Assembling Conjugality: Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd. and the Recasting of Bollywoodised Marital Conjugation in Reema Kagti’s Precarious Narratives

• Published in: BioScope South Asian screen studies Vol. 15; no. 2; pp. 164 - 191
• Main Author: Das, Sragdharamalini
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New Delhi, India SAGE Publications 01.12.2024
• Subjects: New Bollywood; Bollywood couple formation; conjugality; assemblage; multicouple form; Reema Kagti; conjugation; honeymoon
• ISSN: 0974-9276; 0976-352X
• DOI: 10.1177/09749276241305017

While conjugation or couple formation in Bollywood films has received consistent scholarly attention, its functioning under marriage has remained relatively overlooked. When discussed, the focus has been on discerning the sociological relevance of conjugal representations rather than its phenomenological significance. Foregrounding conjugality as the experience of being married, this article attempts to fill this lacuna by discussing Reema Kagti’s multicouple film Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd. It first situates Honeymoon as a precursor to Kagti’s later explorations of marital dynamics in works such as Talaash (2012) and Dahaad (2023), establishing a thematic continuity in her oeuvre. This article then recognises honeymoon as a period of crisis that immediately reveals many contingencies that structure marriage. Accordingly, this article argues that Honeymoon forwards conjugality as a circulating arrangement of couples, themselves undergoing intrapersonal and interpersonal changes and informing the multiplicity ingrained in conjugality, employing a multivalent use of Bollywood tropes. Using multidisciplinary theories, this article outlines how the institution of marriage, the feelings and actions unfolding within it, and its participants remain in perpetual motion to affirm the unity of conjugality. In the course of this discussion, Honeymoon emerges as an instance of New Bollywood Cinema that successfully conveys the multiplicity-embedded experience of conjugality even as it remains bound to the post-globalisation formal reorientation of Bollywood cinema.