Call sindoor a symbol of patriarchy and a Hindu man will tell you how its components scientifically benefit health.
Call burqa a symbol of patriarchy and a Muslim man will tell you how it saves one from heat, dust and radiation.
Yet neither man wears them.
Yesterday at CP, there were jammers because of a protest, so an Argentine woman at Saravana Bhavan couldn’t pay her approx ₹500 bill. Her card, UPI basically nothing worked. I ended up paying for her.
She said, “India is such an interesting country. The system is so hostile, but the people are equally kind.”
And honestly, it made me think: it’s rightly said, India disappoints both the optimist and the pessimist; often in the same afternoon. 😭
Radhika Apte lifted her dress on camera, showed the full bush for Anurag Kashyap’s short, let that clip leak and circulate for years, then acted shocked that the watchman and driver finally saw the same thing the rest of the internet already had.
You chose the scene. You stood there, pulled the fabric up, and gave them the shot. That’s not “intimate footage that happened to you.” That’s work you signed for, got paid for, and later called “liberating.” Parched, Madly, the rest of it, you kept doing it.
Then the moment the men who open your gate and drive your car watched the same clip, you locked yourself inside for four days and started screening staff like they were a security threat. “Have you seen it? If you’re not okay, take your salary and leave.” That’s not trauma. That’s you realizing the audience isn’t only sitting in a dark theatre.
You wanted the role. You wanted the praise for being “brave.” You just didn’t want the people who actually live around you to look at you the same way the camera did.
Sometimes I put my face up against my dog while he's sleeping to feel his little lungs expand and his little heart beat and I am struck by the beauty of life and the miracle of nature to evolve for thousands of years just to create one little guy and put him in my house