Pink. Anger

I watched Pink today. It made me angry. It made me remember things I had chosen to put at the back of my mind. It made me angry because while I have bitched about those things to friends and they’ve bitched back, we never really raised much of a voice against it then, preferring to roll our eyes at “regressive Indian men” instead; preferring not to make much of a scene. Watching the three girls in Pink told me I should have. Maybe all of us who are in our 40s now and were single in the city about 20 years ago, should have been more vocal, should have done more than raising our eyebrows and shaking our heads at ‘idiots.’ Maybe it would have been a tad better by now. Pink is a movie with an ending that can be called happy in some ways because the girls are vindicated. But it leaves you silent, stunned with discomfort and somewhat deflated. Because even if not in the scale as it happens in the movie, bits and parts of these things have happened with you. Or someone you know/knew. You’ve had that sly, gossipy neighbour who makes her/his own judgement about your moral character just on the basis of when you land up home or whether you stand on the balcony wearing shorts. Yes it’s a Sunday and yes you’ve just woken up to have your first chai of the day but all good bhartiya naris either wear a respectable maxi (and make it even more respectable by putting a dupatta over it) or salwar kameez before they give balcony darshans to the neighbourhood men, right? You’ve had the colleague whose roving eyes landed on your chest ever since you attended an office party together and he saw you dance a bit wildly after more than two beers! You’ve been the girl who thought she would never take shit from anyone and then got down from a DTC bus because, hey, better be safe than sorry, right? You’ve largely tried to stay out of trouble, even if you felt that trouble should’ve been punched right back on its face! In the movie, Falak, one of the protagonists, loses her job because a bunch of idiots hell bent on revenge morph her face into a naked body and mail it to her place of work. Her bosses of course don’t believe in checking facts or even giving her the chance to explain. They fire her. It has happened to someone I sort of knew once. Unlike Falak, she wasn’t in a movie with AB to save her and probably did not have the support to stay on and fight her battle. We shared a hostel and her father and brother came to take her back. I still remember their whispers with the warden, the brother’s stern look, the girl hanging her head, wordless, shaking with tears, her friends talking to the father -- how it wasn’t her fault. I don’t think the father believed any of them. We found out much later she had been a victim of what we now call a cyber crime. I’ve no idea where she is now but that incident in the movie made me think of her, hoping that incident didn’t break her forever. Years ago when we looked for a PG in the safest city in India, all landlords would have one standard question: Boys ayenge kya? We would shake our heads and say no diligently. Finding a place was more important than inviting your male friends inside it. Just like it was important to ignore comments or whispers from neighbours that branded you as ‘those girls who come home late’ or ‘those girls staying alone...’ or ‘those girls who drink’ once you had landed a coveted 1BHK or PG. A PG was more important than taking panga, especially if you had a decent landlady or landlord. So you carried on with your life, you went to work, you partied you, came home late from work on weekdays and late from pubs and parties on weekends. You were 20/25 years old. You thought if you ignored comments and barbs they would go away. You thought you were too cool to dignify those with a response. You thought just do your own thing as long as there are like minded people around you and one day, times would change. You clearly thought wrong. There’s Pink. And there’s news like this: http://thewire.in/67205/bhu-rsss-ne...