MLA ko Chora in Shape of Momo: What a Likeable Man Reveals About Patriarchy

By Pema Gyalchen Tamang

21 June 2026

Shape of momo poster featuring Bishnu (Gaumaya Gurung)

In Tribeny Rai’s Shape of Momo, every morning, Bishnu (Gaumaya Gurung), a young woman who has returned to her hometown after quitting her job in Delhi, goes for a run around her village. It is one of the few moments that seems to be entirely hers. On her trail every day, she silently notices a woman walk within the parameters of her terrace. The image recurs throughout the film: the woman continues her walk almost bound within the geometry of her terrace as Bishnu herself feels the walls of family expectation and social obligation close in around her. However, near the film’s end, something shifts. Bishnu runs her familiar path but this time finds the terrace is empty. The woman is gone. Then, Bishnu sees her, on the same trail. A silent glance passes between them and the woman begins to run. It is this silence that becomes a pivotal moment of solidarity. Two women, separated by circumstance and generation, briefly occupying the same freedom at the same time. Perhaps, the woman too watched Bishnu run free, which pushed her to move out. It also foreshadows what happens to Bishnu as she too eventually moves away from the home and the expectations she struggles to negotiate with throughout the movie. What Rai understands and what makes Shape of Momo worth paying attention to, is that patriarchy rarely announces itself. It is silent and it is subtle. It is with these same tools that she and co-writer Kislay, construct Gyan (Rahul Nawach Mukhia), and it is through him that the film makes a potent argument.

Growing up in Darjeeling and Siliguri, and eventually moving to Kolkata and Sikkim, I have watched my region and its people get romanticised my entire life, for better or for worse. A part of that romanticisation has always included a particular claim about its women: that this corner of India is progressive for women and that things are different here. I know this claim well because growing up I believed in it too. The uncomfortable realisations of my own privilege and conditioning, came much later and continues as I watch Gyan.

Gyan is the son of a local MLA and is Bishnu’s love interest. He is the kind of man that gets described as a ‘good catch.’ The family approves of him almost immediately as he earns his likeability. When an unknown number keeps calling Bishnu’s mother (Pashupati Rai), Gyan steps in to play his ‘role’ and warns the person behind the call. He even takes Junu (Shyama Shree Sherpa), Bishnu’s pregnant sister, for a checkup without being asked to. There is a warmth to him that makes you understand why Bishnu too doesn’t dismiss him outright, but the ‘role’ he is playing eventually does. 

Gyan also exists alongside Junu’s husband, mostly invisible. Junu has come home because she is pregnant. Her husband doesn’t join her, and he is absent during hospital visits, and in the everyday reality of what she is going through. But his physical absence does not hamper the presence he has over Junu’s realities. At the hospital, a receptionist asks for the father's name as routine paperwork. This man who does not show up still has his name required on forms. He has enough financial control over their shared life that Junu cannot even push for a new chimney in her own home. His hold on things is just dressed as normal. The question of the baby's gender lurks all throughout the movie: a boy is hoped for and in one absurd scene someone mentions Junu’s food cravings and what that might mean about the sex of the child. Which brings you back to Gyan. Junu’s husband almost feels like he plays a foil to him because next to Junu’s husband, Gyan seems perfect. The family even starts treating him less like a possibility and more like a conclusion. 

And in spite of all of this, Gyan offers us more. In one of the first scenes between Gyan and Bishnu, he offers her a cigarette and she tells him she is trying to quit. He smiles and says that smoking doesn't suit women anyway. It is said lightly, almost as a compliment. Bishnu doesn’t let it slide and calls him out for it, and so he cushions the remark the only way he knows how: that’s what his mother always says. In another scene, Bishnu is photographing Gyan and she asks him to pose a certain way. He tries it, laughs, and says it feels like posing like a girl. But Bishnu asks, simply, what is wrong with that. Gyan does not really have an answer. 

All of this culminates in a scene that the film has been building towards from the beginning. The momo in the movie is never just food. It runs through the film as a quiet, recurring idea: a momo done well is no different than a round roti when it comes to what it represents. Bishnu cannot make the expected shape, like the way she is unable to fit into the ‘role’ the society expects her to play. Perhaps, in a way Junu does. Bishnu slowly sees Gyan entering her life and her family’s: his ‘role’ is slowly being more defined, and because of that hers is too.  

Her skills on momo making has also become a running joke in the house. In one pivotal scene, Junu says sarcastically that Bishnu makes excellent momo, in front of her husband and Gyan. Gyan, who seemingly doesn’t understand the sarcasm, says that even his mother makes good momo. He is being agreeable and trying to join the conversation. Bishnu snaps sharply and embarrasses him in front of everyone. Gyan even makes his case, saying it didn’t seem like he said anything wrong. He is genuinely confused because he thought he was paying a compliment.

This is why Shape of Momo is worth watching. Not because it is lesson, but because Gyan is recognisable. He is not a villain performing innocence. He truly cannot or perhaps doesn’t try to locate the source of Bishnu’s frustration, and that inability is the whole point. Patriarchal conditioning does not require bad intentions to do its work. It only requires that certain assumptions become so naturalised and normalised in everyday life, that they stop registering as assumptions. Gyan is accepted and liked because he plays the ‘role’ of the protective, caring male patron (Dr. Rinzing Ongmu Sherpa, Sikkim Express). Gyan tells Bishnu that smoking doesn’t suit women. When Bishnu calls him out, instead of retrospectively looking at what he said, he chooses to deflect by citing his mother. He genuinely believes the attribution softens it but cannot see that tracing a prejudice back to its source does not dissolve it. It only tells you how long it has been there.  

But the momo scene does something more specific. His mention of his mother again, that she makes good momo, quietly installs a comparison. His mother, who presumably fits the shape expected of her not only by the society but Gyan himself, becomes an implicit standard. The suggestion of what Bishnu might one day be held to, arrives as a pleasantry and not a demand. After the exchange, Gyan leaves and Rai gives you a quiet shot of the plate of the eaten momo he has left behind: unnoticed. It is not a dramatic frame. It has not occurred to him to think about them. This ‘likeable’ man, has much to learn. 

Eventually, during their last meeting after the momo scene, he gives Bishnu the photographs he had taken of her earlier. It is meant as a gift as he mentions the photo where he ‘posed like a girl.’ For him it is just a memory, something warm to offer, but he cannot feel what it recalls for her: the clearest illustration of the distance between them. Their final conversation is quiet. Bishnu tells him that when she is around him, people expect more of her. That his presence comes with a version of herself that everyone else seems to have already decided on. Gyan listens and then tells her she is being selfish. He is not saying it to wound her. In fact, he is unable to understand why Bishnu feels the way she feels. Gyan exits without resolution, unable to understand what happened. But for Bishnu, he is, in his own way, another form of the earlier mentioned terrace. A boundary drawn so gently and warmly.

I once worked as a faculty in a college in the region. Every class on gender almost featured a male student’s passionate argument in favour of Andrew Tate’s philosophies and perspectives on women and their roles, as other students cheered them on. It is around such a pivotal time that Shape of Momo arrives and disrupts. Shape of Momo offers something quieter and more useful than an argument. It offers a point of view. A point of view that probably every man, including Gyan, played honestly by Mukhia, could learn from. The movie puts you in a room with a woman navigating her life and asks you to pay attention. Women of different generations, navigate the heavy, but almost purposely shrouded weight of patriarchy ‘back home,’ in the movie. It is not simply that only men oppress in Shape of Momo: it is the whole system that has normalised something that Bishnu, as everyone should, finds enraging. While speaking to a friend, we pondered weather Gyan’s ‘likeability’ is highlighted further because he is placed almost beside an ‘unlikeable’ and ‘imperfect’ Bishnu. There is so much more to unpack in this nuanced work that is by far, for me, one of the best films to come out this year.  

Also read a review of the film by Shivani Khati An Unsteady Shape of Home: Adulthood at the Intersection of Class and Gender in the film Shape of Momo

Pema Gyalchen Tamang is an editor at Volv, and has previously worked in education as an Assistant Professor. His writing has appeared in publications including University of Edinburgh and Routledge, and has recently received the Zubaan Publishers Research Grant for young researchers from the Northeast.