dailyO
Life/Style

What Deepika Padukone's #MyChoice means to me

Advertisement
Mehr Tarar
Mehr TararApr 06, 2015 | 11:41

What Deepika Padukone's #MyChoice means to me

I am a misfit. My most-oft, four-worded, self-description in college. It's not that I had a "wild" lifestyle since I didn't drink, smoke or wore "provocative" clothes, but there was an undeniable aura about my personality that spelled "rebel" to many who believed in appearances being more important than the reality. Years later not much has changed, albeit I've become more conscious about my choice of words. My urges checked by mental advice, my choices have become a tad more in line with the societal demands.

Advertisement

Growing up a tomboy in a household of five girls and four boys, there was a constant refrain from my very conservative grandmother when she bemoaned my "wild" existence of climbing trees, horsing around, and sliding down walls: "Tainu kudiyan te mundiyan vich farq nazar nahin aunda?" (Can't you differentiate between girls and boys?)

I guess my answer was in the negative despite constantly facing the very stark reality: Girls don't… Fill in the blanks.

It could be anything. Don't laugh loudly amidst strangers. Don't initiate conversations with boys. Don't acknowledge your male friends as merely friends; a simple friendship must be guised in the socially acceptable terms of he's-a-cousin, a family friend. You don't have a right to be who you are. You are a female, and there are parametres of behaviour that you are expected to exist within. One step outside, and you would be going against the realm of good behavior. Or what they connoted as good behavior.

Many of us didn't even have the choice to study what we wanted, and being inclined academically entranced by the unlimited horizon of knowledge, that mattered a great deal to me. I loved English Literature, but the only reason why I opted to do my masters in Literature in an all-female college was because that was the only choice I had. When, aged 21, I was asked by the publisher/owner of a very popular weekly to join the paper on a very good post, the paternal objection – set in stone - to that came in one line: Girls from good families don't work for newspapers. Years of regret later, I'm aware even today that that was one fight I should have taken on because it would have changed the way my life unfolded in terms of the few choices I made later.

Advertisement

One thing I was clear about from a very young age, unequivocally. That I wanted to be a mother. Motherhood is a choice I made very consciously based on what my natural inclination was, and that's something that shaped the core on which I exist today. I'm just a mother. Period. And I say it simply, happily and proudly.

My 15-year-old son, having studied in a co-ed system his entire life, accepts the equality of gender like he accepts the other facts in his life. Like I'm his mother! There's no advice to be given to him how females are to be treated as he does it naturally. Therefore, there is often "rolling-of-eyes" and "Gosh, Mom" when he reads about one or the other "feminist" issue being raised anywhere in the world. To him if men and women are equal, why so much hullabaloo about "feminism." And while I agree with him on many facets of his argument, I doubt if I'd ever be able to explain to him fully what a constant battle it is to be a woman in our part of the world.And that although I don't ascribe to feminism I've always had to struggle to make my choices matter. Not much has changed while much has changed.

Advertisement

As I watched Deepika Padukone, looking gorgeous and…well, Deepika, and the 99 women, most of whom are unfamiliar to me, in My Choice, I couldn't understand the furor the three-minute Vogue India-sponsored, Homi Adajania-directed video seems to have unleashed in India. Notwithstanding the simplistic wording of the video, and the gloss quotient, there's no mistaking the potency of the intent and message it carries. Deepika walks the talk, and her body of work demonstrates that. Deepika is the quintessential 2015 strong, emancipated, independent, very wealthy, very smart, and a very lovely woman, and here's to that. The roles she essays – barring maybe Adajania's Cocktail where the "bad" girl loses the boy to the "good" girl – exemplify the construct of Deepika's life. Full marks to Adajania for making Deepika the protagonist of My Choice, because no matter what you may say about her, Deepika is unapologetically Deepika - on her own terms.

My Choice is made for a niche audience, and there are no ifs and buts about it. There are also no ifs and buts about the reality that the issue of "choice" for women is more relevant today than it was say…choose any year or era. Indeed, choices are not expected to be limited to how minimal your clothing is to be, or how much you wish to party, or who you want to sleep with, or how uninhibited you're in your endorsement of narratives or lifestyles. The choices are not merely limited to your rejection of the accepted norms of relationships, or what time you would come home. Any relationship is about give and take. What you expect or do elicits responses and reactions that may or may not be to your liking. But then that's the choice or the bed you have made or chosen to be in. The issue here is deeper, and the gloss may have obfuscated it for those who wish to express outrage about every choice that's against their sensibilities.

The word choice is relative, and so are the choices, and so is the emphasis on it. However, there's no denying the need to say it all out loud. The forms may vary, the presentation may arouse a difference in response, and the reactions may clash. It has to be stated, and that is one choice open to women today.

My Choice to me is about the assertion that women must have the freedom to make a choice. Women must be free from the endowment of freedom from those they call family, through blood or marriage. Women must have the mental security that their choices of their lives are not going to be tagged and judged negatively. Women must be given the right to decide what their lives are to be.

To me, My Choice is not about unclasping a brassiere, having sex outside marriage, staying out late, or a negation of motherhood. To me My Choice is simply the assertion of one woman, those 99 women, any woman, to simply…be.

Last updated: April 06, 2015 | 11:41
IN THIS STORY
Please log in
I agree with DailyO's privacy policy