Pink and Consent in Hindi Films

A couple of months after the December 2012 gang-rape in Delhi (probably the watershed for discussions of gender justice and consent in India) I was travelling in the general compartment of a reasonably crowded metro. I was standing near a row of seats occupied at one end by two middle aged women, most likely returning home from work. A feet from me, stood a young couple, holding hands and making calf eyes at each other. Adequately repulsed by their PDA (as prudish young women are wont to) I proceeded to eavesdrop on the middle aged women. Apparently they didn’t approve of the PDA either, going on to assert that ‘these’ (referring to the female half of the couple) are the kind of young women who first ‘make’ young men fall in love with them and then cry rape. 

From a neutral perspective, Pink is an above-average movie. The first half is crafted like a thriller, and in spite of all the stomach churning scenes (and as a woman in Delhi, your stomach is bound to churn), it holds your interest. The second half however is unrelentingly preachy with Amitabh Bachchan’s baritone doing everything to convince you that no means no.  From the perspective of a person with vested interest however (that is, an average urban woman facing close mindedness from aunties in the metro, neighbourhood uncles, family friends and relatives), the second half of Pink is like a well-made pamphlet for propaganda of the feminist cause.

And you have to admit that this is a reason for some happiness. After all, as late as 1980, the same Amitabh Bachchan was lecturing Zeenat Aman to wear more clothes to the beach as a solution to avoid others’ lechery. He helpfully tells her, “aise kapdo mein aapko seetiyan nahi sunayi degi toh kya mandir ki ghantiya sunayi degi”. Did I mention he was a cop?

Then in 1990, in Ghar ho toh aisa, Anil Kapoor harasses his secretary into changing out of her modern clothes into “decent” ones. Of course he may have been commenting on her fashion sense (the dress was truly hideous, see pic below), but his elation at seeing her wear a sari later (“inn kapdo mein tum shareef ghar ki ladki lag rahi ho”) puts an end to such hopes. And I am not even going to go into the numerous successful attempts by Jeetendra to stalk, molest and generally harass Sridevi into dating him.

The most egregious failure to understand matters of consent was of course Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, an all-time favourite for many young people. 

Waking up after a night of drinking, Raj convinces Simran that the two of them had sex the previous night. Simran does not remember anything about the night and quite justifiably, freaks out. Raj tries to calm her down and admits he was joking. And then he tells her that he knows she is Indian, and therefore understands the importance of her virtue. The point about the ‘bad boy’ not being evil could have been equally well made if he had pointed out that Indian or not, if he had had sex with a girl too drunk to have given her consent, it would be rape. But maybe that wouldn’t have had the NRIs cheering…

In Raaja Ayegi Baraat, Rani Mukherjee marries her rapist (apparently not an uncommon outcome of the great justice system’s working in India) and makes nice with him even as the rest of the family plots to off her. But even in the better made, YRF sanctioned Ishaqzaade, Arjun Kapoor has sex with Parineeti Chopra under false pretences (still rape). Not only does she forgive him, but by the end of the movie they are a pair of star crossed lovers killed by their feuding families.

In fact the only time at the movies when I felt satisfied with the consequences faced by men when they treated women badly, was Chak de India.

At a visceral level, this was more satisfying than the favourable court verdict in Pink, which I know reflects quite poorly on me. Of course a court mandated punishment is better for democracy than a public lynching. Yet this scene allows its women to vent their frustration that Indian women (or at least I) feel on a daily basis and cannot express, while also doing justice to the characters (watch how Bindiya trips one of the goons while continuing to sit with a certain amount of detachment).

There is a second non-cinematic, illogical reason why Pink did not make me rave. At one point, Falak points out that even if they were sex workers but withdrew their consent at any point, it would still be assault. For that moment, I suddenly wished that that had been the storyline. I thought back to an episode of the serial Sidhhant, a courtroom drama that used to play on Star One while I was still in school. I only have vague memories of it (and I can’t find a link online) but that had been my introduction to the issues of consent. And if a television serial could tackle that a decade earlier, there is no reason why a movie with that many resources at its disposal could not be slightly bolder.

Please Baba, aar five minutes khelbo...

Unlike my friend, the Mutinous Scribe, I care deeply about Imtiaz Ali's filmography.

I have, since the day I stumbled on to Socha Na Tha on t.v*.
In one scene, the hero and heroine are in Goa and facing the prospect of sharing a room together. (They aren't in love yet). The heroine tells the hero, "Ghabrao nahi, main tumhare izzat pe haath nahi dalungi."
That nonchalance, the non-drama was refreshing then to a child of the nineties for whom the Hindi film heroine was always a bit of a tight-ass paragon of virtue.
Geet in Jab We Met was even better etched, with lovely shades of so many people I knew. Self-obsessed, talkative, feisty, and armed with a healthy sense of adventure. And then came Veera**, who on the outside, was in the same mould as Geet. When she hides herself in the truck during the police search, and Aadu, the genial goon asks her why, I didn't need her to answer. It was just what an Imtiaz Ali heroine did.

Except it wasn't. While Geet's flight came from the protected, indulgent child-hood she had had, Veera's was a result of her cloistered one. And it wasn't a sense of adventure, as I came to learn a bit later in the film, it was a need to escape, a need to enjoy her new-found freedom. I wouldn't say that this need or feeling resonated with me, because it didn't, at least not at the time I was watching the film. There was so much else to take in-the characters, the acting (thanks to the casting-everyone, down to the creepy molester goon, was perfect), the visuals of the great Indian countryside (which I admittedly wouldn't care for, in a lesser film), the music (it is all I listen to, anymore), the world that Ali transports us to (so much so that the police shooting, in spite of its inevitability, felt like an intrusion in an otherwise idyllic life),  the "neat" story-telling (Mahabir dying before he was put on the stretcher). But the reason that all of this came together, the reason that I understood and accepted Veera's longing for the journey to continue (even if it was with her kidnapper), was possibly because I have wanted the same at different points in time.
Did I have a traumatic childhood? Far from it.

But who as a child has not wanted to play for "five more minutes", because home was boring place in your sister's board years? Which child hasn't dreaded the last week of the summer holidays when all the pending homework would have to be squeezed in? Which harassed masters student has not wanted to run away before a game theory/ econometrics exam? In fact, I only realised why I loved Highway the way I did, four days after I had seen the film, as I listened to "Patakha Guddi"on my way to office, in the white cab that dutifully carries me there and back every working day.


*And not since the day I realised I went to the same college as him.
**Yeah, I just pretended that Love Aaj Kal and Rockstar didn't happen.

My Taxonomy of Academic Writing (in Economics)

I am currently reading a paper, firmly ensconced in the intersection of B, D and E (see below). Which motivated this.

A.      Vishal Bharadwaj cinema^*- Our microeconomics professor encourages students to write short answers in exams. He cites the example of Kenneth Arrow, who was notorious for his short papers (most of which, went on to span complete branches of economics). I haven’t read much of Arrow, but I have certainly read other economists who decide to infuse meaning into every word they construct. You blink. And you miss the most important plot point. These economists enjoy sneaking in a harmless looking line in the introduction, or worse, a footnote- the one line that holds the key to all the mind numbing (unsolved) differential equations that you are so impatient to get to, in later sections.

B.      Ekta Kapoor Soaps- These authors lie on the other extreme end of the continuum. They absolutely must give us a recap of every section of the paper at the end of the section, as well as at the beginning of the subsequent section. And in the introduction. And in the recommendations. And in the concluding remarks. You get the idea. (And then almost start missing the algebra).

C.      Farhan Akhtar/ Abbas-Mustan projects- While the Vishal Bharadwajs are theoretical economists (in the vanguard of academia), empirical economists (especially if you skip the methodology bits to power on to the results and discussion) are more accessible. That’s not to deny their capability of employing stunning gadgetry on the way to the climax. When done well, the results are sublime. When not…umm I trust you have seen Race.

D.      Rohit Shetty filums- unambitious and unpretentious. But (happily) not very taxing on the brain. These benign authors decide that they must make life easy for students, and spend most of their paper presenting a simplified version of the papers written by Exhibit A and C. Just as fancy cars hurtling in the air are a regular fixture in Shetty’s films, the penultimate section of these papers too must invariably involve critiquing the papers they discuss, and sometimes an extension.

E.       The ensemble film (in the tradition of Aaja Nachle, Chak de India)- Chak de India straddled regional chauvinism, national unity, religious persecution, sexism, the pathologies of Indian sport, all in a three hour narrative. The academic equivalents may not give such gripping results, but they do manage to flog a single mathematical model into providing amenable results on a variety of points the author wishes to prove. Sometimes this is not limited to a lone paper. Several careers have often hinged upon one model, one idea. Sometimes so much so that all the loving self referencing pushes it into Yashraj Films territory (who remind us at every chance they get, that Aditya Chopra made DDLJ).

^* Yes I compare academic papers to Bollywood films and Hindi television. Sue me.