These women who drink whisky for fun

The likes of Vidya Balan who will opt for a Silk Smitha and a Bobby Jasoos and utilise them to up her "progressive" profile but begin sentences with "Look I'm not a feminist but..." are severely problematic for what they take from feminism but fail to give back to it. Jahnavi Gadkar, homicidal maniac of a drunken lawyer who killed an innocent father and a taxi driver is the peaking of that liberty.

Apart from the right to work in jobs that men once controlled and equal pay, feminism has fought for decades for the woman's right to "fun". That fun implying that we have bodies that have a right to be sensually deployed and satiated, and whims and fancies, pick and manipulate the gaze upon us; thirsts for adventure or whisky, that have every right to be explored. Work, have kids or not, but also, play. We have the right to run a messy home, have multiple-partner sex, stay out late and not just because the boss set us a late deadline and we are bringing home the bacon. We have the right to pick whisky over beer. We have the right to buy ourselves Audis because we earned the money we bought it with, after the graduate education we worked damn hard for.

Two men were at that celebratory bash that night. One of whom asked her if she could handle herself. The one woman went home too drunk to drive, telling her colleagues "She'd done this before". She later told police she'd had "whisky for fun". The headlines the day after scream "woman has whisky 'for fun' and kills innocents".

As women gain power in society, it becomes incumbent on them to recognise the hard-earned liberties they enjoy. A Vidya Balan who does not recognise that she is free to work after marriage in an industry that once wrote off married women on screen, and who gives thanks to her producer husband - a powerful male archetype in an industry besieged with the power of such - while carefully side stepping the very feminism she claims to espouse, is a role model of the worst kind for this generation.

Both these women should ideally be feminist icons for what they have achieved at young ages. Vidya for her outspokenness and endless discomfort with her body issues and the quirky roles she's picked to portray - though I believe Rani Mukerjee, Nandita Das, Preity Zinta and even Kareena Kapoor found edgy feminist roles to play within the mainstream casting system without making it their marketable USP far more effectively - and Jahnavi for snagging a high profile job at Reliance, one of the country's top firms, earning the big bucks, breaking glass ceilings and setting off on to the path to corporate stardom on her own steam. And above all, for stopping along the way to celebrate herself.

The tragedy is in their reluctance to take responsibility for the celebration of our liberties. Towards society, towards other women, towards a younger and an older generation equally, and towards contributing to the definition of what women will and will not do with their liberties. It is said of women, that when a man does something, it is a man. When a woman does something, it is of all women. And sadly, this remains true. We collectively, those of us who continue to fight for our liberties in patriarchal spaces, must bear part of the burden of Jahnvi Gadkar's lack of self-control and self-awareness. To be fair, it also comes from women being pushed to overconfidently overstate their ability to handle themselves. A new age feminism paints women who would say "I can't" or ask for help, least of all from a man, let alone two, as weak. To know your own limits and respect them, must be feminism too. Vidya's rejection of feminism embodies this collective failure of women who use liberties as personal conveniences, like a wealthy husband's credit card.

In studied contrast is Sheryl Sandberg in her public outpourings of her grief. As much celebratory of her shared life as filled with her struggles as partner and mother and CEO.

"While the experience of grief is profoundly personal, the bravery of those who have shared their own experiences has helped pull me through. Some who opened their hearts were my closest friends. Others were total strangers who have shared wisdom and advice publicly. So I am sharing what I have learned in the hope that it helps someone else. In the hope that there can be some meaning from this tragedy."

...she wrote on Facebook.

The deeply personal for truly evolved women becomes the collective. It comes from knowing that we are products of a movement larger than ourselves. The work we take satisfaction in and derive our freedoms and celebrations from, is the result of several generations of women fighting for our right to do so.

That, Vidya Balan, and Jahnvi Gadkar, is feminism.

Liberties have before been taken away from women on the pretext of "she can't handle it" before. Don't add "she doesn't want the responsibility of it" to that list for the rest of us.