Monday, April 6, 2015

Deepika’s ‘My’ Choice?

Well, what was she even thinking when she agreed to be a part of this video? That she would gather a whole new bunch of admirers? Or, that she would have a larger fan-base for her films? No, maybe she was thinking that all of a sudden she would be transformed into the voice of women oppression and liberation all at once; that she would share some handsome space with feminists across the globe and win international accolades. Yes, what was she even thinking?

Deepika Padukone is the last celebrity who should have been a part of the video ‘My Choice’. In fact, what idea does Vogue, a brand catering to the elite, have about women’s issues. And Homi Adjania, can you please stick to making top-selling masala-films please?

I truly fail to understand why women’s issues have not even been touched upon in the video. Why no one talks about grave social issues like rape, dowry, acid-attack, molestation, female foeticide, education, and so on. Brought up in a privileged family, what does Miss Padukone know about the traumas that women much less privileged and fortunate than her face each day of their lives. They have no proper meals, no rags to cover themselves, and no alleys outside or inside the house to hide themselves when predators come in search, and she talks about her right to go ‘naked’. Such irony! In a country where the body of a woman is at stake and at peril, how frivolous it is to gloat about the soul. Where women have to prove their virginity before being deflowered by a ‘husband’ they hardly even know; where they are mere objects of lust; and where they are considered whores if they have more than one lover in a lifetime; it is unbelievable the way Deepika pronounces her right to have sex.

Wow, so it is done. And I have been able to mirror the thoughts of those who are so forcefully and ruthlessly tearing apart a video that talks about ‘My Choice’.

Firstly, it is my choice to like, hate, detest, or adore the video. I don’t need people preaching me what to do. Millions of girls out there, maybe young and urban, but nonetheless millions, chose to support the video and were forced to hide in their closets when women started attacking women’s choices, yet again. When the older, ‘knowledgeable’, and righteous women took to social media to destroy the liberty of a select few who wanted to make a point.

Secondly, women’s issues are not only about rapes and murders and lesser privileged women. It is also about what urban, independent, and privileged women see as issues. Why do we fail to understand a simple point that needs and desires are different for different sets of people? While some may seek education as their right, others may choose sex. It is what one doesn’t have that one vies for.

The contention is that even educated and privileged women cannot speak their minds. This does show the deplorable society that we live in. I understand the right to be safe and treated equal, but doesn’t the freedom to express supersede these needs? Why does a woman like Deepika fail to garner the respect and admiration of a society when she talks about mental health or her choices? Why does she need to be battered and bruised and victim of some grave mishap to be able to voice herself? I heard someone comparing her with Saina Nehwal. Isn’t that extremely naïve of us? Deepika is not trying to win admirers here or the world over. In the video, she is just another woman, like many of us are (though my dear feminists would chop off their heads rather than agree) and she is merely speaking her mind and what she believes in, though it may have been scripted.

More so, the video has nothing to do with men. Why are the men feeling offended then? And their caretakers (read the women who are staying up nights finding ways to defend men and demean the women featuring in and supporting the video), do they even realise how their callous and nonsensical lashes are bruising the morale of women? I repeat the video is not about men; it is about women. We expect to free ourselves from patriarchal dominance, have an equal society, and give women all the powers and rights that have been denied to them. And here we have our dear friends dragging us by our hair to the same place where we began; the same place where our lives revolved around men. Can we not, for once, distance ourselves from men and think only about ourselves.

We are not talking about what men should do if women have the right to choose their sexual partners. We are not talking about what men should do when women stay out late or dress the way they want. When Deepika says that she is not a man’s privilege, it doesn’t mean at all that a man would be her privilege. When she says that she can choose her partner, it doesn’t mean a man cannot.

In fact, what are we trying to stuff into closets here? Men and women do cheat, and it happens pretty often. I personally know a dozen men who are married and have love (or lust) in their hearts for other women. Please note that a practice prevails which is known as ‘wife-swapping’. And when a bunch of women start talking about their sexual preferences and rights, it leads to women chastising them even more than the men.

Then, men unzipping themselves, isn’t it a very common sight in India? I laugh at the people who see problem because Deepika merely unhooks her bra in the video. And, if that doesn’t suffice, why did my dear friends not take to the streets crying foul when Akshay Kumar made his dear wife unbutton him at a fashion event? Why didn’t they say then what if a man does the same to a woman as they now are saying?

 Vogue is a fashion magazine and does best what it is meant to do. Women are getting more trendy and fashionable. The feminists among us think it is to attract men. Yes, that is true. That is basic theory of the animal kingdom; to attract. Are we trying to suppress our natural instincts here? We may be liberated and empowered and all of that. But, I am stupefied when women totally sidestep the laws of nature, of which attracting the opposite sex is one such rule. If women are spending more on themselves to look and feel better, are the men not doing the same today? Did we hear or see our fathers and grandfathers going for facials, manicures, and full body waxing? And it is so common today. So, my question is, are these women unaware of the laws of nature that I just spoke about or about what the men next to them are doing to attract women? No, I’m not looking for an answer here.

It is sad that when we should be supporting the cause of women and coveting an equal society where everyone has the right to choose, we are here defending men’s point of view. We have films where the camera is a male, hoardings on the roads meant only for men, clothes and perfumes to suit men’s liking, and ceremonies arranged for men. It is, therefore, apparent I believe that a video will be looked at from a male point of view.

Well, the fact is that the video ‘My Choice’ is the point of view of a group of people who got together to share something they (strongly) feel for. They do not reflect your sensibilities or ideals. They do not support your campaigns. They do not need your approval to talk about issues they face. So, stop encroaching upon their liberty to express. You can and please fight your own wars. That would perhaps do us more good than humiliating and demeaning somebody else’s struggle. A video changes nothing. It is a message; a message we should all grasp and move on to better our circumstances and situations. Instead, we have dissected it so brutally that it has lost any purpose that it may have even had.


Till we are a better and empathising lot, long live patriarchy! Vande Mataram.

Monday, October 20, 2014


I look at you and wonder,

How could you be so heartless to me.

All the love that I had in my heart and I gave you,

You just turned your back on me.

And it hurts somewhere deep within.

That one drop of tear, that guides its way to the far corner of my eyes; it trespasses down, drying somewhere in the vast desert of my cheek or reaches down and hides somewhere in the nooks of my neck.

I work ten hours a day, sometimes twelve and sometimes fourteen. And I come back home at the end of each day to a heart that is lonely and a soul that wants somebody to call its own. Houses have not been empty always, but the heart has. I have found myself too in the arms of someone but I didn’t quite belong there.
I don’t really know what a life changing conversation is. But sometimes conversations do change a lot of things. Like when we are in a soup, toggling between work (that keeps us awake at night) and sleep (that is deprived of us), a little pep-talk (like we lay people like to call it) can be the change that we are looking for.

This morning I was having my usual ‘plain Jane’ breakfast of cornflakes and milk (context: I am desperately trying to lose some weight, but weight-loss eludes me). There is a particular individual who works in my team. He is a runner, and quite famous too. He works for his own reasons and runs because of all the right reasons that we should all be living for. I talk to him pretty often and am always inspired by his talk on his way to fitness and ‘dreams’. And trust me, every time I want to take charge of my life, prioritise my life over mundane job roles, and push myself out of lethargy, procrastination, and lack of will, I actually encounter a lack of will like most of us, or at least some of us. It is like every night I go to sleep promising myself that I am getting old and thus I shall not have junk, and every day turns out to be yet another ‘cheat day’ for me.

So yes, this morning could well have been one of those ‘talk sessions’ where I am in awe and take nothing back really. But this morning, in fact, was different. When I wake up tomorrow morning, I do not know if my zest and lust for life will remain, or even a remnant of it. This morning was not like every morning because I realised that it is my state in life and the point in time that determines what I see, what I hear, and what I do. Today I feel the need to cut myself loose and to snap out of the life I am leading. I feel the desire to not be a grumpy 35 year old woman, steering towards some managerial role and looking not a day younger than a 50-year old. No that is not what I dream for myself. This is not what I had come out of college paving my way for.

I have not seen the wide world, nor have I seen the world that He has created of which I am fortunately not a part of. I have not travelled far and wide, nor have I taken a step towards anyone who might need me. I have followed not my dreams, nor have I lent a hand to those trying to achieve theirs. I am ashamed of myself. I am ashamed of the way I lead my life. I live not for myself, neither do I live for those around me. What am I living for, anyway, then.


And the answer lies bottled deep within me. 

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Yet another day!

It had to end somewhere and so it did. It is not a good feeling to be cut off, but sometimes that is exactly what happens to me. I am hammered away and become no more a part of what I was just yesterday. You think I gave up without a fight? No, I did not. I am still trying; trying to climb back and clamp myself to the trunk somehow. But it doesn't want me. It has given up on me.

I did no wrong. In fact I did good, and so it lets me go so I may grow someplace else. It says I have outgrown it. I am a trunk myself. I don’t feel a trunk. I feel a midget still; maybe a midget with tiny arms protruding out, which the trunk imagined for branches that could emerge of me. But I am barren.

Did I tell you how heartless they were when those hands turned me barren? I suppose not. It is not a story I share too often! I was a happy and cheery little girl. Enthusiasm cavorted beside me at all times. And then they stripped me of every prance that made me up. Drops of me trickled out and I watched-hapless, helpless, and in pain.


But I am not talking about that story here. That is for some other time. Maybe when we feel not a tad bit close, but are engrossed too much. The reign that I felt till yesterday, the throne that I only sat on, it has been taken. Taken away from me. I am bereft. It turns its back on me; doesn't like the sound of my voice no more. How heartless it is from this moment on. All its good words and the pedestal that it placed me on, is shaken. So is shaken my belief in it, my belief that I could add a meaning, and be a part of the whole. Am a lone midget, scampering in the dust. Till I find another it to cling on. 

Thursday, June 27, 2013

My mother got a call today. An old friend of hers had called to say that she is dying. Advanced stage of cancer has given her six months to live.

We human beings are basically scared of death. Thousands of philosophies, hundreds of movies and all-world religions later, we still have not been able to quell this inherent fear in our hearts. What if my car is banged by a truck that takes a wrong turn? What if the elevator suddenly comes down crashing? What if I choke on the strawberry shake? What if I fall down the stairs and break my skull? But we continue to live and believe, don’t we?

No. Not all of us. At least not me. You have to pardon my impudence when I say that such thoughts never intimidate me. I have had a very cordial relationship with life, saving myself each time from illness, tumble down the stairs, unwanted swim in the rapids, bikes rolling down rocky roads while holidaying. It was a failed relationship that brought me close to death. Alternating between wishing I was dead or he too suffers my pain, it was perhaps very easy for me to give up contemplating on a life beyond that roadblock. Believing that everything is going to be alright one day without an iota of effort by me was how I was spending each day of my life; screaming at those who love me, shutting the door of my heart to friends who care and becoming the failure I had always shunned.

For six months till that fateful day when my mother picked up the phone to be informed that her friend was dying. Six months is a very long time. I had just spent six months of my life doing nothing. I could very well engage another few months doing the same and cursing somebody upstairs for dreams that lay shattered at my feet.

Dreams like my mother’s friend had seen and which now didn’t exist anymore. Dreams of living a long life with her partner, of moving into her new house in the countryside, of travelling to places that she could not visit being busy with jobs, family, children and responsibilities of the world and self, of dancing at her kids’ weddings and the birth of her grandchildren. Dreams of knowing what it is to retire from work, of becoming a grandparent, of reducing eyesight, hearing and number of teeth but overwhelmingly increasing love and companionship, of simply lounging lazily and sipping tea at the end of each day with her beloved of thirty years.

And you can ask me what do I know of dreams. But uncannily, I too had the same dreams as my mom’s friend a few years back when life was all rosy and smiling at me. Brevity of time binds her and me and you and this now scares me. What if I was given six months to seal off my mortal work and dreams on earth? And what if the last six months that I had just spent cursing myself were all I had and now it is time to go? All of a sudden, I do not wish to die; I do not wish an end of my suffering because that would mean death.

Human beings are selfish. They mourn the miseries of others and feel empathy but pray that none of it befalls them. But I am not praying this time. I am only asking for forgiveness. From each fellow being who is suffering and still standing tall, from them who live by the second, from them who are handicapped as I misuse my blessings, from them who have not a family that supports them unconditionally and friends who look after them even when wronged and ignored, from lovers who are cheated in love because they suffer silently and more than I ever did, from those who unsuccessfully try to scrape time out for their families and the burdens still never get lighter, from each and every one of them who smile at me while being ripped apart from within.


To them I ask for forgiveness. I am sorry. Please forgive me...