Invisible couch

Many years ago, when ‘sting operations’ were in vogue, an intrepid reporter landed up at Shakti Kapoor’s house in suburban Mumbai and ‘exposed’ him. The video clip showed a haggard and seemingly inebriated actor hit on the young woman, seeking sexual favours. Mainstream media had suddenly discovered the casting couch and every one wanted to do a ‘khulasa’.

Many years later, I was at a casting director’s swank new office. This gent had risen to fame thanks to a maverick filmmaker, who was the anointed prince of Indie cinema. His office, deep in the heart of Aram Nagar, was teeming with young hopefuls and faces with ‘character’. My interviewee was wearing crimson-tinted aviators at noon and sipped coffee from a mug with his initials at the bottom.

Every time he raised the cup, you could see the initials, in blazing gold. ‘I have cameras’ he said, pointing at the robotic eyes placed strategically around his plush groom. ‘Everyone is watched. Very often I feel I am at risk,’ he shrugged. I was flummoxed. Apparently, said the upstart, women would walk into his office and start taking off their clothes. “The first thing I tell the girls who are here is that they are being watched. So that they do not try anything funny,” he smiled. Poor little entitled guy!  

The bevy of headlining star kids would make you believe in an ideal world, where the only couch they had ever slept in was their own designer bed or their girlfriend’s Ikea pouf.

But reality is a Sri Reddy stripping in public to draw attention to the systemic exploitation of women in the film industry. Reality is also an ageing Saroj Khan telling you that in Bollywood, at least women got work after the sex. Making it a perfectly legit give and take. Distasteful? Too bad. But she does have a point.

During the promotions of her film Tumhari Sullu, Vidya Balan made some rather sanctimonious remarks about how no one dared to make a pass at her, because she did not give “those vibes”.

There are a bunch of other splendid actors who will tell you that women in Bollywood, or Tollywood, or Kollywood or Mollywood… always have a choice. Just as all the women who took on Hollywood’s big daddies did. Right? So, at first, they chose to be exploited. Ravaged on the casting couch. And now they choose to speak up.

Choice is yours only when you have nothing to lose. When you are at the top of your game, have crafted an image for yourself, you are very unlikely to talk about not having a choice. Because you do not want the world to know about your scars. The skeletons in your closet. You want the world to know that you are an empowered woman.

Let’s face it, the world is hanging on to every word uttered by a certain curly haired feminist icon today, but did she have the gumption to speak out against her infamous sugar daddy when she was living in a Versova apartment provided by him?

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