Follow Us
Join UsShortly after the release of PINK, our avid reader Saurabh Kshatriya has written an interesting column based on his perception after watching the film. As a guest blog post by our readers, Koimoi.com brings to you a write up by Saurabh. Read on…
Well well well!!! May be after reading this, many self-proclaimed liberals and open minded but (sadly) opinionated individuals may come with their interpretation of me. Many would call me an impotent or may come up with a suggestion to get a sex change or may be put me in a gender called Gay which is again a sexual abuse (anyways Let’s not get into that right now). So the point is, your machismo is not proved until and unless you show your masculinity by degrading and pushing the second gender. I don’t care but… coz a real man won’t need to carry a certificate of machoism with him. He just needs to know that he is one and he can be one by respecting women for their contribution and moreover for bringing them in this world.
In our upbringing, we might have experienced that we have been tagged as a ‘girl’ for many of our actions. We being a man cannot cry because only girls are born with the right of crying. We won’t be proved strong enough till the time we curb our tears and we often get comments from friends, family and acquaintances, “KYA LADKIYO KI TARAH RO RAHE HO” (why are you crying like a girl).
Even it exists in High School curriculum as well. Being poor in mathematics is a curse and people have conveniently believed that only girls can born with this curse. If a boy is weak in mathematics, he has to get by his parents, guardians and teachers as well – “Improve yourself otherwise you have to take HOME SCIENCE. Do you know it is a girl’s subject??? You will be the only one to sit with them in the class”. The funny part is, schools have also believed that only girls can be weak in mathematics and that’s why they have been given the option of choosing Home Science. Study hard otherwise “Ladkiyo ki tarah ghar bathna aur bartan dhona” (sit at home like girls and do the dishes).
There comes the point of colour as well. Red, Pink, Purple are colours of girls. Real man won’t like this colour (this is what has been injected). But if there are people who like any of these colours, they would hesitate to say because they don’t want to hear “ABE LADKI HAI KYA” (Are you a girl?). In fact, keeping accessories or t-shirts of any of this colour is not less than a nightmare.
Boys shouldn’t take selfies because it is a girl thing. Boys shouldn’t watch Romantic movies because this is girl’s genre. Boys have only 1 fitness option and that is Gyming and if they wish to join Zumba or dance classes, they need to listen to a gentleman who don’t know from where came up with a categorization here as well. The worst part is, Boys also cannot like stars like Ranbir Kapoor, Fawad Khan and all coz girls like them. If they are man then they have to be like John Abraham, Salman Khan and Akshay Kumar only.
These were few examples of categorization, now let’s talk about few definitions. By the age 16 or when a boy just enters the college (Let’s take an average although many starts with HSC only), he starts getting suggestions from his well-wishers around to lose the virginity coz according to them girls also want the same thing and if you won’t do then you are nothing for them. Sigh!! The worst part is having sex with a girl is not an expression of love or just a physical need, it has become more a Trophy. A guy is not cool enough if he has only one girlfriend and is truthful to her coz according to the Masculinity Act 1976 (well may be it exists otherwise why this mentality would have turn up), it is not cool to have one women in your life and you need to boost amongst your friends as well that you had sex with this much number of women. In worst cases, they make videos as well to show them as a proof. For guys, 100 sins like this are forgettable but for a girl, she would be tagged and categorized if she has reached even a number 2 or 3 count of boyfriends and if by any chance she had sex with them, then she is just a job opening for whom other guys can also apply.
A girl’s character and purity is defined by her virginity. She should be an “exclusive offer” (along with a good amount of dowry of course) although for the guys, the same is not applicable for them. Apart from this, how many guys she is friends with, what sort of clothes she wear and on the scale of 1 to 10, how extrovert she is are some added black marks to a girl’s character. Even in many houses these days, the height of being open minded is limited to getting their daughters a master’s degree and after that they should be happily married.
It’s not about class, it’s about people and how they have been taught and guided. From a very initial level, we start injecting them with gender stereotypes and cliché definitions and such people grew up to become chauvinists who continues the custom. Although there is a section who is mature enough to understand all this and maintain that equality but what is the ratio? For how long are we going to allow this mentality to continue and let our women suffer? If we want to end this never ending debate then it has to be stopped. It is a high time to change few rules and unfollow the followed ideologies.
In the film it was so nicely showed that how the 3 girls took stand for something which was wrong and fought for their self-respect and dignity but if that situation would have arouse in reality then they would have apologised and ended it coz this is the atmosphere that has been created. At least they would never get a wise aged lawyer who will come on board and prove the point. What they would definitely get is the judgmental attitude of people around who have no life except for checking how many guys are coming in their apartment and what could they be possibly doing. Recently I read Taapsee Pannu aka Minal’s interview where she said that the climax of the film has been changed considering audience’s feedback and boys were going to win in the end originally. Well it’s not difficult to understand why?
