Anyone who knows anything about showbiz will tell you how further out from reality Tinsel Town really is. Glamour, hyper-real action sequences and sporadic dances on streets all reek of old-school entertainment that has ceased to please the current generation of viewers. In a time like this, for a movie like PINK to come and address blazing issues for women and indicting everything that’s wrong in our society, not just in India but even here, in Bangladesh, is a true feat.
Bangladesh faces the same issues for women that India does. Despite having a reputation of being an ailing third world country, a young woman here leads a life as normal as a young woman in the west. This would mean going to parties, having a drink or two, wearing somewhat revealing clothes and mixing with the opposite gender- all carefully shielded from the eyes of a more narrow minded society made up of “parents, uncles and aunties.”
In a miniature world of their own, so detached from supervision, a lot does go wrong- from an unwanted touch to groping and raping. Usually these incidents are pushed under the rug by the women themselves- because they realize that by stepping outside the “bhodro, obhodro” LOC, they have been “bad girls.” However, when these issues gain their share of spotlight, the blame usually falls on women for being so “modern”, “forward” or “fast”- side effects of growing up in a patriarchal society. Reinforced by Bollywood’s not-so-subtle “no means yes” messages in songs and movies, the average man doesn’t find it too difficult to turn a deaf ear to the woman’s NO.
Without revealing too much of the plot, the movie very bluntly addresses the importance and power of a woman’s No. A no is a no, regardless of what she is wearing, or whether she is drunk, sober, friendly or aloof; whether it comes strongly, or meekly. Whether it comes politely or as a prelude to strong expletives; whether the woman is a working woman, your friend, a sex worker or even, your wife.
PINK uses sarcasm and rhetoric, highlighted by some of the most amazing dialogue delivery from Amitabh Bachchan that you will ever witness, to let the proverbial cat out of the bag and let society know the blatant disparity between its treatment of men and women: you can read the chauvinism on the male actors of the film and in the body language of the female police officer who helps nail the wrong victims.
It is just as easy to evaluate the character of a woman in Bangladesh (through the kind of clothes she wears, the crowd she hangs out with and her social habits as it is in India.) The only difference is that no Amitabh Bachchan has thus far, come to save these “immoral and loose” offenders from their plight.
**This write up was published in the October 2016 issue of ICE Today magazine.