Female friendships and bonding is a genre that Hindi cinema has yet to crack. There are a handful of films about female bonding, but most of them have not worked on the big screen. Veere Di Wedding, Aisha, and Cocktail have explored modern female friendships, and all these films have almost rightly described how bonding works. Interestingly, three out of four are backed by Rhea Kapoor, and the woman has been instrumental in coming up with films that would put female-led storytelling at the center. Karan Bolani’s film, Thank You for Coming, falls into the same genre and revolves around a girl in her thirties who has been seeking her knight in shining armor but has been unsuccessful so far.
Spoilers Ahead
Why is Kanika frustrated with her life?
Kanika Kapoor is the only daughter of her single mother, Dr. Bina Kapoor, a gynecologist, who raised her without any filters regarding the female and male bodies. Her mother’s profession exposed Kanika to understanding what a female body constitutes. Kanika is beyond upset since she has hit thirty and is far from being settled down with the right man. There is also the question of several men being unable to please her the way she desires. Kanika has had several boyfriends over the years, but none of them were physically satisfactory, which causes a huge mental block and a sense of paranoia in her.
Kanika’s concern also highlights the fact that a percentage of men in India might be unaware of how the female body reacts to intercourse, which is rather selfish behavior. Years of brainwashing have made them believe that only their pleasure matters. These two matters are her biggest concerns, with no solution in sight. Her friends Tina and Pallavi are horrified at hearing her secret and help seek a permanent solution by finding her a perfect boyfriend. In Kanika’s mind, a person like that does not exist, for she has been disappointed one too many times, and the hope is diminishing.
Why did she choose Jeevan Anand as her life partner?
On the day of Kanika’s birthday party, organized by Pallavi and Tina, they invite Arjun, an old fling of hers, in the hope they can both rekindle their old romance. To everyone’s horror, Arjun shows up with his new girlfriend, Rushi, who happens to be a big fan of Kanika’s food vlogging venture. Arjun, on the other hand, comes across as a misogynistic man who only wants to date younger women. Rushi helps Kanika to calm down and offers a rather simple solution to her problem. Rushi asks her not to take physical pleasure seriously and to go with the flow, as it was never a competition. Rushi also suggests seeking pleasure with someone who loves you, not the other way around.
Kanika has her eureka moment on that advice and pursues Jeevan, whom she had met through an arranged marriage setup. Jeevan is rich, well-settled, and in love with Kanika. She assumed he could be her fail-safe option and settling down with him seems fair instead of taking the dating route. Jeevan is happy to accommodate Kanika in his life, and he is delighted to know Kanika wants him as her life partner.
Kanika fast-tracks this proposal, despite being questioned by her mother and friends about this decision because the man is a simpleton and far away from what Kanika aspired to be with. Kanika’s decision feels like a quick solution to her temporary problem. Their engagement is fixed, and Kanika’s grandmother, Kishori, is the only person who is genuinely happy with this alliance. Kishori, unlike Kanika’s mother, is an old-school person who had never approved of her daughter’s choice of having a child out of wedlock. But since they are a family, Kishori could not abandon her only daughter and helped her raise Kanika.
What happens the night after the engagement?
Kanika seems to be elated on the night of the engagement, and she ends up inviting all her ex-boyfriends, including a middle-aged professor from college. Kanika gets drunk at the thought of settling down with Jeevan and the palatial home he has built for them and wakes up with no memory of the previous night. The scenario is straight away picked up from the Hollywood film Hangover. Kanika claims to have had the best climax of her life, but she cannot seem to remember who she slept with. Pallavi and Tina are horrified at the thought Kanika may have potentially cheated on her fiancé, but they convince her it must have been Jeevan because he took a drunk Kanika back to their room, and seemingly they spent the night together. Kanika learns from Jeevan that she did not spend the night with him, and the man has no reason to doubt his fiancée because he truly loves her.
What are the secrets that are revealed?
Kanika, Pallavi, and Tina retrace her steps back from the night and get in touch with all of her ex-boyfriends in the hope they will be able to fill in the gaps. Rahul, one of Kanika’s exes from the party, invites her over to another party to converse, and the women have every reason to believe it is him.
At the party, Kanika is shocked to see Rahul as a cross-dresser and confesses to having come out to Kanika the previous night. Rahul comes out as Anjali to her and is open about the closeted life she has led so far. She also confessed to having begun cross-dressing while dating Kanika. This seems rude and a hit to her already broken self-esteem. Kanika is happy for Anjali, but she is nowhere close to finding out who the mystery man is. Anjali also reveals that Arjun is probably not as straight as he pretends to be. The memories keep coming back to her when she runs into her school bully, Neha, who attended the engagement party as well. Neha was a witness to someone leaving Kanika’s room, and the man was not who she had expected to have shared a night with. Neha was the kind of person who could ruin Kanika’s life by broadcasting the name of the man she was with just for some amusement.
Who was Kanika Kapoor’s mystery person?
Neha reveals the person Kanika spent the night with was Pallavi’s husband, Karan, who has been her childhood friend as well. Kanika spirals quickly because she has made many mistakes in the past because of her drunken stupor and adventures. Sleeping with her best friend’s husband is crossing the line, and she would not expect Pallavi to ever forgive her. She has clarity on having cheated on Jeevan, which made it easier for her to break up with him and end the engagement. Jeevan knows something is off, but since he loves Kanika, he tries to salvage the relationship by claiming he could be the one she is seeking if only Kanika gives him a chance. Jeevan is highly respectful of Kanika and understands her predicament. He agrees to the breakup because Kanika is sure that she is not the right person for him. For the first time, Kanika questions her worth, and she realizes Jeevan is too good for her. So far, she treated Jeevan as a person who would be lucky to have her, but the memories from the previous night allowed her to see her fiancé in a new light. Jeevan is indeed a nice person, and she could not treat him like trash.
Kanika is contacted by Tina’s daughter, Rabea, a grade-A student who has a bright future academically. The young girl ended up in a scandal after her boyfriend leaked a video of their intimate moments. Rabea was forced to apologize to the assembly for her bad conduct. This activity is a charade aimed at shaming young women from making wrong moral decisions in the future, something which is common in many schools. Kanika went through something similar during her days at the same school, and she is adamant about Rabea not going through a trauma that could affect her adult life. Kanika requests that Rabea remain strong, but Tina vehemently disapproves. Kanika is also confronted by Pallavi after she comes across the hotel CCTV footage of Karan leaving her room. Pallavi has all the right to be livid and cut communications. Tina and Pallavi violently confront Kanika and request that she stay away from their lives.
Kanika and her mother Bina have a heart-to-heart conversation about why she chose to live a life on her terms. Bina reveals Kanika’s father wanted to marry her mother only out of pity. This made her choose to live life on her terms without any regrets. Bina, being a doctor, informs her that the percentage of women who do not feel any pleasure during intercourse is high, and it is high time women rely on themselves.
Dr. Bina is not wrong about the statistics, and it only throws light on how sex education is necessary in a country that has the highest population in the world. Dr. Bina’s moment with her daughter is the most honest and heartfelt because Kanika was trying hard to not remain single all her life and remove the tag of being dirty, a standard term associated with promiscuous women. Kanika finally had a revelation about the night before and headed to her old school to confront Tina, Pallavi, and Rabea.
In a bid to stop them from making a mistake, Kanika takes over the stage and talks about how women are always character assassinated for wanting to do something out of their choice. Good, bad, or ugly, women are judged and shamed into following societal rules. An out-of-place conversation is that she did not sleep with Karan after all. Kanika pleasured herself through self-stimulation, which is why it was best. This revelation, coupled with her mother’s information, made her realize she probably does not need a man in her life after all. Kanika is a self-made woman, and she wouldn’t want to have a man by her side to seek validation. Thank You for Coming ends with Pallavi and Tina reconciling, and the former is willing to believe their words because all of them have remained friends for a long time. Kanika concludes that the happiness she is seeking could be found in herself.
