Writer, filmmaker, and feminist Paromita Vohra has spent decades telling stories about women, work, pleasure, and the politics of everyday life, often through a lens that is curious, disruptive, and deeply humane.
The maker of acclaimed documentaries, she uses witty and reflective language to explore feminism in contemporary India (Unlimited Girls), examines gender and access with a mundane but necessary utility like public toilets (Q2P), and probes the worlds of copyright and creativity (Partners in Crime). She is also a two-time winner of the Ladli Gender and Media Awards for Best campaign video.
Paromita is also known for her pioneering digital project ‘Agents of Ishq’, a joyful, inclusive space that talks about sex, love, and desire in the languages of everyday Indians. As the platform turns ten this year, the anthology of essays, comics, and confessions, titled Love, Sex and India published by Westland will be released at the upcoming Literature Live! The Mumbai LitFest.
Now, after a 14-year hiatus from filmmaking, she returns with Working Girls, a documentary that turns its gaze towards the invisible labour of women, from sex workers in Mumbai, farmers in Maharashtra, domestic workers in the North East, to ASHA workers in Kerala.
The film is part of a project about women's paid and unpaid care work, called The Laws of Social Reproduction, conceptualised by academic Prabha Kotiswaran and builds on its research.
In a free-wheeling chat, after a recent screening of the film in Kochi organsed by the Kerala Federation of Women Lawyers (KFWL), Paromita speaks about filming across India, the meanings of solidarity and friendship, and why the Constitution continues to resonate most deeply with those who live on the margins.
Excerpts:
There are moments in the film where the women talk about democracy, Ambedkar and the Constitution. What were your thoughts?
I saw it everywhere I went. People spoke about the Constitution with such respect and intimacy. Vanita, one of the women in the film, who is a sex worker, had the preamble of the Constitution pinned to her wall.
Working Girls is about invisible labour, but at a deeper level, it’s about how law creates invisibility. The central question of the film is: Why has the law been created in such a way that this kind of work remains unseen and unvalued?
Law, to me, is morality in another guise, and it often serves privilege. It maintains it. Look at the sex work law. It was shaped, in part, by upper-caste women who thought they were “helping” by criminalising sex work. But what they really did was make sex workers more marginalised and vulnerable.
The Constitution, however, is something else. It’s not law, it’s a set of principles, a moral imagination of equality. And that’s how these women see it. They understand that the Constitution represents a spirit — a spirit of justice, solidarity, dignity.
Working Girls also portrays the friendship among women left out of traditional family systems. What is your opinion?
I’ve never had a fixed idea of family. My mother’s side was in films; my maternal grandmother (Ashalata Biswas) was an actress and producer, while my father’s family was regular Punjabi. So I grew up between two worlds — one orderly and one wonderfully messy.
In my parent’s circle, friendship was kinship. People lived together, cared for each other, and became a “muh-bola” family by affection, not blood.
Among the sex workers I filmed, I saw that same tenderness, elderly women cared for by others with a love that was both political and personal. When Bishakha Laskar (a sex worker) says, “Your sorrow and my pain are the same,” it encapsulates that.
How long did it take to make Working Girls and how did the structure evolve?
Just under two years, and it was hard (laughs). Not only physically but also emotionally. I had to let go of control. My earlier films were more planned, but Working Girls began with openness. I told myself — don’t define, go listen, and build from what you find. I did not script it.
The first time you meet anyone in the film, you don’t see them at work. You see them cooking, laughing, praying. Only later do you learn what they do. That way, the audience meets them as people, and not as ‘subjects’.
As a young man noted after the screening at Kochi, the film felt 'intersectional' rather than just claiming to be. That was the intention of the film. Because living intersectionality means inhabiting discomfort, being unsteady, yet alive to difference, not merely aware of it.
Working Girls isn’t just about invisible labour though, but about invisible lives as well. The movie also looks into the lived experiences of sex workers. Could you elaborate?
Yes. The film begins as a conversation about work, about the ways in which women’s labour is seen, unseen, or made invisible. Sex work sits at a peculiar intersection of morality, class, gender, and economics. It’s one of the most honest mirrors of how society thinks about women’s work — dependent on it, wanting it, yet ashamed of it.
The women in the film are not victims or victors; they are workers. They just aren’t recognised as such because our legal and moral frameworks refuse to see their labour as legitimate. When you see older sex workers caring for each other — sharing food, laughter, pain — you realise it’s not just survival. It’s a collective life, an ethics of care built from nothing but mutual struggle and a sense of humanity.
The humour and music in your films are unconventional. How do these elements come together?
Humour isn’t something you bolt on; it’s who you are. It’s about rhythm, timing, and presence. I like irony, not ridicule, and gentle satire that pokes but affectionately. It is called Tanz in Urdu.
People often think seriousness and humour are opposites! Life doesn’t work like that. People make jokes even at funerals, not out of denial, but as a way to cope. So why should art be any different?
Music, too, has been part of my life since childhood; my grandfather (Anil Biswas) was a composer. I use music not to manipulate emotion but to let the audience stand with the people in the film, through a sensory and emotional connection that music architects.
Music should create a universal human connection — not hierarchy. It should let the audience stand beside the people in the film ,not look down on them through false pathos.
For Working Girls, I wanted the music to be large, saturated and contemporary, because the film moves across so many cities, times, and languages.
How was your experience filming with the ASHA workers in Kerala?
It was incredible. I spent three days with them, filming alone. I don’t speak Malayalam and depended on gestures and tone. The women like Rosamma (state vice-president of the Kerala Asha Health Workers Association) and Shantamma were articulate, warm, and full of grace.
Rosamma says in the film that the Constitution is everybody’s — not one party’s. That kind of clarity is stunning.
There was also this hilarious moment. When I arrived, the strike had entered its 27th day, and I was suddenly told, “You’ll give the inaugural speech.” I was surprised, and had never given a speech but I didn't feel entitled to refuse, I spoke briefly about care work, then sang an old activist song, Zinda hai toh zindagi ki jeet mein yakeen kar. Everyone joined in. Later I realised they wanted me to speak because I was the only outsider, it mattered that someone had come all the way just to stand with them.
That’s the thing about workers’ movements: they’ll always make you part of it, but on their terms. That’s their form of leadership. That’s their form of leadership. Watching them sleep on pavements after long days of striking. it was humbling. For people like me, who rarely have to fight like that, it’s a lesson in solidarity. It makes you more human. You act, however small the act, and that changes you.
How did you find your way to filmmaking? How were your early days in Bombay like?
I never had a fixed plan. I was drawn to books, ideas, and music. Film felt like the perfect place for all of it — politics, poetry, people.
When I began in the 1990s, documentary filmmaking wasn’t a career. My first one, Annapurna, was about a women’s credit cooperative in the mill area of Bombay. After that, I made A Woman’s Place, wrote scripts for Channel V, acted in English, August ( won the Best Feature Film in English in the 42 National Film Awards) and freelanced for TV. It was a polyglot life.
I lived alone and it wasn’t about being 'bold', I dislike that word. I wanted to discover who I was. Some days were thrilling, others lonely or frightening. But that’s what your twenties are for.
How has it been to screen Working Girls across the country?
Unprecedented. When I made Unlimited Girls, I spent an entire year travelling with it, showing it wherever people would watch. It had been rejected by every single film festival — big or small, international or Indian but now has a cult status.
Working Girls has been another kind of experience altogether. I didn’t make a film for fourteen years, so I honestly didn’t know if anyone even remembered that I made films.
And then, registration for the first screening filled up in three hours. People were so eager to see it and have been connecting with it. I hear audiences laughing, reacting to different parts of the movie in different cities. Seeing them emerge from the film moved and full of emotion. A filmmaker could ask for little more.
