Mohar Basu (MID-DAY; October 3, 2019)

“I hated Womaniya as the title,” states director Tushar Hiranandani, taking us by surprise. After all, only months ago, filmmaker Anurag Kashyap was at loggerheads with producer Pritish Nandy, who held the right to the name. Kashyap, producer of the film based on the lives of Chandro and Prakashi Tomar — the country’s oldest women sharpshooters, felt that the spirit of the biopic would be best captured by the title, Womaniya.

A war of words later, Kashyap decided to rechristen the Taapsee Pannu and Bhumi Pednekar starrer as Saand Ki Aankh. “Anurag and Taapsee were keen on Womaniya. I always wanted to call it Saand Ki Aankh. When I told Anurag of the new title, he looked at me in disbelief. But when he read it [the script], he realised it was the best name the film could have got,” explains the first- time director.

In an interesting turn of events, the makers have included a song titled Womaniya. Hiranandani reasons that the song — that starts with Pannu and Pednekar in their youth — is instrumental to show their ageing process. “Womaniya is the journey of young girls as they reach their prime.”

Producer Nidhi Parmar adds, “When Vishal [Mishra, composer] made us hear Womaniya for the first time, everyone in the room felt that this would be the biggest song of the album.”

Even as he understands Kashyap’s keenness in naming the film after a term coined by him in Gangs Of Wasseypur ( 2012), Hiranandani reiterates that Saand Ki Aankh, or bull’s eye, has a stronger connect with the core subject of “hitting the right spot in life” — a perfect metaphor for a movie whose protagonists find their purpose in their 60s. “My movie is not about feminism alone, it’s about the fighting spirit of human beings. My hook point was that age is not a barrier. Women stood up at that age and inspired young girls to stand on their own feet. My writer Jagdeep [Sidhu] wove it beautifully in the dialogues.”