Vidya Balan and Shobhaa De sat down for a chat on everything from Bollywood to feminism to India’s vibrant democracy. Shobhaa De, who turns seventy in January next year, also spoke about ageing gracefully. She released the cover of her appropriately titled book, Seventy And To Hell With It!
Vidya and Shobhaa also spoke about the allegations levelled against Hollwood bigshot, Harvey Weinstein and the culture of keeping these things under wraps in Bollywood. A conversation about the defiant feminist, Kangana Ranaut and the controversy surrounding Mersal also came up.
Take a look at a few highlights from the event below:
In India and in Bollywood, there have been creepy, crawling Weinsteins for the longest time and there has been that kind of complicity and people have kept quiet (about it). As they did in Hollywood, as they have in Europe and Australia and China and Hong Kong and wherever there has been a strong, vibrant and powerful movie industry; wherever showbiz has been a commercial driver. There have been the Weinsteins who control it all. So it’s upto that one brave woman to say, “enough is enough, we’re not gonna take it anymore”. As someone who has monitored the movie industry in India very closely and keenly, Bollywood in particular. I don’t see change I would’ve wanted and expected.Shobhaa De, Author and Columnist
Vidya Balan, who maintains that while she has never been propositioned by anyone in the industry, she believes that at times, women learn to live with such acts because of the perception that they don’t want to be seen as too “aggressive”.
People don’t want to be seen having opinions and being intelligent. As an actress, you have to be seen as desirable. And desirable women are not ‘intelligent, they’re not articulate, they’re not agressive’ in the way that it’s been defined. A lot of them shy away from it. But I think, things are changing. Yes, kangana is a great example but there are others. I read a blog by Richa Chadha recently, which was lovely.Vidya Balan, Actor
Talking about Kangana’s gutsy interviews and revelations, Shobhaa De says that women who speak up are “relegated to a mental asylum”.
Women, who you would expect would be on top of their lives are infact puppets, and the tragedy is that the one woman or two women who choose to speak up, are relegated to a mental asylum. They’re told that they’re actually insane and crazy.Shobhaa De
I mean Kangana and I mean her very strongly, because regardless of her emotional stability or otherwise. And men in Bollywood are nobody to question that. She has taken some pretty strong decisions which say a lot about her guts. I know her since the time she came to Bollywood and I know what she’s up against. The minute the big Bollywood club decides that ‘We don’t want you’, it’s so easy, you just blacklist a girl. Like her no one wants to work with her, no one wants to sign on new films with her, I think Kangana can take them all on and win, because that’s the kind of woman she is, she’s also capable, as I’m sure Vidya is, of walking away from it all. She can produce her own films...if they choose to ostrasize her, the loss is theirs.Shobhaa De
On the controversy surrounding Mersal, Balan said a film was “either someone’s imagination or interpretation” and it should not be seen as making a political statement.
“Once the CBFC has cleared the film, it should be allowed to be seen the way it has been cleared. If there are any issues, they should have been brought up before,” she said at the ongoing Penguin Fever.
You can watch the entire conversation between Vidya Balan and Shobhaa De here:
(With inputs from PTI)
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