Zero-sum game: Abled-persons taking offence over Bollywood's landga, andha jokes are as fake as leather-jacket flaunting animal rights lovers
From 'disabled', to 'differently-abled' to 'Divyang' now, there is no term that we haven’t already used to make it known that we know nothing about how to even ‘show’ sensitivity — ‘feeling’ is a different ballgame altogether — to people suffering from some or the other sort of physical impairment.
But then, a lot of people haven’t shown sympathy towards a lot of problems we face or have faced.
We live in troubled times. Actually, we always have lived in troubled times. As far as this piece goes, we are concerned with ‘now’ because we live in ‘now’ — the present.
There are too many triggers.
Okay!
There always were too many triggers.
The one thing that has changed perhaps is that we have been able to add labels to our triggers. Calling someone fat, thin, short, tall is all 'body shaming' and thus wrong. Said in a derogatory way, it is wrong anyway. Said as light banter, it is not just innocuous, but also a welcome relief from the daily grind of life, which becomes more grinding without humour in it.
But coming with labels, we tend to take things more seriously. Without labels, we can afford to ignore. So, everybody has to be a 'right-winger' or a 'left-winger' when all that the person actually cares about in life is just a chicken winger. Now, this can be such an insensitive insult to political ideologies and the intellectual class desperate to be counted in either camp. And that precisely is the problem with the idea of 'insult' and charges of 'insensitivity'.
It lacks the understanding of banter.
Songs like 'Jiski Biwi Chhoti', which also refer to ‘Moti’, hurt today more than ever before because they are now clubbed under the label of 'body shaming'. This also stems from our problem of burdening language with expectations. Language conveys meaning, language is not meaning itself. 'Moti', 'chhoti', 'behra' and 'andha' convey meaning – they can be insults, but they can also just be words used to express endearment towards our cousins, siblings, friends or even partners for that matter.
Our oversensitive selves are touchy about the depiction of disabled people in our movies. Wait! Did I just offend anyone's sensibilities with the use of the word 'disabled'?
There has never been a more hypocritical exercise undertaken by mankind as the christening of people suffering physical disabilities. Many such people have themselves said that they would much rather have smoother access to public places than verbose conferences over what they should be referred to as.
How insensitive of the disabled people to show such scant regard for our staged sympathies.
With Zero ready to hit screens, many are worried if this too will be an insensitive portrayal of the disabled or people born with physical challenges, as Bollywood is guilty of doing so fairly often.
But our movies are a reflection of who we are — not always, but mostly.
If movies could actually influence us, the world would have been such a beautiful place — more just, more equitable, more loving, more sensitive.
Movies tell us caste and religion are inconsequential to love, but we are nowhere near ending honour killings, executed in the most dishonourable ways across the country. Movies tell us not to lie, steal, loot or kill. We anyway lie, steal, loot and kill.
So, the argument that movies deepen our insensitivity towards disabled people is nothing more than an attempt at blame-shifting.
All depictions of disabled people, other than the ones which seek to present them as sympathy-deserving individuals, don’t merit criticism.
A deaf and mute character can only be depicted as a deaf and mute character just as a non-deaf, non-mute character can only be presented as s/he is. It can’t happen any other way because someone finds it hurtful.
Yes, there should be no unnecessary ridiculing because, after all, what is there to be ridiculed about how a person is?
Stammering is a problem — so is a loud voice or a shrill voice or just the voice of someone we don’t like. We imitate them, laugh it off and then we get on with life.
If movies were to stop showing stammering as a funny thing, school bullies wouldn't stop bullying others. Bullies need help — you can’t make them run out of ideas on how to bully others simply by changing what the movies show.
I am short.
The best joke I remember about my height came from a very dear friend who was walking besides me during our college days. I got a call on my phone and as I said hello, he looked down towards me and asked, “Wahan signal aa raha hai?”
We laughed out loud together.
There have been days when these jokes have irked me, probably because they came from people who irked me anyway.
The world is huge and its problems, umpteen. So drop your pretence of playing the super-sensitive soul and get on with life.
As for showing your respect for the disabled, join the campaign to make public places more and more accessible to them — including the theatres where Bollywood movies are screened.