2020 promises to be a year of many FIRSTS!
For the first time last night, I decided I wanted to watch a
movie without my husband tagging along. You see, all along I’ve wanted him to
join me for movies. Most often I would miss out on the movies I wanted to see,
because he didn’t like the subject, or the director, or the ideology, or the
star. I don’t blame him. He had his reasons; genuine or not. I regretfully
tagged along and gave the movies a skip. Not yesterday though!!!
I wanted to see Thappad and decided I would see it, even if I
had to watch it all alone. Just as I logged into bookmyshow and selected my
seat, I thought id ask my girlfriends if they wanted to tag along; and they
did. Yehhh
So, five of us, hurried through our chores, cooked dinner
and kept everything ready for our families and then dolled up and went for the
movie.
Then as five of us sat and watched the movie, we went
through an internal conflict. We retrospected, we introspected, we responded, we sobbed, we empathized with the
protagonist, and we sympathized with our own selves. Don’t get me wrong. We come
from happy families, we come from happy marriages, we love our children, we
love our husbands.
But for the umpteenth time I sat there wondering ‘WHY’, ‘why
do we women choose to keep quiet, why do we accept this, why do we brush it
under the carpet, why do we tell our
daughters that its ok, why do we silently watch other women fight their
battles, why do we ignore a mans actions, why do we forgive him and tell others
to forgive him, why do we advise women to forgive and move on! Why, Why, Why?
Thappad is a movie that questions all the teachings that
mothers teach their daughters. This is a movie that questions age old patriarchal
norms. It questions a woman’s self-worth.
Mind you, the husband loves his wife, the in-laws adore
their daughter-in-law, the parents love their daughter and the brother loves
his sister. Yet, when it came to calling out the wrong from the right; each one
of them kept silent and then asked the wife to forgive and move on. WHY?
I recommend the movie to everyone and also ask them to watch
it with their entire families and make a promise to fix things before it is too
late.
