(20 Sep 2013)
Bollywood is big business today. And it’s getting
increasingly bigger with filmmakers generously spending on raunchy ‘item’
numbers. Money is what gets you more money: this apparently is their mantra.
Let’s decipher the meaning of an item number in this
context. It is the shameless celebration of an open invitation to lustful men
for ‘possession’ sent out through the gyration of myriads of curves and parts
of the female body. It is the act where a woman is portrayed as having been
born only so one day she could lure men to ‘have’ her, and feel extremely proud
of that. The guy seems to think, why not, if she herself is so welcoming of the
idea?
Being sexy isn’t offensive; being attractive is a gift not bestowed
upon every woman; seduction is an art not every lady is skillful at. Do our
item numbers, however, exhibit any of these? Well, I could bet my head in
saying that I don’t have any doubt they do not! What is dead unfortunate is
that there seems to be an open admiration society consisting of both women and
men that has found this systematic commoditization of women as cool. Here we
are, looking at an ‘object’ that is available to be sold, to be bought, to be
had. This is too disdainful to be any iota of sex or dance or entertainment, or
anything that goes along with the taste of a mature consumer.
I pity the confidence quotient of most of the filmmakers in
Bollywood. They’re so low on it, they need to sell their stories wrapped in
flesh. Bankruptcy!
The irony is when the makers and patronizers of these item
numbers appear on ‘national’ debates on issues concerning women’s rights and
crimes against women, and talk about protest rallies they may have organized or
been part of. An analogy that perhaps gets close to this joke is a politician
preaching about values!
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