Kurlekaar's Kaleidoscope - Enter consensus, exit originality?

I was a little disappointed with our Group Discussion session today. The students were asked to choose between two topics and the majority selected “Do beauty contests degrade womanhood?” We had a few girl students in the group and I thought they would really let fly. One girl started, rather defensively, with trying to define ‘womanhood’ first, which, for her, comprised of all roles that a woman was required to play in life; a mother, wife, daughter, sister etc. Somehow woman as an ‘individual’ was missing from her list. She did not think that these beauty contests degraded ‘womanhood’ since they also tested her intelligence, general knowledge and social awareness etc. I was a little taken back when another girl pointed out how answers given by some of the winners showed their deep commitment to these social causes, and which, actually helped them to win their respective contests, but how the same contestants had quickly forgotten about these causes after they had won these contests and apparently had made use of these contests merely as a platform to make their entry, either into the advertising world (if they were not there already), or into Bollywood. Yes, I agreed, but wished she had also pointed out the sole exception of Ms Sushmita Sen for strengthening her argument.

Now it was the turn of the boys. I saw a spark when a young man vehemently argued that that these contests tended to treat woman as mere ‘commodity’ and that, to him, was degrading enough. I felt even better. My happiness was, however, short lived as the peer group pressure started building up against. These two students, now afraid of taking a stand alone stand, succumbed to this peer group pressure, mellowed down, and ultimately joined the group. How consensus kills originality.

Kurlekaar's Kaleidoscope - Jodhaa-Akbar, united and divided

I came back home and switched on the TV. Elections in Pakistan were no more in the focus and most channels were showing how many millions (in Rupees) were paid for roping in some indigenous and overseas cricketers for playing for various participating teams in ensuing IPL tournament. I settled down on one channel which was showing an interview with the Director and the male and the female lead of the movie “Jodhaa and Akbar”. The movie is already mired in many controversies and in all probability, the interview had been arranged to regain some lost ground. The female lead, as per news published a couple of days ago, had already dissociated herself from these controversies and had held the Director responsible for any historical inaccuracies portrayed in the movie. That, to me, seemed fair enough. But now as they appeared on the TV, I felt that they ought to have constituted a team and presented a united front. Frankly speaking, I did not watch the episode in full and may have been a little out of context. But what I saw was disturbing enough.

Firstly, the Director asserted that it had taken him three years of research before he had started making the film and his decision to settle down upon ‘Jodhaa’ over some other names that had also appeared, was borne out of this research. He further said that what had appealed to him was that this marriage was the first ever attempt to fuse two disparate cultures and that too it had taken place 450 years ago. He did not look at the theme beyond this and therefore certainly did not mean to hurt the sentiments of any social or religious group. To me, he appeared to be quite focused and consequently unperturbed.

When the Anchor asked him whether he saw this movie as a historical love story, he replied that for him, it was a historical romance. It was at this stage that I noticed from the body language of the two leading stars that these two were clearly distancing themselves from the Director. The Anchor now asked him whether he was ever impressed with any Bollywood film dealing with romance and the latter promptly replied that it was “Bobby”. Quite true, although I felt, he could have also mentioned some, if not most, of Raj Kapoor and Nargis movies as belonging to the same genre. The Anchor now turned towards the leading duo and asked them the same question and both did not answer it. The leading lady squirmed and giggled while the male lead simply parried it. This question by the Anchor had nothing to do with their movie but the duo now seemed bent upon distancing themselves from Mr Ashutosh Govarikar as they had already finished with the Director of “Jodhaa and Akbar”……