REPRESENTING CHILDHOOD TRAUMA AND MEMORY IN CONTEMPORARY BOLLYWOOD: A STUDY OF QALA, CHHAPAAK, AND THE SKY IS PINK
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs171-2202622908Keywords:
memory and trauma, gender and cinema, mental health, emotional resilience, psychological traumaAbstract
This paper examines the representation of childhood and teenage trauma in three Bollywood films: Qala (2022), Chhapaak (2020), and The Sky Is Pink (2019). These films center on young female protagonists whose lives are shattered by psychological, physical, or family trauma, providing rich insights into how early emotional trauma is rendered through cinematic form. The research engages with Caruth’s trauma theory and Hirsch’s postmemory to examine the narrative and aesthetic strategies used in representing trauma. Caruth’s theories of belatedness and fragmentation are used to examine the fractured timelines and non-linear memories that organize such films, while Hirsch’s postmemory framework serves to situate inherited and familial trauma as felt by subsequent generations. Through close qualitative analysis, this paper closely analyzes narrative structure, cinematography, characterization, and repeated motifs like silence, hallucinations, and inner monologue to trace how trauma is represented cinematically. Through this methodology, the research indicates the specific ways in which each film positions trauma, psychological repression in Qala, embodied resistance in Chhapaak, and inherited affective burden in The Sky is Pink. Finally, the paper contends that current Bollywood cinema increasingly explores trauma as a developing, intrinsic process rather than a one-time event, particularly in youth.
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