Ms. Padukone vs TOI: Everyone is a defaulter

For the record, I genuinely despise Times of India. It’s a third degree torture to an intellectual mind. At the same time, and I know I am offending a lot of you; I don’t have any genuine respect for Deepika’s roles in her movies either, barring a few.

Thus, this episode gave me a great opportunity to vent my anger on Times of India in particular and actresses in general. Moreover, seeing the humongous response against TOI, I believe that I am not the only one sharing that “special feeling” for TOI, though the part about actresses are sure to bring some ire in the on line communities of fans.

So, everything was going as usual. TOI was continuing with its garbage and actresses were portraying what the “character wanted them to do” (basically the producer’s knowledge about commercialisation). Suddenly, Ms. Padukone complains and there is one hell of an uprising. It was great to see people rising against such things. Respect for women must be the pillar of a civilised society and TOI must be really ashamed, and ashamed not just for this episode, but the plethora of garbage which it daily publishes. I was shattered, like everybody else. But then I said, Hang on, is this only about TOI or is it the collective responsibility of everybody involved. I don’t know the magnitude of what Ms. Padukone does to portray her character, but some of the character she portrays should not be acceptable to all those who are up in arms with her in this episode. The same people should go against her when she does the kind of roles which portrays women as nothing but objects of entertainment (movies like Race, item songs etc.) I mean, each of us know item songs add nothing to the value of a movie, but an add-on to work on the base desires of people, attracting them to come to the theatres and watch the movie.

This last line may be offending to a few of us, but let’s not take it personally. The reach of these bollywood movies is not just to the educated class of people like the one reading these who are smart enough to make calculated decisions, who understand that these are just role plays. But, India is more about people who are less educated, people who are unable to make a distinction. Education doesn’t reach them, but movies do. Yeah, and most of us are unaware or rather have shut our eyes of the fatal effects these are having. The rising rates of crimes against women are part of these. When Ms. Deepika Padukone does an item number to get money and portray the character, at many places, women are being harassed by their husbands, not living up to their expectations, of which the bar has been set very high.

Now let’s come to how we are participants of this. In spite of everyone rising against the TOI, nothing has changed. TOI will remain one of the leading dailies. Everybody knows what its city times contain, yet we are taking these. They only provide what people want, so if we don’t want it, in this competitive business world, either TOI will change its ways or lose business. But, I don’t see any changes in the patterns of viewership of TOI. Today only, I got to know about the Bang-Bang poster and TOI ‘Priceless comments’. Same way, there hasn’t been anybody standing up to Deepika how her movies portray women and affect the self-respect of women.

So, unless a collective responsibility is taken, these incidents will just grow. For all we know, this might be a marketing gimmick, considering that it coincides with the launching of her new movie and for TOI, any publicity, good or bad, is acceptable.