Baapya

Director Sameer Tewari’s Baapya is about the acceptance of an individual who undergoes a sex change surgery. The story revolves around Anil Borkar aka Anya (Girish Kulkarni), who is a fisherman residing in a village in the Konkan region. It has been 10 years since his divorce from Shailaja (Rajshri Deshpande), who now stays in Mumbai. Anya currently lives with his second wife Vishakha (Devika Daftardar), his son Sanjay aka Sanju (Aaryan Menghji) from his first marriage and two little daughters from his second. Vishakha loves Sanju as her own son. There comes a situation where Anya and Shailaja need to sign a few papers together regarding a property they co-owned before their divorce. For this, Shailaja needs to visit the village registrar office. When Shailaja arrives at the office on the given day, Anya, Sanju and others get the shock of their lives when they realize that she has undergone a sex change surgery and has now become Dr. Shailesh.

Baapya opens normally enough. A small Konkani village. A boisterous fisherman (Girish Kulkarni as Anya) is in debt. His teenage son (Aaryan Menghji as Sanju) is infatuated with a classmate. Anya’s lawyer proposes a land deal to fix the crisis. The catch: he needs the signature of his ex-wife, Shailaja (Rajshri Deshpande), who left the family years ago. His second wife and kids could do with the money. Both father and son do not look forward to seeing the woman who ‘deserted’ them, but they must. And at the half-hour mark of Baapya, they do. Except they don’t. Shailaja returns as a doctor, but also as a man. A gender reassignment surgery means that Shailaja is now Shailesh (Rajshri Deshpande), a trans man who was once a reluctant wife and mother. What follows is a bittersweet week in a community that grapples with the ‘stigma’ of this transition, even as Anya and his son resist their new reality on the conveyor belt to acceptance.