapoor) and Pam (Sheeba Chaddha) Hansraj’s only daughter. Bob Hansraj is a well-known politician in the United States, and he is running for Mayor of Houston. The Hansraj family has a lot of money, so when Tejas sees them for the first time, he gets very tense. He calls his mom Pallavi Patel (Madhuri Dixit), and she wishes him to do well. When Tejas goes to meet Bob, he asks him to take a lie detector test so he can figure out if Tejas is courting Esha for the greed of money or for some other reason. Bob is very careful about his public image, so he does things like this to protect his family name. Tejas does well on the test, so Bob wishes to talk to Tejas’s parents.
Things start to take a wrong turn when Esha’s parents show up to meet Tejas’s family. Pallavi’s husband Manohar Patel (Gajraj Rao), is a very normal man who doesn’t understand much about anything. He is the president of the society they live in, and a local thug named “Viral” irritates him often. Viral also wants to run the society as a president, so you can see what’s at stake here. Anyway, we meet Pallavi’s daughter, Tara Patel (Srishti Shrivastava), who is an active social worker and pursuing her Ph.D. in Sexual and Gender Studies. She works hard to help the LGBTQA+ movement. Then we see a little girl, the granddaughter of their neighbor Janak, who is always taking videos all over the neighborhood. She doesn’t care about the privacy of anyone. Pallavi and Tara get into a fight one night, and Pallavi confesses that she is a lesbian. The little girl records that exact moment.
There is a festival in a society where everyone does something on their own. Every year, that little girl plays all the videos she has recorded on her phone. Viral and his gang edit the videos, put them in order, and then play them for her. This year, Viral finds a video of Pallavi claiming that she is a lesbian; he jumps at the chance, hoping that this will help him get elected as the president of the society. He plays the video in front of the crowd, where Esha’s parents are also present. When everyone sees the video, Pallavi’s life goes from bad to worse. The wedding is called off by Esha’s parents, and even Pallavi’s family starts to break up. At the end of the movie, Pallavi takes a lie detector test and, to everyone’s surprise, passes, showing that she is not a lesbian. This finally makes things right, and Pallavi’s family accepts her as she is. Did the lie detector not work? Well, let’s find out.
‘Maja Ma’ Ending Explained: How Did Pallavi Pass The Lie Detector Test?
In reality, Pallavi was a lesbian. She has loved Kanchan Adhia (Simone Singh) very much ever since she was a child. But back then, no one could even think of something like that. So, Kanchan was very hurt when Manohar married Pallavi. Later, Kanchan thought that Pallavi never liked her, so she married Manohar’s cousin Moolchand Adhia (Ninad Kamat). Now that they had been together for 30 years, Kanchan found out about the video in which Pallavi said she was a lesbian. Kanchan then talked to Pallavi, and Pallavi said that she had to give up her own happiness in the past to make everyone else happy. When Pam Hansraj kept asking Pallavi uncomfortable questions, Kanchan stepped in. She told Pam that Bob kept flirting with Pallavi and Kanchan in front of her, but Pam had failed to stop him from doing so. Pam realized that Esha had found a better husband in Tejas, who would really love her. Thanks to Kanchan, This intrigued some sentiments inside her to do the right thing.
Pallavi went, to tell the truth on the day of the lie detector test. She started giving confident answers to random questions. Soon, Bob Hansraj asked him the most important question. “Are you a lesbian?” Pallavi questioned him about what he meant when he used the word lesbian. Bob asked her if she had had sex with a woman or had bad contact with a woman. Pallavi said no. The lie detector said that her answers were true. Now, Bob was about to ask her if she had ever kissed a woman, but Pam stopped him. Pam was having a hard time seeing Pallavi uncomfortable. Pam asked Bob, “If you don’t make love to me anymore, does that mean you’re gay?” She fought back hard, so Bob had to stop the test.
Now, here’s the thing: Bob asked the right question at the end, but before Pallavi could answer, Pam stopped the test. When they were young, Pallavi and Kanchan kissed each other. But for sure, they had never slept together or touched each other inappropriately. Pallavi and Kanchan really loved each other, which is one reason why Pallavi technically never lied to any of Bob’s questions. She was honest and proud of her answers, which helped her pass the test.
Final Thoughts
“Maja Ma” had a lot of things that could have been left out, like the summary I just gave. Basically, neither Kanchan’s leukemia nor Manohar’s hyposexuality had anything to do with the overall conflict. Even the fact that Tara is an obsessed social worker could be shown in a more subtle way. But even so, it had problems, just like every other Indian drama, but that doesn’t change the fact that Madhuri Dixit and Sheeba Chaddha both did a great job, so you won’t be disappointed if you just watch it once.
“Maja Ma,” a social drama comedy film directed by Anand Tiwari, is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
