By Shruti Sunderraman

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Akshay Kumar fans lashed Mallika Dua for ‘not taking a joke’. Photo courtesy: Mallika Dua Facebook Page

My very first job at 16 was an internship at a prestigious event management company in Mumbai. During my three-month tenure, I met but never spoke to the bigwigs of the company. So imagine my surprise when its co-founder said I had spunk.

He then went on to scan me from top to bottom and pointed me to a group of male colleagues saying “they don’t make ‘em like that anymore”. They all laughed. As did I. In my naïveté, I believed he was still referring to my talent. By the time I realised it was a sexual slur, I could do nothing but grimace and carry on.

Watching comedian Mallika Dua fake laugh her way out of a sexually-explicit comment thrown at her by Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar on Star Plus’ The Great Indian Laughter Challenge felt like watching an episode out of my own past. Dua, a ex-judge along with Kumar and comedian Zakir Khan, was impressed with a contestant’s performance. The show’s format allows a judge to ring a large bell to show their appreciation. When Dua reached for it, Kumar said “Aap bell bajaiye, main aapko bajata hoon”, which is a sexually explicit way of saying he’ll ‘bang’ her. Dua did what a lot of women have done before in her place. Laughed and went on to do her job.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Akshay Kumar, like a lot of male bosses, looked like he believed his sexist joke was brilliant. Photo courtesy: Akshay Kumar Facebook page

We’ve seen this often at workplaces, haven’t we? The male boss who throws a punchline which covers sexist undertones with hahahas by the watercooler? Even in our homes, there’s the uncle whose WhatsApp joke format is set to sexism. We don’t quite know what to do with them sometimes. Most women are awkwardly stuck between biting down on a retort and laughing along.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Image courtesy: Lead The Way

Then there’s also the accusation of ‘you have no chill’ floating her way if a woman decides to cut a man off mid-laughter. When the leaked footage of Kumar’s comment found its way to the internet, Dua responded saying she was thoroughly uncomfortable with Kumar’s comment. Trolls and Kumar fans alike lashed at her, saying Kumar was joking and that she ‘can’t even take a joke’.

But the ‘you can’t take a joke’ act often proves to be the get-out-of-jail card for men guffawing at a woman’s expense. For 19-year-old Nidhi Shukla in Pune, this card often dangles with peer pressure. Her engineering coaching class teacher joked last week to the classroom, “What is even rarer than a holiday in a class of engineering students? A good-looking girl.” Everyone laughed. The teacher looked very pleased with himself but she herself couldn’t do much about it other than grin and bear it.

But what about when sexist jokes from men in authority is a repeating offence? Ruchi Mehta’s boss has the worst sense of humour. Think Jackie Shroff in King Uncle with an authority complex. Working at a multi-national company in Mumbai, the 32-year-old attends meetings with him. “One time, he knew I was on my period as I looked weak. During a meeting, my red lipstick stained my white shirt’s collar. So he laughed and said ‘haha today is your staining day’. I just stared at him in disbelief.”

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Dua dealt with Akshay’s comment the way most women have. Image courtesy: Instagram

Mehta doesn’t see a way of having a sit-down with her boss about this matter without his making it all about her lack of chill. But she has her small revenges. “I once added salt to his coffee and another time I spread a rumour that he has very smelly socks. It was so much fun to watch his colleagues cringe around him. He looked thoroughly confused,” she laughs.  Meanwhile she just pretends she hasn’t heard his latest ‘awesome’ line.

Mehta isn’t alone. Take Sudha Reddy for example. At 52, you’d think she’d be treated with utter respect in the Chennai branch of the bank she works in. But even with her experience, she still has to listen to her branch manager badger her with sexist jokes in the company of sarkaari dudebros. At an office function earlier this year, the manager asked some women, including her, to clean up the dishes saying, “Madam’s work nobody can do like madam. Madam’s hands are great”. He may have believed he was giving me a compliment, Reddy says, shaking her head.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

What to  do with male bosses who throws sexist punchlines? Representational Image courtesy: Mad Men Facebook page

If shaking heads is mostly done by the women, then who tells the joke? Who laughs and who laughs along? It’s all indicative of the power structure. Paramita Chatterjee, a 43-year-old business development head of a Fortune 500 company in Mumbai, says that even for women in power, sexually explicit jokes are not off the table; it gets even more difficult to handle at the top. One assumes, like everyone else stuck in an office hierarchy, Chatterjee has had her share of grinning at bad/boring but not necessarily sexist PJs from her seniors. But Chatterjee tells a startling story about a joke from a man who was her junior in the organisational ladder.

She says, “At a dinner party, my division supervisor got slightly tipsy and raised a toast to me, saying, ‘Behind every successful man is a woman, but now men should be behind this successful woman and you know… do things’ thrusting his pelvis forward slightly and laughing.” Even more shocking than his statement was how everyone joined him in laughter. The memory of this incident embarrasses her today just as much as it did when it happened.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Sometimes the man knows the woman can’t do much else than laugh. Artwork courtesy: Gauri Saxena

A joke in this context becomes just another form of bullying, a way of exerting control or even expressing hostility. Sometimes the man knows the woman can’t do much else than laugh. Men in power playing on this psychology are tickling nobody’s funny bones. What they do know that in the modern Indian workplace, no one wants to be seen as old-fashioned. As if modernity automatically means this kind of half-baked sexual permissiveness. And women sometimes buy into it, thinking that ‘taking’ (notice the verb) a joke well is the sign of a cool girl.

And this is what perhaps created the Akshay Kumar situation and its strange epilogue involving his wife, actor and writer Twinkle Khanna. Kumar’s fans argued that he had no ill intentions and he was just being himself but surely after you find you offended someone inadvertently, you’d apologise, right? But he didn’t.

Which brings us to the epilogue. On October 29, four days after the video surfaced and the drama was well underway, Khanna slytweeted at Dua. Twice. And Dua responded to it with anything but sleuth.

I couldn’t resist these two and after this I am done Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view. #LameJokes pic.twitter.com/3mMckTtmDu

— Twinkle Khanna (@mrsfunnybones) October 29, 2017

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH No. https://t.co/x1GRbWCHkX

— Mallika Dua (@MallikaDua) October 30, 2017

My first thought for Khanna’s tweet was: Any need? I wanted to send her that Gillian Flynn passage about the dangers of being a Cool Girl.

“Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.”

Then I remembered that Khanna had named herself Mrs Funnybones. Mrs Funnybones. And that was that.

Co-published with Firstpost

The post Akshay Kumar-Mallika Dua Row: Why Women Feel Pressured To Fake Laugh Their Way Through Sexist ‘Jokes’ appeared first on The Ladies Finger.

By Sharanya Gopinathan

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Suraiya in Shama Parwana, 1954. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

It’s almost surprising how little the Harvey Weinstein scandal has touched Bollywood. In India, its explosive effects came straight out of left field, with Raya Sarkar’s infamous, widely-shared and controversial list of men in liberal academia who were accused of repeated sexual harassment. Some people in the film industry, like Swara Bhaskar and Priyanka Chopra, have spoken a bit about experiencing or hearing of such things, but not one person has been publicly named, despite public calls for people to come forward with their experiences, and more importantly, with their knowledge of known harassers within the industry.

I bet Bollywood feels like it narrowly dodged a bullet (speaking of which, did you know director Vikas Bahl was welcomed back to Phantom Films earlier this year, despite having been chucked out back in April after he was accused of sexual harassment by an employee there?). But now, about a month after the Weinstein allegations, the creeps are really starting to come out of the woodworks.

Bollywood producer Mukesh Bhatt gave an interview to Reuters in which he was asked about sexual harassment in Bollywood, and he was quick to answer that India’s film industry shouldn’t be singled out, and then, that absolutely nothing could be done about sexual harassment in the film industry.“What can we do? We cannot do any moral policing. We cannot keep moral cops outside every film office to see that no girl is being exploited.” Er, well, at least he told us where it happens.

Even more shockingly, he goes on to actually blame women for the kind of rampant and twisted abuse that goes in Bollywood, saying, “I am not saying men have not been exploitative. They have been for centuries. But today’s woman is also not as simple as she pretends to be. But just as there are good men and bad men, so also there are women who are exploitative and very cunning. Also blatantly shameless to offer themselves.”

After some media outrage, Mukesh Bhatt issued a statement saying that what was presented in the Reuters interview was in fact the opposite of what he actually said. He clarified, “Sexual harassment is not gender specific and in some instances men take advantage of it and in some instances women take advantage of the same. But it was twisted, turned and completely put out of context. I stand by the firm belief that sexual harassment should not happen in the first place and shouldn’t be gender specific.”.

He also cried that he didn’t appreciate being misquoted on such a sensitive point of discussion. What to do, we cannot keep cops outside every interview to see that no quote is being exploited.

The post Mukesh Bhatt’s Take on Sexual Harassment in Bollywood? Women are Not Simple Any More appeared first on The Ladies Finger.

By Nisha Susan

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Karni Sena leader threatened to cut off Deepika Padukone’s nose. Photo courtesy: Padmavati Facebook Page

Can’t a girl get some sleep around here? No? Because every time I get a little shut-eye I hear that metallic grind of you lot sharpening something. And then I know it’s not my nose, but there is some woman’s nose you are after.

This time, I hear it’s Deepika Padukone’s nose. Because she is in that movie about Padmavati, a long-dead woman who a long-dead man may have seen in a mirror. Over the millennia I’ve seen lots of gents running around cutting women’s noses. As you know. For stupid reasons. As also you know. I mean, you got worked up when Padukone said she is appalled that you brothers did things like destroy shops and vandalise a cinema hall in Kota. “Rajputs never raise a hand on women but if need be, we will do to Deepika what Lakshman did to Shurpanakha,” said Karni Sena leader Mahipal Singh Makrana.

Having lived as long as I have, I can never crank up feelings to properly appalled. But attacking that rangoli artist in Surat was quite random, if you don’t mind my saying so. Abhi kya hai ki, I don’t mind if you mind also. The beauty of my post naak-katva scene is that men in battle formation or sulk formation cease to bother you. Now, if only I didn’t wake up each time I hear that grinding I’d be truly zen. But there is that Phantom Nose Syndrome, what to do.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

What is with men and wanting to cut off women’s noses? Photo courtesy: Women India Blog

As noses go Padukone’s is a nice nose, don’t you think? Not that it matters to you, you’d cut off any woman’s nose and then promptly get to writing that she looked kakka anyway, what loss her nose? I wasn’t bad-looking, you know. I looked a lot like my mother Kaikesi. But you men were in some post-truth funk, prepared to swear up and down that since I made a move first, I must be desperate with my ugly face, pot-belly and those sharp nails of mine.

My friends called me Meenakshi, if you really want to know. I did have eyes like a fish and I needed those sharp nails in my life. First they married me to someone literally called Dushtabuddhi (I mean, literally) and then Ravana was like: Surprise, sis! He’s no good, I will just kill him. So there I was, a widow, not what you call conventionally beautiful, and stuck in the court of an extra ambitious, too many brains brother.

Back in that moment when I was making my famously #fail move on one brother and the other, I kept wondering which way to go. Soft sell or hard sell. Little bit smoochie and then ask them whether they’d teach my brother a lesson, or pick one of the above. Anyway, it all fell apart and instantly appeared you boys ki famous proclivity. Either you are saying ki you didn’t fight your kidnapper hard enough, naak katva di. Or it is that you came on too hard so I will kaato your naak for you. Basically roaming around grinding your knife ready to cut a nose, any lady’s nose.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

The existence of my nose is no matter and neither is your point, Mr Makrana. Photo courtesy: Mahipal Singh Makrana Facebook page

Now you gents are after Deepika Padukone’s. Sanjay Leela Bhansali has sworn up and down the country that there is no dream sequence in which Alauddin Khilji and Padmavati will be in the same frame and that it’s all a rumour, but you are like no, no, no. Because you have dreamed that there is a dream, is that it? Over hundreds and hundreds of years, ever since the 13^th century, the frisson of the Muslim man glimpsing the Rajput queen is still giving you the shivers, is it? (Achha chalo, I don’t blame you on this front. The Other is Hot, this is the universal truth. Hence my misadventures in the forest and hence, also, that incredible Muharram scene in Raees. Whip me.)

Maybe what you are really afraid of is that this new movie will somehow remind people how daft our textbooks are to continuously claim that Khilji attacked Chittor for Padmavati. That people will start wondering why Chittor collapsed, queen or not. Books written by men, I notice, are not so hot on facts and are really hot on blame.

Now I have lots of books I could quarrel about, especially one written by a man whose name starts with a V and ends with an I, but I’m too old for this. Places to go, things to do, y’know. But I’m going to make an exception for Padmavati, seeing as she is my fellow countrywoman from Sri Lanka, at least in that poet dude Malik Muhamed Jayas’ version. According to Jayas, a talking parrot told Chittor’s king Ratan Sen about Padmavati and so he brought her away from her nice, leafy island happiness to be among folk who were constantly worried about noses. And then Khilji, the mirror, the war, and the end. Now, Jayas probably dreamt up a fictional heroine for whom a hardened invader would change his plans to make the story more relatable, or he just liked writing about beautiful women whose lives end badly, or he liked the adolescent pathos of the it-was-all-for nothing-feeling when Khilji walks into an empty fortress after everyone dies. Who knows.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Sanjay Leela Bhansali was attacked on set. Photo courtesy: Sanjay Leela Bhansali Twitter handle

I just want to tell you that back in Lanka, no poet would write about women jumping into fire to kill themselves just in case the men lost a battle. We girls from Lanka like to ensure we don’t lose battles (and if you are murmuring something about Hanuman and fire right now, please don’t, that’s another story). Poor Padmavati, so much peer pressure, she must have been wishing that parrot dead and all mirrors shattered. Instead, into the centuries the parrot talked and the mirror gleamed and she became that simpering inflammable miss.

So no, Padmavati wasn’t real but does it matter? And Jodha Bai of Jodhaa Akbar was not really Akbar’s wife, and that doesn’t matter also. I mean, my nose isn’t real and it doesn’t matter and the dream sequence you brothers are burning things in several states for apparently isn’t real and that doesn’t matter either.

Here you are again, fellows, prepared to go to war for a film you haven’t watched. I hear you are saying that Sanjay Leela Bhansali can’t be trusted because you feel he gave haath last time with his Ram-Leela screening, showing you one version and releasing another. Betrayal makes your knife hand itch and everything your mother told you about filmi types is coming back, isn’t it?

I understand the sab kuch jala do feeling (or to quote you precisely, “jauhar ki jwala hai, bahut kuch jalega. Rok sako to rok lo”), so I won’t give you a laundry list of shattered promises that you might want to be angry about instead. Rationality is so overrated. Instead, Karni Sena brothers, I give you one of those strange English sayings: Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face. Why not meditate on that? Breathe in. Breathe out.

 Co-published with Firstpost.

The post Padmavati: An Open Letter from Shurpanakha to the Karni Sena and Men Sharpening Knives Everywhere appeared first on The Ladies Finger.

By Sharanya Gopinathan

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Our new gossip column, Finger Fries.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Lady love

Bollywood actresses clearly have a strange private mode of communicating with each other, kind of like inscrutable plumy birds. Recently on the sets of Super Dancer 2, Shilpa Shetty complimented Rekha’s fitness and agelessness, to which Rekha responded by pulling her onto her lap to prove Shetty’s fitness. Because, why not? I mean, what else is there to do after a while. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Guess who

Movie titles that have been rejected for Anushka Sharma, Katrina Kaif and Shah Rukh Khan’s upcoming movie in which SRK plays a dwarf: Dwarf, Katrina Meri Jaan, Rangbaaz, Batlya, Bouna…

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.Dress code

It’s confirmed that in the next few days, we will be flooded with photos of Ivanka Trump wearing a traditional Telangana sari. Film actress and Brand Ambassador for Telangana Handicrafts, Akkineni Samantha, gifted Trump the Gollabhama sari when she arrived at the GES summit in Hyderabad, and also seems to have pulled some strings behind the scenes. It’s being reported that Trump will necessarily be seen in the sari whether she likes it or not as “the state government has also made arrangements to make sure that all the women attending the event will be seen in the iconic Gollabhama sari”.

Class topper

Manushi Chhillar has touched down in India after winning the Miss World crown in China, and all the crazy PR has already begun. She’s been giving interviews providing tips on communication (“say what he/she feels. It makes it easy”), her family’s take on practising medicine (“My father always says that a doctor is a half actor”) and her belief about the relationship between mothers and daughters (“magic”). All I want to do is spirit her away from the cameras and the paparazzi somehow and tell her to just take a deep breath, and that everything will be okay. What to do, I am also feeling a bit fatherly towards her after seeing this video of Chhillar giving advice on how to crack the medical entrance exam back in her first year MBBS days (“jis subject mein sabse zyaada problem aati hain entrance mein, woh hain physics because its all concept-based. But thanks to sir, he cleared all my concepts”).

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Something so right

This is what sweet dreams are made of! Known for her hits Here Comes the Rain Again, Why and also for impersonating Elvis once, Eurythmics star Annie Lennox has been made the VC of Glasgow Caledonian University. You can be sure the students are in good hands: apparently, back at her time at the Academy of Music, Annie Lennox’s flute teacher’s final report stated, “Ann has not always been sure of where to direct her efforts, though lately she has been more committed. She is very, very able, however.” Two years later, Lennox reported to the Academy: “I have had to work as a waitress, barmaid, and shop assistant to keep me when not in musical work.” Ooh, Savage. With her latest encounter with the academic world Lennox has been more circumspect and merely reported herself in that constant celebrity emotional status: humbled.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Elephant in the room

Rana Dagubatti has just signed a new trilingual (!) movie Haathi Mere Saathi and thus enlarges the vast literature of buff actors explaining the deep thinking they bring to their buff characters. Dagubatti says, “There’s a very exciting physical language to the character I’m playing in Haathi Mere Saathi and is completely different from what I’ve done in the past,” he says, “[Director] Prabhu Solomon’s passion for nature and elephants makes him the finest craftsman in the country who can handle a story like this.” The admiration for artistry doesn’t end there. Eros CEO Ajit Thakur revealed, “Elephants are among the most expressive of creatures and with Haathi Mere Saathi, we are hoping to present a thought-provoking film.”

We see you, Maddy

Since June 29 aka the day we were stunned into awed silence by actor Madhavan’s sizzling variation on ‘woke up this way’ we have been stalking his Instagram.

A post shared by R. Madhavan (@actormaddy) on Jun 29, 2017 at 3:45am PDT

His feed has remained chaste and without surprises until this morning. Now there is this video of him making faces. Is he trolling us? Rejecting conventional beauty standards? What’s going on?

A post shared by R. Madhavan (@actormaddy) on Nov 28, 2017 at 3:19am PST

Shilpa Shetty, Rekha photo courtesy Mumbai Mirror, Ivanka Trump photo courtesy Ivanka Trump Instagram page, Manushi Chhillar video via YouTube, Annie Lennox photo courtesy Annie Lennox Instagram page, Rana Dagubatti photo courtesy Rana Dagubatti Instagram page, R Madhavan photo, video courtesy Madhavan Instagram page.

The post Finger Fries: Do Bollywood Actresses Have Their Own Private Mode of Communication? appeared first on The Ladies Finger.

By Sharanya Gopinathan

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Deepika Padukone. Still from Padmaavat trailer

Spoilers ahead.

On Wednesday, the Rajput Mahasabha in Punjab officially withdrew its protest against Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmaavat. The filmmakers didn’t request, do or change anything to make this happen. The only thing that changed was that 30 leaders from the community actually watched the movie at a special screening arranged for them by district officials in Pathankot, after which they proudly, and with no discernible hint of irony, told the media, “We will suggest that community members all over the country must watch the movie because it is in fact showing the Rajput community in a good light.”

Unfortunately, the unabashed backtracking from the Rajput Mahasabha in Punjab was just way too little, too late. The ball was already rolling when it came to attacking Padmaavat, and facts couldn’t stop the momentum it had built up this far.

It’s likely that those opposing the movie most strongly, like the Shri Rajput Karni Sena and All India Brajmandal Kshatriya Rajput Mahasabha, were emboldened by the BJP’s and Congress stated lack of support for the film, particularly given the fact that four BJP-led states attempted to refuse to screen the film despite Supreme Court orders. It’s also likely they were still power-drunk and rolling from a year of violence they could conveniently blame on the movie, which included slapping Sanjay Leela Bhansali, vandalising several public properties, putting a bounty on Deepika Padukone’s head and threatening to chop off her nose, Rajput women threatening to commit jauhar and then insisting that Bhansali commit jauhar instead of them.

The days immediately before its release saw arson, looting, and clashes between riot police and protestors in Gujarat, UP, MP, and Mumbai. In a neat and poignant reflection of the stupidity of a caste group opposing a movie that glorifies them, Karni Sena protestors also set fire to a car belonging to one of their own protestors in Bhopal. Of course, it all culminated in Haryana, which seems to have its rioting priorities all wrong, yesterday when 50 criminals stoned a bus carrying 30 children to protest Padmaavat’s release, and were planning to set it on fire too, until the Haryana police finally girded its loins or remembered its job.

While the irony is high, it’s really not surprising that any erstwhile-protester who actually watched the movie would be happy with the message it espouses. It begins with a disclaimer that the movie didn’t mean to hurt anyone’s feelings, and is meant to show its respect for the Rajput community.  But truly it shouldn’t have bothered. The whole movie was a disclaimer.

The main compliment that Sanjay Leela Bhansali receives after the release of any of his films is that it was a spectacle. And so it was with Padmaavat too, but no number of neatly swirling skirts and artfully placed diyas could make up for the weird feeling of watching a movie that glorifies the life and dharma of a privilege caste, and culminates in the suicide of 16001 women.

It’s hard to tell how much was added in the face of the protests, but the movie’s packed full of platitudes towards Rajput kingliness (personified in Raja Ratan Singh Rawal, played by Shahid Kapoor), queenliness (even though Rani Padmavati, played by Deepika Padukone, is a Sri Lankan immigrant), code of conduct and general valour and mightiness. You know, Rajputs are brave. Rajputs don’t attack the sick, the unarmed, or anyone from behind. Rajputs don’t kill their guests. They don’t kill Brahmins (they see brahm-hatya as a whole separate and awful type of hatya that they never engage in), and would rather die (and instruct the 16000 women who work for them to die) than have their towns taken over by invaders. Okay.

But it isn’t just the naked adoration of Rajputs that would make the caste nationalist groups hating on the film happy. Naturally, Padmaavat also depicts Alauddin Khilji as the personification of the dark, dubious and morally bankrupt Muslim invader. He’s constantly snarling and kissing unwilling women, including his wife (Mehrunnisa, played by she of the wonderfully husky voice, Aditi Rao Hydari), eating extremely rare meat (versus Ratan Rawal’s giant vegetarian thalis), being romanced by his man servant Malik Karuf (Jim Sarbh) and dancing very badly whilst being bathed by Karuf. Some media houses have taken the homo-erotic overtones of Khiljis relationship with Karuf as a major milestone in the writing of Indian film characters. The Huffington Post writes that he’s the “first queer villain in Hindi cinema who isn’t necessarily effeminate or affected by his sexuality”, but it also falls neatly and fairly gutlessly in line with the popular stereotypes around depraved Mughal rulers and the young servant boys they would keep in their harems.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Ranveer Singh. Still from Padmaavat

There were some intriguing moments of course, and they were ones we’d had no hints of in the buildup to the release. Mehrunnisa, Khilji’s wife, the daughter of Jalaluddin Khilji, the uncle he killed to take the throne, is endlessly fascinating to watch, and a character I actually had no clue I would be seeing. She never reacts quite the way you expect her to at any point that you get to see her, from her first appearance as a young woman giggling over the ostrich Allauddin has captured in order to claim her as his bride, to her reasons for helping Padmavati and Ratan Rawal successfully escape her husband’s clutches.

But over all, it was hard for me to separate the movie from all the madness leading up to it, and to watch it divorced from the knowledge that outside, in states far far away, it was currently inspiring Rajputs to burn cars and stone school buses.

We’ve also been reading about the plot for a year now, ever since the Karni Sena slapped Bhansali on set. Last week, the headlines were full of the Karni Sena’s threat that if the movie’s screening wasn’t halted, Kshatriya women would commit suicide just like Padmavati did. Today, the headlines report that Padukone said the jauhar scene in this movie was the most challenging of her life.

But as Netflix once said about Narcos 2, the second season of a show about Colombian drug lord and narcoterrorist Pablo Escobar, history, or in this case, history and headlines, are the world’s biggest spoilers. And that was the feeling I got while watching this three-hour long movie—the annoyed, restless feeling of someone who’s been handed a spoiler and forced to finish a book, and, given the year’s, month’s and week’s headlines, that’s how I expected other people to feel too.

But for once, the theatre around me was packed (I had to watch an evening show instead of the usual morning ones we review because Karnataka was on very peaceful strike all day, but for more useful reasons than a Bollywood movie). The three teenage girls next to me were gasping at all the right moments, and someone actually wolf-whistled at the beginning of the jauhar scene (which is a pretty good indication of what this movie glorifies, because there’s apparently nothing more invigorating than the mass suicide of thousands of women to save themselves from a Muslim man).

So it’s hard to come away from Padmaavat without feeling a bit bemused. You realise that lakhs of rupees worth of property was destroyed, and probably a lot more spent on security, over an imagined insult in a movie that’s nothing but a fawning ode. You realise that many of the 1 million people who came out to watch the movie did so because of the controversy-that-wasn’t, and are suddenly watching an overtly casteist movie with the justified expectation that it would be insulting to the community it venerates. I wonder if they felt the way the Karni Sena did when they set their own car on fire.

Co-published with Firstpost. 

The post Watching Padmaavat like Rihanna: Yes I am Gonna Stand There and Watch You Burn, India appeared first on The Ladies Finger.

By Sharanya Gopinathan

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Photo Courtesy: @akshaykumar via Twitter

Spoilers ahead.

Watching Padman’s trailer felt like a confirmation of what I had been expecting from this movie ever since I heard about it early last year. It begins with Amitabh Bachchan’s voice announcing that the USA has Batman, Superman and Spider-Man, but India has its very own superhero, Padman (AKA the champion of all noble causes currently seeing their time in the sun, Akshay Kumar). The original Padman that this movie is based on is, of course, Tamil Nadu’s Arunachalam Muruganantham. He becomes Laxmikant Chauhan from Madhya Pradesh in this movie because, well, because.

In the trailer, the background track eerily chants “super-hero super-hero” as we see Kumar trying on a pad of his own design, and later, lambasting his wife Gayatri (Radhika Apte) and other female relatives for holding on to ideas of shame instead of trying to help him make functional pads (“sharam ko pakadke bimaari ke naale mein gir jao sab!”). We see Sonam Kapoor asking a dejected Kumar what he’s doing on the ground instead of flying in the sky as Padman should, and Kumar himself declaring at the United Nations that a country is strong only if its sisters, mothers, wives and daughters are strong.

Given that trailer, Akshay Kumar’s general love for macho superhero status, and the moralistic advertisement for a government project that was his last movie, Toilet: Ek Prem Katha, I was pretty sure Padman was going to be another exercise in celebrating Akshay Kumar’s virtuous masculinity and respect for women.

The takeaway would be that any man who helps women, especially with dirty, dirty, women’s hygiene is a super-hero. It is, after all, one of the few “issues” women face that have nothing to do with men being violent, and about which all-knowing men are always on hand to help and teach women about. From the men who rudely burst into your homes and toilets in Domex ads to the Swachh Bharat government officials who take photos of women defecating in public, Akshay Kumar is the leader of all these helpful men.

But, what a shocker! While the trailer promises a male saviour superhero in the shape of Padman, it was all just a clever ruse to presumably get the public to watch a factual movie about pads.

I mean, sure, the movie does focus excessively on Kumar and the various troubles, pains, humiliations and hurdles he encounters in his quest to invent a low-cost pad machine. But once you’ve accepted that the story of Arunachalam Muruganantham was captivating and inspiring enough to base a movie on, it feels hollow to say that the movie focuses on the central character too much.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Photo Courtesy: @UN_Women via Twitter

We follow Chauhan’s horror at seeing the dirty cloth his wife Gayatri uses every month, his efforts to get her to test out his products (which end in depressing failures that force her to spend the night washing bloodstains out of her saree), his disastrous attempts at testing a pad himself with a bladder of animal blood, and the subsequent shame that drives him away from his village when the blood and bladder are discovered. When you see this much of Chauhan, it’s easy to ask why on earth a movie vaguely meant to be about the empowerment of women focuses on Akshay Kumar so much, but then again, all of this is based on a true story. All of these things really did happen to the original and quite remarkable Muruganantham, and he did persevere in the face of all kinds of opposition.

Director R Balki is clearly alive to the ironies of the story (which was adapted, by the way, from a short story that producer Twinkle Khanna wrote in The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad). When Chauhan first calls Gayatri after their humiliated separation, the first thing he tells her is that the pad machine he made (for her) is ready, you see Gayatri sort of speechlessly wonder when on earth she asked for a pad machine as she runs away crying. It immediately leaves you wondering about all the strange conversations the real life Muruganantham must have had with his wife Shanthi.

Padman also gives you the neat little bonus of balancing out Kumar with a surprise Sonam Kapoor. She sort of swoops into the movie and saves the day in a way that doesn’t feel entirely necessary to the plot (and isn’t faithful to fact and Muruganantham’s story either). I’m certainly not complaining, though, that a movie on menstruation added a nice female-saviour character to help save the day for the male protagonist. I think it did both Padman and Akshay Kumar good to take some liberties with the facts and have the main character’s life work be saved by a woman, even if she did randomly try to make out with him and get rejected in the end. *eyeroll*

The nice thing about Padman is that despite the weird trailer and the unnecessary addition of Kapoor’s romantic inclinations, it does little to glorify Kumar or the Padman himself. I think, once you get past the irritation of Akshay Kumar continuously taking on roles that posit him as the nation’s Good Boy (at least in years when Aamir Khan is laying low from his role as Good Boy), there’s not much you’ll find objectionable about Padman, because Muruganantham’s is a truly unique story.

Co-published with Firstpost

The post I Thought Padman Would be a Celebration of Akshay Kumar, But It Wasn’t appeared first on The Ladies Finger.

By Sahiba Bhatia

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Photo courtesy: Flickr

Wonder Woman may have won our hearts (and the box-office) but it looks like she, and only a few others, were the ones to do so.

A study by San Diego University has found out that in the 100 top-grossing movies of Hollywood, woman protagonists amounted to only 24 percent, a decrease of five percent from 2016.

The statistics are a bit surprising, not just because the top three grossing movies in North America were female-led, but also because for some time now Hollywood has been surfing a major feminist wave, focused on the upliftment of strong female characters in movies. Also, amidst the stir of sexual allegations against powerful men in Hollywood, the united front that many major actors have formed provided a this-is-the-time-for-women-in-Hollywood notion to audiences. So when Chris Pine became the funny sidekick of Gal Gadot, people, especially women, cheered and thought ‘The time has come’.  The time when a woman saves the day while her love-interest just makes googly eyes at the shero. But looks like the numbers don’t back up that perception.

But the study also provides a positive statistic: More women had speaking roles in films, accounting for 34 percent of such characters, up two percentage points from 2016.

Though Bollywood also saw a rise in woman-led movies such as Simran, Lipstick Under My Burkha and Tumhari Sulu, the top-grossing movies remained those led by men. So that means that while Sallu Bhai rolled around in money kyunki Tiger Zinda Hai, Hamari Sulu was stuck juggling her life as an RJ and a housewife to make ends meet (admittedly, that’s an exaggeration).

The Hollywood report may have been surprising but it still shows that stories with women leads have the potential to reach the top of the box-office. And at least that leaves us with hope.

The post We May Have Cheered for Wonder Woman But There Were Fewer Female Protagonists in 2017 appeared first on The Ladies Finger.

By Dhriti Mehta

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Photo courtesy: @angira_dhar on twitter

I watched the newly released Bollywood rom-com movie, Love Per Square Foot on Netflix, and girl, was I surprised!

On the face of it, Love Per Square Foot is your quintessential Bollywood movie with an unconventional love story between two bank employees who belong to different religions. Add to that the masala of an awfully weird boss and humorous families and you have the perfect recipe for a totally new age film.

But more than simply good actors and strong female characters played by Ratna Pathak Shah and Supriya Pathak, this movie has a female lead with practicality – something you’ll find in every Indian woman, but unfortunately not in the films representing them.

Karina D’Souza played by Angira Dhar is a realistic woman who dreams of a normal life in a home that she owns. Her wish to lead an independent life and share household responsibilities with her partner are things desired by most urban Indian women today. And while her goal to own her home sounds rather simple to be the entire movie plot, in reality, this is exactly what women in Bollywood were missing and finally got…

The acknowledgement of ownership being our dream too!

Don’t get me wrong. I recognise the shift in Bollywood over the years and its success in giving us extremely strong and ambitious female protagonists from strong-willed Geet in Jab We Met to entrepreneurial Shashi in English Vinglish. But while all the Ranis and Shashis and Shrutis of Bollywod constantly remind us the importance of owning our minds and hearts, Karina D’Souza is perhaps one of the first few female characters of Bollywood who emphasizes that sometimes just having your name on a piece of paper is enough for the average Indian woman to feel confident and secure in a country like ours where finding a place for women in society has become a challenge both emotionally and physically.

The movie is a fun one-time watch for anyone who likes modern Bollywood that serves you almost-reality with a side of unnecessary drama and avoidable jokes. But more importantly it is a necessary reminder to all Indian women desiring independence that their goals are best defined for themselves. Compromising is simply not an option anymore and Karina shows that equality is achievable with equal ownership – on paper and in love.

The post Netflix’s First Hindi Film Gets How Badly Women Want to Own Property appeared first on The Ladies Finger.

By Nisha Susan

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

The 1975 movie Julie begins as a tribute to the overheated and fecund. Julie, played by a ripe and coy Lakshmi, is dying to sleep with her best friend’s brother Shashi and eventually does. One night in her bed at home, she twists, writhes and moans ‘Oh Shashi.’ And from the darkness comes an annoyed and shrill ‘What man!’ from younger sister Irene. 12-year-old Sridevi making her Bollywood debut started as she meant to go along, constantly at odds with the boring and the boringly sincere.

Sridevi made us fall in love with the texture of artifice. Sequins, feathers, glitter. Masks. Transparent umbrellas. Wet saris. Snake dances and enormous headgear. Even her high, improbable voice was deliciously unstable, an auditory soufflé and a constant joke about femininity. It wasn’t accidental that Sridevi’s roles so often involved double roles and subterfuge – the twins Anju and Manju in Chaalbaaz, the mother and daughter roles of Lamhe and Khuda Gawah, the opening sequence as an Afghan man in Khuda Gawah, a whole costume store in Roop ki Rani Choron Ka Raja. So much so that the ostentatiously white and ‘simple’ clothes she wore in Chandni seem to wink their fancy dress quality disrupting the alpine Yash Chopra imagination.

The feminist potential of movies and female actors obviously lies beyond neatly emancipatory mein meri astitiv ko doondhni ja rahi hoon endings. Sridevi gave us, unlike any female actor I can think of, the emancipation of play. The dethroning of the serious, as Susan Sontag defined the nature of camp, existed in every sequin, every muscle of her incredibly mobile face, every flutter of those gol-gol eyes. For every girl schooling herself with teeth gritted to sundar-cum-susheel, Sridevi was jailbreak, a wobbly leap over the wall. You could teach Sridevi’s Anju Bharatanatyam but she might just tandav away from both home and balma.

To me, her closest cinematic ancestor always seemed to be Shammi Kapoor, in his all dancing, all singing, many costume change glory. And much like my late uncle Modi wanted to grow up to be either Shammi Kapoor or Shammi Kapoor’s driver, I wanted to grow up to be either Sridevi or one of Sridevi’s costumes.

Years later when I saw Sridevi in Gauri Shinde’s English Vinglish I was fascinated by the disappearance of the mobility, by her be-stilled face. She was playing a woman coincidentally called Shashi, a middle-aged woman newly in America and shocked that she was supposed to think less of herself because she didn’t speak English. Back then I wondered if “English Vinglish is the dystopic sequel about the distorted afterlives of Anju, Manju and all the other girls we so admired in school.”

In school, a smart friend told me that she had liked Tezaab so much because Anil Kapoor had done every crazy, violent thing he did in the movie for Madhuri Dixit. My school friend had been moved by the lung-filling idea of Madhuri inspiring so much sab kuch jala do in a man. But any sense of epic romance in Tezaab had passed me by. It hadn’t occurred to me at all. My memory of Tezaab goes straight from the numerical Madhuri to the surprisingly effective Chunkey Pandey lullaby. But in the department of Filmi Women Who Change the Destiny of Filmi Men I was more struck by the final frames of Chaalbaaz, where Sunny Deol and Rajinikanth both look bedazzled by their respective versions of Sridevi. They looked grateful and uncertain about how they had gotten so lucky. As grateful and uncertain as we feel today.

In school I read Filmfare and Stardust and Cineblitz and Nana, magazines that said things that would raise the hair of anybody used to today’s carefully processed celebrity pablum. In throwaway paragraphs they made homoerotic implications about Anil Kapoor and Jackie Shroff and moved on blithely to the next snippet garnered, they assured us, from behind a potted plant. One of those magazines wrote that Sridevi was inclined to wear ‘revealing’ clothes when she felt overweight and cover up when she was feeling thin. This was reported bitchily as if it was pathetic, but to my pre-teen self this promise of billowing fat seemed like a wonderful sleight of hand by someone who dressed like the magician’s assistant but was actually the magician.

And that feeling is what I remembered when I watched English Vinglish and concluded back then that “like a feathered hat, like a sequined headdress, Sridevi was making her stillness work to tell us that we have no idea what’s happening behind the blank faces of the sweet, trembling-voiced Shashis we think we know.”

Oh Shashi. What, man!

Co-published with Firstpost

The post In Praise of Sridevi’s Artifice appeared first on The Ladies Finger.

By Sharanya Gopinathan

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Jacqueline Fernandes. Still from Ek Do Teen via YouTube

Poor Jacqueline Fernandez.

All she did was dance enthusiastically to an admittedly quite average remake of the 1988 hit Ek Do Teen from the movie Tezaab, originally sung by Alka Yagnik and featuring Madhuri Dixit. My colleague at TLF perhaps put it most succinctly when he called the 4-minute long track a standard-issue item number and bad rip-off of Babuji and Jumma Chumma.

Now despite Shreya Ghoshal pulling off an Alka Yagnik really quite well here, all of Twitter took very grave objection to this new remake from Baaghi 2, particularly its choreography. Many folks seem to have spent most of the last two days venting their ire at the disappointing remake, with many social media commentators even going so far as to call it blasphemous, and a major insult to Madhuri Dixit.

As a die-hard Madhuri Dixit fan, I find this #EkDoTeen remix blasphemous and highly offensive. DO. NOT. TOUCH. THE. CLASSICS. I repeat, DO FUCKIN NOT!

— Shuchi Singh Kalra (@shuchikalra) March 19, 2018

We should praise the hideous new #EkDoTeen remix ‘dance’ video, since it is grotesque (and blasphemous) enough to kill the Bollywood remix trend altogether.

— Raja Sen (@RajaSen) March 19, 2018

Some of those crying blasphemy are surely being propelled by their extreme love for Madhuri, but my colleague points out the real blasphemy here. The original 7-minute-long song was supposed to tell a story of a month-long-wait, which turns into a years-long-wait. This new remake ends the story of longing quite abruptly at day 21! Isn’t it so very millenial of them, with our new-found Tinder timelines for love?

Anyway, even more amusing than the outrage on Twitter has been the reaction of Tezaab director N Chandra and the choreographer of the original song, Saroj Khan. In an extremely huffy interview to The Quint, Chandra said that he and Khan were both furious about the remake, so much so that Khan was provoked into bringing it up during a prayer meet held for the late Sridevi, which really does seem quite disrespectful to Sridevi, but okay. Perhaps Saroj Khan’s passions were justifiably aroused. She did, after all, win the first ever Filmfare award for choreography for Ek Do Teen, when Filmfare first introduced the category in 1989.

N Chandra went on to hilariously say that Jacqueline Fernandez doing a Madhuri Dixit number was like “turning the Central Park into a botanical garden”, which has to be my favourite analogy perhaps ever. Then he called the new remake of Ek Do Teen a sex act, and said Saroj Khan intended to sue the movie’s makers. I would love to know on what grounds an FIR can be filed here, and am convinced that whatever they are, they’re bound to be hilarious. This is of course also a slightly disturbing trend if it shapes up into anything, because I wasn’t aware we could sue the makers of bad item numbers for imaginary “crassness” or bad choreography.

It all does feel pretty bizarre, because if you watch the remake through a lens shorn of Madhuri-love, it really does feel like just another item number (it even looks like it was shot in the same room that RK-Madhuri’s Ghaghra (via Agra) was shot in, and also Chikni Chameli). Why hate on Jacqueline Fernandez because item numbers are gross?

The post Ek Do Teen: Why Hate on Jacqueline Fernandez Because Item Numbers are Gross? appeared first on The Ladies Finger.

By Ila Ananya

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

‘Anaarkali is an enormously brave character for a Bollywood story.’ Photo courtesy: Swara Bhaskar Twitter.

Anaarkali of Aarah, writer-director Avinash Das’ debut movie, leaves you incredibly happy when you walk out of the theatre. It seems to have everything — it wastes no time in justifying Anaarkali’s profession (she’s an erotic singer), or why a woman performing songs about sexual desire has every right to fight sexual harassment. Anaarkali’s last scene, one that can hardly be summarised as well as it is performed, is the most satisfying end to a movie that lets women speak.

Swara Bhaskar, who has got two Filmfare Award nominations for her roles in Tanu Weds Manu (2011), and Raanjhanaa (2013), and acted in the widely acclaimed Nil Battey Sannata (2016), makes Anaarkali of Aarah what it is.

Here’s what she told us about the movie, her detailed research, and Bollywood.

How did you become a part of the film, and what was it about the film that made you want to be involved?

I had a strange association with the film, because Avinash [Das] had first offered it to me only to read and comment on, because he knows I’m very open about all matters gender. There was another actress he wanted to give it to. When he said he had somebody else in mind, I remember thinking this guy is crack — I mean who asks an actress to proofread for another.

But I was hooked from the title itself. At that time it was called ‘Anaarkali Aarahwali’. I liked the idea of a world where a woman performs such songs. I also have family in Bihar, so I thought it would be an interesting area to explore.

The first time I read it, I asked Avinash if he would be open to comments, and we talked for four and a half hours. Then I read two more drafts before coming on board. He tried getting another actress but it didn’t work out; I don’t know what happened. After all that, I remember him telling me, “You know, now that you’ve read it so many times…” Now I’m feeling very smug after reading the reviews because I had been very excited by the project and thought it had a lot of potential. My parents are now telling me the movie is done and I should move on, but it matters to me so much because I’ve seen it through from an idea to a proper film.

I did the film because I think of myself as much as a Bollywood audience, as an actor, and Anaarkali is a one-of-a-kind character.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.What is it about Anaarkali’s character that excited you?

I thought Anaarkali was an enormously brave character for an Indian-Bollywood story. She is a woman who is an ultra-glamorous, very feisty, singing double meaning songs in the context of a society that isn’t friendly towards female self-expression, or even gender equality, safety – basic shit.

It’s such a deeply patriarchal world, and yet you have this character, and a performance form — a space where these women are in positions, not really of power, but they are cheered and desired. But this is only for the time they’re on stage. The moment they get down, and are walking down a road, they aren’t seen as anything. If anything happens, and there’s a small conflict, everything falls apart and you see the world of that male privilege. I thought it was an interesting fault line that these women live in, and for a movie to exist upon.

Did the script change a lot?

That’s Avinash’s most amazing quality as a writer-director. He wrote more than 20 drafts. He is able to take feedback constructively and convert it into better things.

We did argue a lot but Avinash was very open to me interpreting Anaarkali’s character in the way I wanted. So I would push the envelope with wanting her to be unapologetic. I wanted the audience to be uncomfortable with the morality of our society, simply because she is considered a ‘loose’, and ‘slutty’ girl.

For instance, in one draft of the script we discussed whether Anaarkali and Anwar [who she runs away to Delhi with], were or weren’t involved. I was saying I think they are involved, or that they will eventually be involved, but that’s not the point. I think it is okay to not fully explain that part of her.

What were the other kinds of discussions you had about any of the characters?

We talked a lot about Sanjay’s [Misra] character. He’s a very fine actor, and is so well-loved. My only concern was that all the sympathy could go to him [he plays the powerful VC who molests Anaarkali on stage] at the end of the movie. I didn’t want people coming out of the theatre and thinking, “Arre yaar, aisa bhi kuch nahi kiya tha [what he did wasn’t that big a deal].” Avinash, Ravinder Randhawa, who wrote the songs and is responsible for the gender politics, and I, would often spend time figuring out how to ensure that the sympathy remains with Anaarkali.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.The songs in the movie aren’t shot in the same way that item songs are…

Bollywood has used item numbers for glamour. In Anaarkali of Aarah, we’ve given the ‘item girl’ her own world and voice, a story, and a perspective. The songs aren’t shot in the same way as other Bollywood item songs. They’re shot in a very yes-we’re-watching-a-performance way.

One of my favourite scenes in the movie is when Anaarkali runs to Delhi, and says she wants to work.

I loved that moment too. I liked the dynamic of Anwar trying to be a ‘man’ and saying, “No I will work, you won’t sing here.” But he isn’t like that because he’s too young to take on the responsibilities that he thinks he can take on. And Anaarkali is not the person who will stay home either.

There’s actually a scene that was cut. In that scene, Anwar sees that she’s had a break down. Reshma, the house owner, tells him something like, “Obviously she’s going to be like this, she just sits there and does nothing. I told her I’ll get her a job washing dishes or doing jhadoo pocha, but she says, ‘Anwar won’t like it’. What else do you expect if she’s at home all day doing nothing?”

That interaction felt so good to hear, because it was a conversation about a woman wanting to work, and a performer saying she wants to perform.

Did you do a lot of research for the movie?

I went to Aarah looking for women who were involved in this performance. That’s how I found the Orchestra Party [a group of performers]. In some sense, they were the real Anaarkali of Aarah. We became friends, and I started chatting with them. I listened to their songs and recorded them. That’s where I picked up Anarkali’s body language, and language, from observation.

Of course, the songs they sing are a lot more suggestive than anything we sing. I remember when I sat down with someone who knew the language, to try and understand the lyrics. I was like, “Okay then”, and died of shock.

Also, in the movie, Anaarkali has more agency, and I do wonder sometimes if we’ve created a hero, in some sense. But I guess that’s alright as well; it’s a liberty we took for a reason.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Swara Bhaskar as Anaarkali in a still from Anaarkali of Aarah.

What were some of the interesting things you found in your research?

I remember two things that influenced the way I built up Anaarkali.

When I asked Munni Devi, the head of Orchestra Party, to sing some songs, she sang an early number of hers. It was a sweet song about a young bride complaining — one of the lines was like, ‘Mohe chota mila de bhartar, jawani kaise kati.’ ‘Bhartar’ means husband, and the woman is essentially saying “My husband is small.” When I asked her about newer songs, she said, “No, I’ll sing you a Nirgun Bhajan.” My jaw was on the floor. She actually sang me a Nirgun Bhajan. This became a pointer to peg Anaarkali’s character on, because I realised that whatever the world thinks of these women, they see themselves as artists.

The second thing was that I’d wanted to watch them perform. The show was to start at midnight, and Munni Devi had told me to come at 9:30 pm. They were all dressed up; she was in an orange sari, and decked up with a lot of gold from top to bottom. She was looking harassed when I arrived. When I asked her what had happened, she said the girls who were supposed to perform hadn’t shown up. They had left two days ago, for another performance. Munni Devi found that it was because the organisers of the previous event had simply stopped the women from leaving.

I couldn’t imagine this. As an actor and performer, I was used to working on shifts, and that’s what we get paid for. I can’t imagine not being allowed to leave. It made me realise that however feisty Anarkali is, she also lives in a world that’s extremely volatile and male.

What is it like to make Anaarkali of Aarah in an industry that is misogynistic?

I don’t think Bollywood is consciously misogynistic. I think it’s misogynistic and sexist in the blind and unconscious sort of way that I guess all our fathers or brothers are.

Bollywood is like this about so many things, like the stereotyping of South Indians or sardars. It’s a very unthinking approach to what you’re doing. When you’re trying to make a formula film for instance, you’re constantly wondering what will get the audience to laugh or clap. That’s the reason item numbers are there—hasi aaegi, taliyan bajegi. I think it’s changing a bit, but not a lot.

What kind of responses do you expect to the movie?

I did believe it would do well. I’m curious about how men react to it. I felt that one response would be hopeful, and I can see why I’m getting that from a lot of women, but I also hoped it would make some people uncomfortable. In my mind that’s also a good thing. It would encourage questions.

This piece was originally published on 9 March, 2017. 

The post ‘Bollywood is Blindly Sexist the Way Our Fathers Are.’ Swara Bhaskar on Male Privilege, Working Women and Playing “Brave” Characters in Movies appeared first on The Ladies Finger.

By Aneela Z. Babar

Originally published on 6 May 2014. 

Earlier this year I had my very own ‘Madhuri Dixit moment’. After five years of being the “Bhabhi ji jinko thoda bahut interior decoration ka shauq hai”, it was time to start discussing potential projects in the world of words and art, defying The Pram In The Hall. In a development that I will hereby declare fortuitous, I received a request in my email inbox to speak on the occasion of Women’s Day to students of a business studies program. Keeping in mind my academic training, the organizers offered me a choice between Conflict and Voice (Gender in Politics) and/or Redefining Feminism in Recent Years. While I was still wrapping my head around these two, I received another request from one of the conference organisers (this was someone who knew me from another life), asking whether I was interested in Women and Bollywood. Social theory, power politics, third wave feminism, positive masculinities! Or having a lot of fun searching for Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham GIFs for my presentation? I later told the group assembled that I had finally experienced my own “Sita/Gita challenge”. They looked kind of young, so I quickly modified it to “my Anju/Manju conundrum”. Some in the audience still looked bewildered so I helpfully added “You know, like Meera and Veronica from Cocktail?” (Oh the look of relief on their faces that I was finally speaking their language.) Hindi cinema has been quite consistent in its portrayal of the South Asian woman ‘s sex aur sanskar ki kashmakash.

The post What Hindi Cinema Speaks About When It Speaks About Women: Part 1 appeared first on The Ladies Finger.

By Aneela Z Babar

Originally published on 7 MAy 2014.

(Note: This is a two-part primer on Women in Hindi films. Part 1 elaborated on Women in Love and Family Politics in Hindi movies. For more jolly braininess read it before you read this one.)

JeevanDhara – On The Real Reel Life Worlds of Women Watching Cinema

I have been candid about my consumption of Barjatya’s repertoire, but what about the rest of us? Does the ‘female film watching public’ toe Leblanc’s (1999)[5] observations regarding housewives encountering the political world – that is, women being conscious of acting in a manner that is neither a complete submission to a power system that dominates them nor a fair execution of what they want to do and believe that they should do? Do women buy the film ticket for a glimpse of other lives (encountering their dilemmas)  in other worlds—just  as their men watched The Angry Young Man during the Emergency years fighting the fights they may have yearned to take up, but never did? In women consuming Hindi cinema, I see parallels of what one reads about women and shrine culture. Women visit places of pilgrimage to have a good rant, attaining catharsis if they are very lucky, leaving the space hopeful that benign powers will come to their rescue. However, they will never question their unequal access to a happier life or entertain any aspirations of “subverting” the system. And as this GIF shows, Picture Ke Aakhir Tak Sab Theek Ho hi Jayega. Happy endings.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

However, I will always be grateful to Barjatya films for conveying to us as ideal Indian femininity a character who exhibits no agency when it comes to her life choices, leaving it to a pet dog to choose her destiny for her. (Like in Hum Aapke Hai Kaun, where Tuffy delivers the female protagonist’s letter to the ‘wrong’ brother, which somehow made things right in the end).

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Zakhmi Aurat, Mother India, Maa Tujhe Salaam – Myriad Faces of Bharat Mata

You, dear Reader, may come up with your own examples from Hindi cinema that will negate the gloomy picture I am portraying, but as it is for religious texts, any discussion on this subject is tantamount to pulling one film reference/religious edict out from our hat which is sympathetic towards women, only to be challenged by another reference/ruling that our religious discourses and Hindi cinema can be quite regressive when it comes to women. For as it is with religious discourse, the overarching language will always be one that explains gender difference as biological determinism. And though different interpretations and traditions within Hindi cinema make it hard to generalize, it can be said that overall, our film scripts are sex-affirming, adhering to cultural and religious stereotypes.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

So naysayers will come up with their “women driven” Hindi film lists; a very dear friend suggested (amongst others) Trishul and Deewar – and quotes powerful lines from the two films where the mother shapes (or tries to change) the male protagonist’s outlook towards the tussle between good and bad (in both films Amitabh Bachchan plays the Angry Young Son to this determined woman). In Trishul, the mother makes the son promise that he will take revenge on her behalf: “Main tujhe rehem ke saaye mein na palne doongi… Taaki tap tap ke tu faulad bane, maa ki aulad bane… Main doodh na bakhshungi tujhe ye yaad rahe.” In Mother India of course, we have the larger-than-life Mother who takes it upon herself to rid Bharat Mata of the bad son.

However, these powerful mums are not as genre-defying as they may appear at first glance. Rousseau[6] may have been the first to honour Spartan mothers by reproducing tales that constructed the Spartan woman as a mother who reared her sons to be sacrificed on the altar of civic need. Such a martial mother was pleased to hear that her son ‘died in a manner worthy of (her)self, his country, and his ancestors than if he had lived for all time a coward’. Sons who failed to measure up were reviled. Nationalism and militarism are built on the edifice of motherhood, its pillars are women who exhort their sons and brothers to take up arms to defend them. So in Hindi cinema, too-good patriotic women are willing to sacrifice their men; for in the end these wars and revenge dramas, and taking up arms are all about their (the women’s) protection – of course no one asks these women whether they want to be protected or not.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Some of you may also offer as examples of the New Indian Woman in Hindi cinema, the female business figure in the power suit. She was there in Corporate, an Amazon, transcending gender differences in smartly tailored business suits. However, Bipasha Basu’s Nishigandha Dasgupta becomes a true heroine only when she makes a “womanly sacrifice”, giving up prestige and her career for love. She has the audience sympathy when she is shown as a mother negotiating court kutchery; shorn now of her blazers and power dressing, she wears a behenji cotton suit as she goes about her business. Some years later when Sarkar Raj was made, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan agreed to play the role of a ‘NRI corporate woman’. The publicity material has her “playing a corporate woman named Anita Rajan. Anita is the CEO of an international company, and comes to India to build a power plant”. While the press releases lavish praise on Amitabh Bachchan and his son Abhishek’s energy and dynamism, how everyone is looking forward to watching this film as it is now a virtual powerhouse with the two talented performers coming together and sharing space. There is also some speculation whether the scriptwriters will ever disclose the real-life parallels, considering many believe that Bachchan Sr and Jr play the Thackeray father and son in this film project. However, when it comes to Aishwarya, the publicity material about her revolves around “Designing Ash’s look in Sarkar Raj”. Falguni Peacock, the fashion designer, speaks about her meetings with Ash: “It was Aishwarya’s idea to wear a tulsi bead around her neck to show her love towards her country.” The designer goes on to speak about Aishwarya’s makeup and hair, sharing their thoughts on the colours, the fabrics, denim jackets that they had to source to make Aishwarya look like an NRI.

And lest we forget, the Bachchan men and certain other male actors (and protagonists) grow up to be thespians. Women actors become divas. We infantilise them, for divas throw tantrums and have nakhras. Thespians have gravitas and age gracefully.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

But yes, there is defiance when it comes to these images (as there was earlier too in what was classified as parallel cinema) in what now is now defined as Multiplex Features – these spaces emerging as the new “parallel” cinema with new stories taking up myriad readings of feminism, hopefully the precursors of narratives of change. Today, however, I continue to see agency defined as one where the female protagonist will insist that she is ‘doing auraton ke kaam’ (what women do).

A closer examination of stories such as Lunchbox show that though the female protagonist might not have acceded completely to the power structures within the situation/communities she is placed in, she may have succeeded in managing to negotiate her own space and agency within the areas and stories available.

And the Widhwa Maa Andhi Behen I wrote about in Part 1? How exciting that they have been taken over by a comic book (published by Pop Culture Publishing) and are now vigilante heroines. About time women got their happily ever after.

Aneela Z Babar divides her time writing on gender, religion, militarism, popular culture and telling people her boy is toilet trained, sleeping through the night. She is in Delhi for the year with her husband and a boy who is toilet trained, sleeping through the night.

[5] Leblanc, Robin ( 1999) Bicycle Citizens: The Political World Of The Japanese Housewife, University of California Press, Berkeley

[6] Rousseau, Jacques ( 1968) Letter to D’Alembert and Writings for the Theater, Cornell University Press, New York

The post What Hindi Cinema Speaks About When It Speaks About Women: Part 2 appeared first on The Ladies Finger.

By Aashika Ravi

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

I have become somewhat of a Poo these days. Photo Courtesy: Still from K3G

9 Songs is an occasional series in which people mark major memories in their lives with the songs that accompanied them.

1. Hips Don’t Lie- Shakira

The year was 2006. We were in Riyadh. My father had just bought a new supercool SUV called Rav4 and we were testing out the car stereo by playing one of those 50 Greatest Party Hits CDs that were all the rage during that time. There we were, in the parking lot of a supermarket, bobbing up and down in our seats excitedly while we sang along to Hips Don’t Lie. I felt a little dirty enjoying the song because the lyrics were so explicit, but at least we were in it together. When we left Riyadh, we lost the car, and the feeling of being a family too somewhere along the way. The next time I felt that was ten years later, at the dining table with my mum while we patiently watched our phone screen, waiting for my father and sister to settle a silly argument in their separate tiny screens- one in Congo, one in Canada and the two of us, here in India.

2. Sai Baba Aarti

My tone-deaf father’s love for religious karaoke formed the soundtrack of my childhood. So the importance given to Sai Baba in our household is directly proportionate to the difficult times our family is going through. When we were in a particularly tight spot financially, so many years ago, I remember a frantic amma and appa reading the same worn copy of the Sai Satcharitam. The rules were simple: Start on a Thursday and finish by the next Wednesday.

As an agnostic, my middle-class parents whose middle name was “Safe” and their brief flirtation with the wrong side of the law for Baba half-amuses and half-embarrasses me. Every Thursday, we’d visit Mr. Bhagyanathan aka Pakhi (a Sri-Lankan Tamilian)’s house, complete with soundproof curtains and a cut-off time to enter. What we did inside was fairly innocuous- singing bhajans and doing a Sai Aarti, but in Saudi Arabia, where we were living at the time, it was forbidden to publicly practice our faith. How edgy.

Years of living in the Gulf meant digging our claws into whatever remnants of our culture we could retain, from the makeshift shrine on our mini-fridge to being forced into attending Carnatic music classes for six years at least, alongside my sister who was magically good at everything. This is the part where I divulge that I meanwhile had inherited the tone-deafness from my father, and you all feel sorry for me.

3. I Want It That Way- Backstreet Boys

In sixth grade, when I returned to Bangalore, I found myself smack dab in the middle of a Backstreet Boys phase, a tad bit too late (this was 2008). I remember thinking I was so cool for listening to English music, picking out a single girl in class who I had deemed just as cool, and asking her confidently if she listened to Backstreet Boys. She laughed in my face, and I realized with horror that Backstreet Boys was not considered good music by any stretch. What followed was a few years peppered with embarrassing moments like pretending to like Jonas Brothers and telling my crush that “I hated heavy metal bands like Nickelback.” Naturally, he mocked my poor knowledge of cool English music while I stood there hoping the earth would swallow me whole, but now I laugh at it as I proudly listen to K-pop, completely unironically.

4. Deewana Hai Dekho- Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham

K3G gave us everything from a Desi Mean Girls to unbelievable fashion disasters and fodder for ridicule for the next 15 years, and for that I am eternally grateful. It’s so built into my everyday life that I casually quote from it (Rahul, take a chill pill ya!), sing along perfectly with back-up vocals to any song from it (even the oft under-appreciated but lyrical masterpiece that is Banno ki Saheli) and steal comebacks from it (“Movie tonight?” “Tell me how it was!”). It’s an exercise in emotions, every one of which starts and ends in cringe, whether it was Jaya Bacchan’s mournful “Pati Parmeshwar hai” spiel or the domestic help literally worshipping their employers.

Most importantly, I have somewhat morphed into a Poo these days, complete with self-love bordering on obnoxious and a tendency to coin lingo that only I use, and I have her to thank for not feeling the least bit bad about it.

5. Called Out in the Dark- Snow Patrol

Every woman at some point in her life, should go to an all-girls school or college, even if for the briefest of periods. Simply because. In my two years at MCC, I found myself in a girl-group unlike one I had ever been in. Our biggest drama was that three of us liked each other more than we liked the others. It was devastating and friendship-breaking in the way that only sixteen-year-olds’ fights are. A summer break later, we were all best friends again.

For a friend A’s birthday, two of us orchestrated an entire wedding at Cubbon Park with a life-sized stuffed doll with a balloon for a face, all based off a small inside joke. She hated it and threw flowers at us from the bouquet but eventually agreed to walk down the aisle while five-six men ogled us from the other side of the fence in the way that only men who see a group of girls doing something fun do.

This song was a mutual favourite, so we changed the lyrics for her and it was very appropriately retitled “Called Out to Cubbon Park”. Today we cringe at the memory but also feel wistful about the times when friend’s birthdays were events that required months of planning, and not just phone calls made in a hurry.

Transatlanticism- Death Cab for Cutie

I chose Transatlanticism, but I’d like it to be known that there are so many other Death Cab for Cutie songs that awaken a part of me I didn’t know existed. It’s the band I dared to call my favourite, the one I bonded with my best friend and soul sister over, the one I hold close to my heart like a secret and the one whose lyrics enchant me to this day.

My best friend had somehow managed to miss both our birthdays on an overseas trip, and when we met, we exchanged our gifts in the back of a ratty cab. She’d gotten me a CD for one of two of my favourite Death Cab albums, Plans and I’d gotten her printed cards with Death Cab artwork that I’d stayed up all night making and wished I could’ve kept for myself.

Whether Ben Gibbard is singing about gentrification in Gold Rush or just plain ol’ heartbreak in A Lack of Color, every word and every syllable is meant to hurt where you hit. Picture these lyrics from Marching Bands of Manhattan and cry like I did. “Sorrow drips into your heart through a pin hole/Like a faucet that leaks, and there is comfort in the sound/But while you debate half-empty or half-full/It slowly rises, your love is gonna drown.” Gibbard could sing The Alphabet and it would mesmerize me.

7. Something in the Rain- Rachel Yamagata

In the past few months, I have discovered what it’s like to live with retired people and by extension, what it’s like to live on terms not dictated by the tick tick ticking of a clock. I have moved out of my Type-A 50-something parents’ house to a 60-something relatives’ house and imagine my surprise when I found out that clocks here serve no other purpose than wall décor.

As a result, I have traded my own Type A personality for lazy morning walks and showers that last however long I want them to, and ironically enough, I feel some renewed kind of life taking residence in me, even if it is one of a retired cat lady.

Yamagata’s Something in the Rain is my #1 background music recommendation for soaking in a bathtub. Every time I sing this song I feel like Esthero’s ghost has suddenly possessed me, or I am transformed into a Carla Bruni crooning “Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman, giving all your love to just one man” as if I have some hundred mans to distribute my love among. I am even ready to forgive Bangalore’s now it’s sunny, now it’s rainy, now it’s sunny and it’s raining weather if I can have those small moments of pretending I’m in a Korean drama, clutching at my umbrella daintily and hopping and skipping along the roads.

8. 99 Luftballons- Nena

I don’t ever distinctly remember hearing this song or watching its video, but I feel like I came built-in with the lyrics to the English version. Recently, a meme on Instagram said that 99 Luftballons was the German Despacito and I can’t stop thinking about how it must’ve defined the postmodern angst we all fancied we carried around.

For a while in college, my anxiety and depression took turns in dragging me down, and I was convinced I had been chosen for some cruel Groundhog Day simulation when I rediscovered Nena’s iconic song. Over time I began talking about my feelings and made some huge changes to keep them in check. But every time I listened to 99 Luftballons, it took on a new meaning.

I like to picture my anxiety as a Luftballon (in the English version, it has become a red balloon). Sometimes, I have been the balloon, misunderstood and unassuming, sometimes I have been the General, misunderstanding everything and happily jumping to conclusions and sometimes, the jet fighter who fancied himself Captain Kirk, ready to show my anxiety its place. Every time I struggle with it, I try to do what Nena tells me, “Denk’ an dich und lass’ ihn fliegen” (I think of you and let them fly). This is my favourite retelling of Nena’s story- one where I am both the luftballon, and the one who realizes it can be harmless and lowers their gun.

9. Therapy- All Time Low

My favourite spot in college was not under a shady tree, or at a cool kid canteen, but the inside of a friend E’s little red Nano, fondly called Paddy (short for Paddington). Paddy was our chauffeur for everything from cozy friend gatherings to crazy parties while I passed out in the backseat, our personal getaway car from Puke Central.

Apart from being “a misunderstood bad boy” in his words, E moonlights as the most wonderful person I have ever met. He was also the only person in my immediate vicinity who shared my love for early 2000s pop rock, and the one who always offered Paddy’s services and most importantly, his time whenever I was feeling low.

The day I broke up with an ex, E dropped me home because I was feeling too vulnerable to do my usual “No, I don’t want to inconvenience anyone” dance. All the while, we played All Time Low and All-American Rejects songs, singing at the top of our voices, and at the end of the drive, I felt a little less like the world was ending and a little more like happy.

This happened many times over the course of three years and every time, I was surprised by the cathartic release that shitty pop rock provides when you’re frustrated. Recently, E has been having a hard time in another city and I am counting the days till I can drive up there in a Paddy of my own with Damned if I Do Ya blaring through the speaker.

The post 9 Songs That Tell The Story Of My Life: Gulf Edition appeared first on The Ladies Finger.

By Nisha Susan

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Choreographer Ganesh Acharya with actor Prabhu Deva

You know that story? The one about that super senior Bollywood actor who greeted a woman journalist in his trailer by dropping his pants and asking her to suck his penis? Or that one about the star son who was shooting in Delhi and announced that he would not do a single scene one morning unless an overweight young woman AD (who he had been ‘pranking’ for days) ran up and down the hill they were on ten times? Then there is that story about that so senior but so junior seeming actor who punished an extra who was had demonstrated reluctance to sleep with him by rubbing zandu balm or the equivalent into her vagina. Then there is the story of your cousin or mine who quit working because of her boss assuming that her divorced status means she should be available to him. Actually, I have two cousins who have that story and one of those involves (peripherally) a Malayali movie star. Then there is the story of the women of a Bangalore garment factory workers union which decided to split rather than stay with the faction that said that sexual harassment from men of their own caste and class should be maaf. No movie stars involved. You know these stories and so do I.

Then there is the plain evidence that Bollywood like the rest of the nation is a casteist, classist, sexist workplace, only with sequins and good music. Then there is Tanushree Dutta’s story, so familiar in it its contours, so credible that you would have to work very hard to disbelieve it. But oh hello we have Ganesh Acharya who seems to have taken to heart and messed up the Chimamanda Adichie maxim that there is danger in one single story.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

In case you missed the Tanushree Dutta story, here is what she said. This week in an interview with Zoom TV she said that back in 2008 she reported being sexually harassed by Nana Patekar on the sets of Horn ‘OK’ Pleassss during what was originally meant to be a solo dance number and no one supported her. Dutta’s account is corroborated by journalist Janice Sequeira who was on the sets that day.

Here is what dance choreographer Acharya said when confronted by the allegations this week after the Zoom TV interview.  First he denied any memory of this ‘old incident.’ Then he remembered that the shoot was held up for 3 hours but not why. Then he remembered that it was meant to be a duet all along and Patekar hadn’t horned in to the shoot to feel her up, as Dutta says. Then he remembered that there was no unnecessary inclusion of vulgar moves and that it was ‘pure dance’. Then he remembered the most important thing. That Patekar would never do anything evil.  Acharya said, “he’s a very sweet person, he can never do that. He is very helpful and he has actually helped a lot of artistes in the industry, he can never do anything like that.”

Now if you argue that Acharya is the “I don’t want any kind of trouble, boss” kind of fellow, one could ask why didn’t Acharya immediately say I don’t know anything and run away? Why instead does he have this verbal diarrhea of sycophancy? Abey, in what planet is it a credible claim that Nana Patekar is so ‘sweet’ and Tanushree Dutta is not sweet?

There are many mysteries in the universe but none that seemed as mysterious when I was younger than the Fevicol bond of male solidarity in the face of a woman claiming injustice.  In class 12, my teachers declared two months before the exams that they would stop teaching my class because of my male classmates’ terrible behaviour. A couple classmates and I confronted S, one of the ringleaders and then complained to a teacher that we shouldn’t be penalised for the behaviour that he fuelled. My male friend T, benchmate, fellow nerd and fellow hater of S, astonished me by suddenly piping up in support of S and contesting what the girls had been saying. My world was rocked forever.

In Symbiosis, Pune where I studied journalism, a classmate felt up another classmate’s behind while they stood in the admin office. The ranks of men in our class, even those who despised him, closed like something in Troy to first deny that anything had happened and then to say that she must have liked it if it had happened and then again to say, who would touch her ass, she was so fat and dark.

One of the most awe-inspiring recent quotes in this regard came from the White House where an anonymous official told journalists that to permit a hearing of woman who said that the Supreme Court judicial candidate Brett Kavanaugh tried to rape her is to “If somebody can be brought down by accusations like this, then you, me, every man certainly should be worried.” One has to be grateful to this American government for the clarity of their cruelty. No confusion at all.

Male solidarity is everywhere. I observed it in the wild recently.  Last week, a man began to harass me at a children’s park when I was at the swings with my infant son. When I yelled at him to get lost, he remained smirky and unbothered. (Please note that he had two daughters roughly around six and four playing close by in the park.) In a moment that took me straight back to high school when the world changed forever, the harasser and the balding father who was pushing his toddler daughter in the swing next to me exchanged smug smiles. Total strangers one minute, best friends in the face of women who want them to go the f**k away.

While young women actors have come out in robust support of Dutta, actors like Amitabh Bachchan, Aamir Khan and Salman Khan have scuttled away at high speed when asked about the allegations. None of them know anything, have seen anything and will not comment on thing that they don’t know the veracity of, they say. Salman Khan mumbled something about a legal team like he was taking god’s name. Sure ya, waise you folks comment on things and do things only after reading legal affidavits and polygraph test results, right?

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Actor Nana Patekar

Understandably, the men of Bollywood want to stick their fingers in their ears and sing Lalalalaa in case what they are hearing is the sound of the whirlwinds reaped from the winds they sown. But instead they will be using their phone-swiping fingers and lie-telling mouths and fat wallets behind the scenes to in case Tanushree inspires others. Back in 2008, when she first raised her complaint, the Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena lobbied producers’ associations to blacklist her. In the matter of clarity in cruelty the MNS was a full decade ahead of the White House. Dutta says that back then, “Nana Patekar called up this political party who has a reputation of vandalism and causing damages on the sets. And the producers called up the media to gain publicity from the whole situation. On one side we had the media and on the other side we had the political party workers. They vandalised my car completely. So, I got off my vanity van and headed towards our vehicle… If the police had come even 5 minutes late, I shudder to think what could’ve happened to me or my parents who were accompanying me in the car,” she said. Also back then the Association of Motion Picture and TV Programme Producers (AMPTPP), demanded Dutta pay Rs 65 million rupees to compensation to the producer of Horn ‘OK’ Pleassss for defaming him. Talk about unity in diversity.

Now in 2018, the problem is having deprived Tanushree of work for so long, the men of Bollywood can’t threaten to take her work away.

Over the steady stream of revelations in Hollywood, one constant thread has been specific explanations for why talented actors, writers, producers you and I admired suddenly disappeared. They pushed back against harassment and assault and suddenly they had no jobs. The stories of all the rebellious women who lost work in our film industries because of the male whisper network? We will only find out years from now. Or maybe not.

In Kerala it is highly likely that the alleged criminal mastermind Dileep bet 100 percent of his fortune on the silence of the woman actor whose abduction and molestation he is charged with having organised. He should have guessed what was coming. Long before she had acquired the reputation of telling the emperor that he was so, so naked, ente ponnu bro. And it is the sliver of light she provided by refusing to be rendered invisible that gave other women actors in Kerala the courage to organise formally and make demands formally. And the response of the Malayali male actors have been transparent. Now that their privilege of barbaric pillage among their female colleagues might just go away they have closed ranks. It is why I will never watch a Mohanlal movie again.

You know that story? The lone hero who has lost everything and now has the power to burn everything down? This is the story of Tanushree Dutta. This is the story that the men of Bollywood have seen in a million movies of their own. And that is why the chickens are sticking together, not a peep or a cluck but silently singing yeh dosti hum nahi todenge in their heads.

Co-published with Firstpost.

The post Ganesh Acharya, Tanushree Dutta And the Eternal Disco Dance of Male Solidarity appeared first on The Ladies Finger.

By Aashika Ravi

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Badku and Chutku’s relationship is an MTV Roadies episode on drugs. Photo Courtesy: Still from Youtube

Those of you who grew up in the nineties and were forcefully subjected to Sooraj Barjatya family movies of the time (read: diabetes inducing Hum Saath Saath Hain kind), you would have had many reasons to go: life is not like that! And a simple reason might have been this: siblings don’t get along like that.

Remember our collective confusion at this happy family where siblings actually looked out for each other? Whether it was Laddu’s lifelong mission to reunite his estranged bro with his parents in K3G or Max beating up guys that flirt with his sister in Josh. Sure, siblings get along. In the way that Gaitonde and Bunty get along in Sacred Games. (You know which one you are. There is no in between.)

And yes, you’ll point me to the occasional Deewaar, with its nuanced portrayal of sibling rivalry but for every Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander where Ratan and Sanju have moments of healthy competition and admiration, I raise you a bouncing Rani Mukherjee and Preity Zinta duo in matching fluffy yellow towels in Har Dil Jo Pyaar Karega, or a sensuous first thing in the morning flash mob featuring Kareena Kapoor, her two sisters and colour co-ordinated satin togas in Yaadein.

If you have longed for something you could relate to in the representation of sisters, if you have simply wanted a pair of girls of shared parentage but not identical clothing, here is some hope. Vishal Bharadwaj’s Pataakha is a game-changer if you want to feel better about your messy, complicated and disastrous relationship with your sister. And you will, because Badku and Chutku’s relationship is an MTV Roadies episode on drugs. It’s Sooraj Barjatya’s seventh circle of hell.

While I may not have encountered any sisters whose raison d’etre was to spite the other, Badku and Chutku’s relationship is a shade closer to reality than the sugary sweet sisterhood of Bollywood. Sisterhood that revolves around sacrificial passing the parcel games with the hero like in Har Dil Jo Pyaar Karega, or gushing over cute boys like in Bride and Prejudice. As far as portraying depth in sibling relationships goes, Badku and Chutku’s hate to love, love to hate interaction is Bollywood sister goals. Where other Bollywood sisters spontaneously burst into song and dance, Badku (Radhika Madan) and Chutku (Saanya Malhotra) are different. Their preferred interactions with each other are impromptu wrestling matches in the school ground.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

The sisters are united only by their love for cigarettes. Photo Courtesy: Still from Youtube

Imagine the carefully choreographed fight sequences in every action movie ever. Badku and Chutku’s fights about bumming each other’s cigarettes occur with the same intensity and frequency. Never before have I been so enthralled by multiple angles of two girls clutching at each other’s hair with this ferocity, and I blame Bollywood for not championing the cause of girl fights as vociferously as they show their boys fighting. Give me more scrappy brawls with biting and kicking, I say. That’s how we would all fare in a fight, let’s be real.

For those of you who underestimate the intensity of a girl fight, here’s my favourite Tumblr post to remind you that girls fighting is some serious beef, yo. Of course, the only one brave enough to break up this girl fight is their father, a pitiful Vijay Raaz (credited as Bechara Bapu) who gets tossed aside into some fresh kheechad while the girls continue to spar. He learns his lesson soon enough, and grants them permission to duel to the death in the final scene. A+ parenting is respectfully making way for survival of the fittest.

The sisters even mix it up a little with a dance-off during a pre-wedding ceremony which has me convinced that I witnessed the birth of a new fighting style whose signature moves include “accidentally” elbowing your opponent while twerking and putting them in a friendly stranglehold with a dupatta while several aunties cheer on, clueless.

Apart from literal mudslinging, you best believe that they engage in their fair share of petty psychological warfare too. Badku shows off a cool city girl haircut, and Chutku has to immediately up her ante with a wardrobe makeover and a personal procession to hype her up. Badku gets reprimanded for an outfit choice and wastes no time in ratting her sister out for having a boyfriend. Take notes, Bollywood. Sisters thrive on spite, mind games and whataboutery, not just synchronised dancing.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Photo Courtesy: Still from Youtube

I’d choose Badku and Chutku’s reunion after realising they’ve married brothers over the reunion of Rahul and Laddu in K3G any day. It’s got all the same ingredients — the slow motion walk towards each other and the crying. The rightful horror of realising you have to live under the same roof as your sibling yet again is just a bonus.

Their only solidarity is in forbidden cigarettes and paradoxically enough, a conspiracy to separate their husbands. This they accomplish masterfully and the result is two brothers once like Salman and Salman in Judwaa, now a Badku and Chutku themselves, yanking each other’s hair out.

Once they are out of each other’s lives, we expect the two sisters to finally be content. But soon enough, their lack of an outlet for their frustration leads to them developing psychosomatic disorders — Badku becomes mute while Chutku loses her eyesight. The climax is akin to that of a Shakespearean comedy, and there was a moment after the village trickster Dipper ominously declares that the only solution is ‘yuddh’ that I thought the film would veer away from the unpredictable, but it ends in a cliched lesson learnt and hugs all around.

I had hoped that Bhardwaj would stick with the arch-nemesis narrative, but ultimately, he takes an unconventional route to deliver a similar message as a KJo or Barjatya: “It’s all about loving (to hate) your family.”

That said, Badku and Chutku’s relationship is a step beyond your average brutal sibling rivalry, in that I wouldn’t have been surprised if one had killed the other and felt no remorse after. In the movie, others compare them to India and Pakistan, always inventing reasons to fight it out, to a point where they are purposeless without active hatred for each other. Where else would you see a movie that gleefully fails a kind of reverse Bechdel Test: the only real interactions that take place between the men of the movie are about Badku and Chutku’s legendary rivalry.

Co-published with Firstpost.

The post Pataakha is the Accurate Portrait of Sibling Rivalry Between Sisters We’ve All Been Waiting For appeared first on The Ladies Finger.