After months of controversies surrounding “Padmaavat”, and comments struck around everything from the Queen’s waist to her integrity, and even her death. I quietly found time to watch the movie and here are my thoughts on it:
At every controversy, somewhere I found myself confused between the two roads of ideologies. It was always difficult to point a finger towards the wrong. What exactly could be called wrong?
Can you really blame someone for feeling pride in the history of their lineage?
Can you blame someone to be protective of their mighty, elegant warrior queen?
It is difficult.
Even more difficult is to say that this story should not have been glorified at a humungous “Bhansali” level. If even a fraction of justice needed to be done to the innumerable folklores written for the Rajput king and queen, the story needed every bit of exaltation.
How does one do justice to the whole portrayal, if not by making it life size? Somehow every bit of the controversy faded in my mind.
But during the entire movie, the much talked about “Jauhar” scene kept my breath hanging. I had to see, I had to feel if Sati was glorified and if women were objectified with it. And after seeing it, I can say that I stand in staunch disagreement with this statement.
This might seem a little out of context, but I have always looked up to heroes and have fondly remembered them. And with the memory that comes in my head, I must ask a few questions. I must ask how insecure are the so-called pseudo-intellectual women around us? Are we so insecure that we have to perpetually shout the warcry?
And I enquire, if Chandra Shekhar Azad is remembered and celebrated as a hero for his choice to give up his life before British could touch as much as his hair, why does the things change for a woman?
Why do the “strong” woman today rather screams about how petty “Jauhar” made her feel. How was the courageous act of choosing a death of dignity, an act of shame?
I do not stand in support of Sati here. But I stand here, completely secure and confident of a woman’s strength to say that the entire picturization of Jauhar in the movie was like a warcry of women’s empowerment ages before the word was coined.
I stand in reaffirmation of my belief, that strength comes not from asking for it; strength is in the very being.
Courage requires no proof; the very presence of it is a detailed testament. Empowerment does not exist, power does and so does the choice to embrace it.