“Chhe din, ladki in”. This was the guarantee a cocky Aman – played by Shahrukh Khan – says to his friend Rohit (Saif Ali Khan) in 2003’s
Kal Ho Na Ho, accompanied, of course, by the tasteful gesture of inserting his finger into the cylindrical grip of his other hand. Back then, it felt like a slick exchange of urbanised machismo between a man and his understudy, a cultural standard that the millions of Indian men who watched the film must have felt had to be matched. In Bollywood, examples like these are a dime a dozen, perhaps innumerable. Women have, at least in Bollywood’s imagination, served as mere context, appearing either as a “must-have” or “has had” conquest for the quintessential hero. Even SRK, the walking embodiment of Valentine’s Day for female fans, has seemed agnostic to a woman’s self-will, and her capacity to exist as a “cannot be had” or “doesn’t want to be had”. If 2018 and its chorus of #MeToo revelations has taught us anything, it is that the pursuit of consent requires as much scrutiny as our (men’s) understanding of it. This, after all, felt like a year when even Love became a hard-sell, all because of the men who have been stitching its shroud for years. It is difficult not to feel the stomach knot when I look back to the years when I thought “ladki patana” was akin to a talent of sorts, a habit that was its own reward. Even though I was stunningly poor at it, my inability failed to reflect in questions I should have asked of this template. While geography and history came from books, my knowledge of relationships came from films and television. No film in the ’90s, perhaps, had a woman whose first “No” was accepted for its literalness. Instead it was deconstructed to the point of subjugation, until a woman’s individual freedom had been swallowed whole by a man’s psyche – the “naa mein bhi haan hai” narrative. Come to think of it, the reason Bollywood eulogises marriage as the endgame of all love stories is because it sees marriage and consent as synonyms.While geography and history came from books, my knowledge of relationships came from films and television.So what happens when the tree that has redolently spread through notions of love find some of its own leaves to be rotten and lustful? Queen Director Vikas Bahl, for example, found it conducive to harass women under the umbrella of the ultra liberal Phantom Films. The revolutionaries and woke men at All India Bakchod were either perpetrators – like Utsav Chakraborty – or ignorant bystanders to cases of sexual harassment. When the #MeToo allegations broke on social media, it was a watershed moment for those closely involved on either side. But the allegations also pointed to a deeper malaise, the obscuring romances of the film industry with its own imagination and its pitiful grasp on reality. Looking back, it feels stunning that an entire body of literature has been built around the “wooing” of a woman, a persistent inquiry of her tolerance until she, as scripted, caves in. None of the millions of slaps in our films got their point across, it seems in retrospect, so crassly and shamelessly has male ego been written as boastful heroism. Men on celluloid have never backed down. Love and ownership seemed conjoined at the hip, climaxing prematurely in matrimony – the entire afterlife of which has been left for us to live and figure. Perhaps the new Dhai Akshar Prem Ke can be “Nahi, Never, and No”. There must be love in letting be, surely. It’s a neat scam really, hatched by men, for men; declaring women as victories while reducing their lives to polish the misplaced grandeur of male accomplishment. Like Director Sajid Khan, accused of harassment, said to one of his victim – I’ve made you. How is it that so many women have been so adored, showered with flowers, songs and sacrifice in cinema, but are so misunderstood, mistreated, and practically unheard in real life?
None of the millions of slaps in our films got their point across, it seems in retrospect, so crassly and shamelessly has male ego been written as boastful heroism.What the #MeToo movement tells us is that even men with the smartest of words and cosiest of personalities have a long way to go before they understand consent; before they understand that women, unlike objects in a shop, aren’t waiting to be bought. We men must realise that a relationship doesn’t occur inside the icebox of a delusional Bollywood romance where we’ll be crowned heroes just because we get the girl. We need her to stay, give her enough reasons to not leave. Nobody, not even the women in our lives, are asking for perfection, but we can at least get off this absurd, self-congratulatory horse that only runs half-races. If nothing else, then the rulebook needs to change, be it on dating or relationships, official acquaintances or marriages. From its vocabulary to a new Dos and Don’ts section, we men need to start appreciating space, both private and public. Our consumption of pop culture also must evolve to the point where we ask crucial questions that in turn force it to reflect. We need to look beyond idols like the bothersome Khan in DDLJ or the scheming, yet middling Madhavan in Rehna Hai Tere Dil Mein. For that lost feeling of love, we must first assure women in this country that we can live without it – that we can live with rejection and can take NO for an answer. Let’s start with our films.
