We are currently breathing in the best of times. We are living a dream as you can simply threaten to behead whoever you don’t agree with and state governments would both allow and cheer you gleefully.
I am also expecting rewards in billions, in case I decide to take advantage of the situation and get away with mass killing of social evils. I am all for violent assertion and masculinity masked concern for women. You do you, bro. But only if I could do me as well, this world would be a better place to live in, I promise.
Oh, what if you don’t agree with my idea of an ideal world? Well, you can behead me next, because that’s the on-going trend in a country that boasts of women empowerment and initiatives on women’s safety.
You can call me a pseudo-psychic but I knew from the time when Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s set was vandalized by some when he was filming at a fort in Jaipur that they were going to have a blast releasing the film.
What the fuck exactly the noble people are furious about? Why do you need to rush into battle with rusting swords without even watching the movie? Does the film flare up such controversy because it retells the legend from a woman’s perspective? Is it acceptable to publically threaten Bhansali and Deepika with death and mutilation? Can we do that now? The fierce coterie machismo is more powerful than the individual?
Some people have completely transcended the limits permissible in freedom of expression constitutionally protected or peaceful assembly or dissent in this debacle.
Dear Cultural Brigade,
By your own admission, not one of you has seen the film, but lakhs of you have come out onto the streets demanding that the film be banned. The National mood is haywire and strategically out of order. Rashtramata Padmavati was never in the conscience previously but now she has been hailed as, the mother of the nation. She upheld the values that are dearest to a Bharatiya Nari and so does Deepika seemingly.
There is not an iota of a scene between Khilji and Padmavati, they say. Ergo, cut the cackle now because queen’s honor has not been begrimed. Do something productive in life at a time when logic has been clouded by a rush of non-sequitur.
The new-fangled cultural brigade is romantic about anything that can be polarised in elections. Hey, you, elections peeking out.
In all seriousness, to me, Padmavati Controversy is frenzy and irrational. There can be no reasoning to the mass hysteria one is observing today about Padmavati. It is impossible to think of people who settle with conventional wisdom. Those monks don’t contemplate the revenge with retrospective effect is in order.
Sharing of knowledge may not lead to progress. Nonetheless, allow me to show off my research when fronting defeat during the war with (mostly) Muslim invaders, Hindu women committed the act of mass self-immolation, to avoid capture and rape by usurpers. Unlike sati — where widows were enforced to perform — Jauhar was entirely a woman’s prerogative.
Hence, Padmavati enjoys the status of a “Devi” in the minds of the people. Similarly, the very same brigade that claims to be the guardian of Padmavati’s legacy and her honor are the people that glorify her self-immolation. Did Padmavati, if she did commit Jauhar with her female companions, actually had a choice? The choice of saying no to sacrifice, or of living on beyond her husband who might possibly die on the field of battle?
For the breathing women, though, this is alarming. The fiasco about history and myth are about the present.
Whenever you debate a historical film in India, whether it deals with Jodha-Akbar, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj or Baba Sahab Ambedkar, there are people who are staunch blind devotees and self-proclaimed wardens of history and patriotism.
Also, the film industry has not been averse to generating controversy in past in the course of the shooting of the film or after the film is about to be released so it creates enough interest in the film and affects the box-office receipts well.
For now, it is on the Indian state to safeguard individual’s fundamental right to freedom of expression and those holding out deadly threats to the film’s director and the actors are dealt with purposefully under the law.
The film is going to release, if not today, then tomorrow. You can cherry-pick not to watch it if you don’t agree with the story retelling. The Padmavati ghost is gleaming at Y’all with scornfulness as it has better things to do in her afterlife than wasting her oomph on upcoming elections.
Squeeze out is a tight embrace, has an erotic connotation which might be unacceptable to the new cultural brigade.
Thus, squeeze out, dearests.