Page 41 - Seniors Toady March 2020

Bollywood’s Feminist Forays women in a society that punishes victims of rape
Dor (2006) instead of the perpetrators.
Nagesh Kukunoor’s remake of the Malayalam
film Perumazhakkalam (2004) is about a city
woman (Gul Panang), who has to get a pardon
from the widow (Ayesha Takia) of the man
her husband has been accused of killing in the

Gulf. Widowhood is a curse in a patriarchal
Rajasthani society and mercy is expected of
one whose life has lost all joy. The friendship
between the two has the tender empathy that Mujhe Insaaf Chahiye (1983)
such suffering can bring to the hearts of women In this almost forgotten film by T. Rama Rao,
who have seen a glimpse of hell on earth. Rati Agnihotri played a woman who is wooed
and seduced by a man (Mithun Chakraborty),

who dumps her when she gets pregnant. Instead
of quietly hiding her “shame”, she joins hands
with a fiery lawyer, played by Rekha, to drag
the man to court. She believes that if society
considers unwed motherhood a sin, then why
does the man not share the blame?

Fire (1996)
Deepa Mehta’s controversial film starring

Shabana Azmi and Nandita Das is about two
women in loveless marriages to two brothers
living in a crowded Delhi colony. When they
decide to offer support and sexual pleasure to
each other, the foundations of an oppressive
family system that expects submissiveness from
wives are shaken. Mirch Masala (1987)

In Ketan Mehta’s film, when a village woman
(Smita Patil) turns down the advances of the
police chief and takes shelter in a spice factory,
where women work, they all band together to
protect her, when the men of the village are
prepared to throw her to the vengeful wolf.

Zakhmee Aurat (1988)
This B-grade Dimple Kapadia starrer, directed
by Avtar Bhogal, had a group of vigilante
women who go around castrating rapists. In
its own coarse way, it spoke up for justice for

41 SENIORS TODAY | Issue #9 | March 15, 2020