Are we finally accepting our heroines in lead roles?

Bollywood or Indian Cinema is more than just entertainment for Indians....it is like a celebration of life. People blindly follow their favorite stars ...be it the goatee style beard from Aamir Khan's character in "Dil chahta hain" or the long hair of Salman Khan in "Tere Naam", people have blindly copied them all. It is needless to say that even if real life, people believe and follow their movies and stars very seriously. The "Raj of DDLJ" has been the prince charming of millions of young girls throughout India. Every young girl saw herself as Simran waiting for her Raj to come and rescue her from "saat samundar paar". Basically, Bollywood mostly shows women following norms, values, customs, highly dependent on the approval of the male members in her life (father, brother, husband,son ) who needs to be protected and rescued.

Indian Cinema has always been more of a male dominated space just like the country. Actresses were merely for few dances, skin shows and minor side roles. It is always the hero who takes up eighty percent of the screen space, fights with the villains and wins everyone's heart. It is always his story. Ofcourse some women centric movies like Mother India, Aandhi, Arth were released from time to time featuring some of the best talents the industry has ever seen Nargis, Suchitra Sen, Shabana Aazmi, and many more but the numbers are very less. These movies somehow got lost among the huge number of Hero-dominated movies. 

Times have been changing and our country has been progressing. Our women are progressing in all fields. This change is even reflected in our Indian film industry....movies like Nobody killed Jessica, Kahaani, Mary Kom, Neerja, English Vinglish, Piku, NH10, Queen and many more movies with women is the lead role are rapidly on a rise in India. These movies are being accepted and loved by the audience. The audience is slowly accepting these kind of movies with women lead.

Women-centric movies don’t typically make lot of money as compared to blockbusters starring the biggest male stars.  No wonder, our female leads today complain about unequal pay. As of now, these women-centric movies are mostly low budget movies and are not becoming blockbusters yet but I am sure slowly we'll get there too.    

What we need to understand is that a major section of Indian population is still uneducated but this section have access to cinema. A rickshaw puller from a small town doesn't mind spending a day's income on a Salman Khan movie. Cinema actually have a huge influence on them, on the way they think, the way they behave socially. We can use this media to change the mindset of people and our social condition to make the country a better place for women. Most of the filmmakers are not ready to take this risk of making something different. They are concerned about their movie's profit, they have to enter the 100 crore club. Infact, to make a movie hit, they often add item numbers which mostly objectifies women. This is adding more and more to the already existing social evils. 

Slowly we are breaking the stereotype and heading in the right direction. These kind of movies should be more encouraged . More women centric movies should be made and more money should be invested in them.

For the love of rain

I am a Pluviophile...I simply love rain :) Everything about rain ...the way the earth smells when the first drops of rain hits the ground, the way the wind blows, the way the view becomes dark and hazy, the way the water droplets rolls down the window shield, ..............I can go on and on. I just love watching rain for hours and hours sometimes with a thought inside my head or sometimes just blank.

Somehow, rain always make me happy, like temporarily-real happy, if that even makes sense. It makes me forget all my current pains and problems of life and makes me gaze dreamily into the unknown. Sometimes, I think of love, not pains of love but hopes of love. No matter how sad I am, rain instantly makes me happy. Most Indians relate rain with a chai-pakoda thing but to me its an internal soul-connecting thing.

Rain reminds me of my childhood days when I could afford to spend hours watching the rain through my big glass window sitting beside the pane..........when I had no pain or worries of the world. It reminds me how I use to go to class with my friends carrying an umbrella and jumped on pool of water(on the sides of road) to splash it on them. The worries of clothes getting ruined/becoming unpresentable for the important meetings or how to wash stains off light colored clothes did not exist back then. It reminds me how our shoes used to get all wet on our way to school and we use to open our shoes in class and hang our socks on the window racks and roam around barefooted whole day. The worries of a favorite expensive shoe getting spoiled did not exist back then. Life was much simpler back then :) Only the hopes of the unseen future and the joy of being a kid existed. Beautiful unforgettable childhood memories :)

Growing up sucks, specially when its raining outside and you can't give time to watch this beauty of nature which detoxifies your soul......when you have client calls to attend, when you have code deliveries, when you have to work. Job. Jobs which pays our bills :)

But still, no matter what, even today whenever it rains outside, my otherwise dead/in-a-coma heart skips a beat and becomes unexplanatory out-of-world happy. Maybe that's the beauty of the rains :)


N.B: Apart from watching rain, I love clicking rain too :) The pics posted here, have been clicked by me from my office desk.

Is age really just a number?

As I went through the status update of a school friend of mine on Facebook which reads ‘last day in my 20’s ‘, I could not help wondering that is really age just a number? What is the big fuss about turning 30 then? Will the concerned person change overnight as she wakes up the day she turns 30? Will she age overnight and her face will be full of wrinkles or will she become wiser overnight? Nothing, right? Then why we people specially girls become so sad and freak out when we turn 30 whereas we remain just cool at 29? Does the real problem lie with our Indian outlook that a girl must get married in her twenties or no guy will marry you? Or are women all over the world actually freaked out at turning 30? What is the real truth ?

I personally feel that after turning 30, you enter the best phase of your life. You become serious in your life and leave all immaturities behind. You have already completed your education and you have already worked for few years or maybe even switched few jobs. You are economically more stable and pay all your own bills without asking your dad to help. You have already bought a house or a car or plan to do so in few years. On personal font, you know yourself so much better now. You totally know if or not you want to be in a relationship. And if you want a relationship, what exactly are the things you are looking for and what all are a strict no-no. You learn to say "NO". You do realize what adjustments are worth doing and what not. You have so much more clearer vision in your head about you , your life, things in your life.

The 20 year old me would do super crazy things, take silly risks and try out anything.....just anything. There was no worries, no stress...as if tomorrow does not exist. I had dreams of tomorrow...real big dreams. Today I am in that "tomorrow". I know much more about the world and about me as compared to my 20s. That does not mean I have turned all boring now, but I know my limits now and am mature enough to take better decisions. I know now when to stop and when to let go. So, growing older is indeed better :)

Today is the tomorrow I already dreamt and worried about yesterday :)