Laila (Kalki Koechlin, THAT GIRL IN YELLOW BOOTS) is a Mumbai college student with cerebral palsy who writes lyrics for her college band. She is also somewhat of a late bloomer when it comes to sexuality, having experimented with her paraplegic cousin Dhruv (Hussain Dalal, 2 STATES) who is resentful when she suggests they explore other people. Her moment of triumph at a music contest is shattered when the well-meaning judges announce that they awarded her band the prize because of her disability and then handsome lead singer Nima (Tenzing Dalha) rejects her advances. Determined not to go back to college, Laila is surprised when she is accepted into NYU's writing program and her mother Aai (Revathy, ANJALI) encourages her to go since she is concealing her own battle with colon cancer. Traveling to New York with her mother planning to stay with her for the first month, Laila navigates the new terrain and strange people independently, experiencing new freedoms but also being reminded of her perceived limitations on a daily basis. Her writing teacher assigns her a writer to transcribe her thoughts despite the fact that can type, and Laila nearly rejects him until she discovers it is handsome Jared (William Moseley, TV's THE ROYALS) but she feels that he is way out of her league. Joining in a police brutality protest, she meets amidst the tear gas blind Indian/Bangladeshian immigrant Khanum (Sayani Gupta, PARCHED) whose independence, worldliness, and uninhibited sexuality Laila envies; especially the latter when Khanum makes a move on her. Moving in with Khanum, she still fears coming out to her family, and is further torn between wanting to be normal (or at least normal-adjacent) and discovering who she is independently of family, friends, and those with which she has formed physical and emotional ties as her sexual exploration proves both liberating and destructive. One of the finalists for the Sundance/Mumbai Mantra screenwriting program, MARGARITA WITH A STRAW is not just a feel good movie about a disabled character, but it addresses the unexplored (in cinema) issue of sexuality and disability. Although (or possibly because) Koechlin is one hundred percent convincing in her role, the viewer immediately identifies with her as just any other young person looking for love and exploring her sexuality with all of the contradictory emotions and sometimes self-destructive consequences that one wonders how anyone could be shocked that she has sexual desires and the tenacity to explore them.