“I can’t decide whether I’m a good girl wrapped in a bad girl, or if I’m a bad girl wrapped in a good girl. And that’s how I know I’m a woman!” That’s Tara Khanna for you in Made in Heaven on Amazon Prime.
How it all began for Tara Khanna in Made In Heaven
Tara Khanna (played by Sobhita Dhulipala) the good/bad girl’s self-worth came from her mom, who hated her poverty and her dismal surroundings. She told Tara and her sister that you have two things, your youth, and your good looks and make the most of it.
Tara takes this advice seriously. She manipulates, sells her soul and claws her way to be the wife of a rich man. She learns the ways of the rich and their language and feels she has achieved it all.
She hates it when her sister and mother visit her because it opens up a window of her deprived poverty-stricken, sordid past which she wants to erase completely.
Tara and Faiza are contrasts
She is a contrast to her best friend Faiza who is a rich entitled divorcee who thrives on her sadness and wallows in self-pity and does not want to do anything about it, while Tara, on the other hand, starts her own company of wedding planners.
But there is a vulnerability in Tara that shows up when she watches the human drama the good and the bad in all the weddings she plans.
The good and bad side of Tara
Though she is hard as nails, Faiza calls her a diamond, shiny and hard and she has no scruples while conducting her business, there is the other side of the bad girl gone good. She has the mind of a hustler but the heart of a queen.
She stands up for the poor molested mehndi girl for whom money is more important than fighting a case, or when she tells the Dubai princess, who gave in to her temptation, we are women we fuck up sometimes just forget it.
Or when they do a lovely wedding for the peon’s daughter, who could have never afforded it.
Tara is a feisty introspective woman
In all the weddings Tara does in Made In Heaven, she comes across as a feisty introspective woman standing up for others, doing the right thing like telling a bride how her future in-laws are asking for a hefty dowry or arranges for another bride to marry the man of her choice rather than give in to her tyrannical father’s choice of a groom.
The past lingers
She tells the girls of an etiquette class she had attended when she was young and tells them, “never forget your identity” though she realizes she has forgotten hers. And that is the time we see the chink in her armour when she breaks down coming from the class or when she stands alone in old Delhi and enjoys a plate of pani puri and the taste of her old life lingers on.
A life lesson from the sister
The sister whom Tara despised earlier for being so middle class and plain, now she sees her with a different perspective. Because the sister is so happy in her little world, neither craving for more nor envious of anyone. Tara wonders where she went wrong and what truly is the right thing to do. Can the life of an entitled rich wife buy happiness? Or what really is happiness?
Tara takes her decision
I love Tara in Made in Heaven because she gathers herself finally to leave her rich adulterous husband but not before telling him the truth about how she manipulated their marriage. She finally knows now she does not need a rich husband to validate her existence.
Tara Khanna, in the end, is like an angel with broken wings as she finds succour in the arms of her gay business partner and we all know she will rise like Phoenix in whatever she does.
“She made broken look beautiful
and strong look invincible.
She walked with the Universe
on her shoulders and made it
look like a pair of wings.”
― Ariana Dancu
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