How much textbook space and dinner-time pep talk have we spent listing the evils of smoking of alcoholsism? College boys and girls haunt beer lounges in the dozens still.
How much money have we pumped into curbing drug trafficking? Hashish and cocaine still invade the hostel rooms and lives of youth every day.
How many windowpanes and car windscreens have we smashed to ban Valentine’s Day? Young love overflows on the streets unfazed.
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There were seventeen lip locks in her first movie in the country where milk boiling over was just about as erotic as you could get. She was going to get noticed. She had announced herself with a big noise. And she was all set to go ahead with full steam. (The pun here was intended). Her second movie was the most talked-about movies in recent times. For one part of population, it was a "shift of attitudes from hyporcysy to realism". For another, it was "scandalizing and against moral values and Indian culture". There was a lot of noise, positive and negative. The noise was the point.
It was loud.
It was there all the time.
Everyone joined in the screaming.
Everybody spoke about her, cursing or praising her.
Mallika Sherawat had arrived.
Over a span of a year, Mallika had transformed from "just another starlet" to "one of those".
And for a legion of struggling starlets, she was the biggest signboard possible saying, "TOP SECRET SHORTCUT TO FAME THIS WAY".
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As time went by, Mallika came under the microscope for a change. So far, critics needed microscopes only for her clothes. Now they put the dame under it herself. They searched for the actor named Mallika Sherawat. And so far they haven’t found any. Her USP is her "bold" attitude. Her speciality is her lack of inhibition when it comes to unbuttoning her blouse. But that is all. She is just an Easter Egg. Decorated on the outside, but a hollow shell nevertheless.
Exeunt Mallika from limelight.
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Her antagonists had the last laugh. When she came, she was full of vigor and enthusiasm. She had brought "boldness" into the movie world of our country. She had brought "realism" to it. She had brought the Indian woman out of her hiding place. But Mallika made a subtle mistake here. The Indian woman isn’t hiding behind her clothes. She’s happy there.
Brand Mallika tried to wear the cloak of feminism. But failed grossly. She was no feminist. She was the most ideal piece of firewood male chauvinism needed! Because Mallika’s feminism was nudism. And if nudism is the same as feminism, then every man out there would want to be a feminist. And so most of us understood how wrong she really was.
A powerful woman is not the whirlpool of lust.
An empowered woman is not adulterous.
A true feminist is not insecure.
So Brand Mallika crashed. All of us now know Mallika as that starlet who came and kicked some waves on the surface of the pond. But all of us now know that Mallika is just a forsaken soul seeking attention and money in every way possible. And even if your and my sanities were put to the test, we were not going to credit her with anything more than an embarrassing erection at the movie theater.
Brand Mallika is gone.
Or is she?
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Mallika did expose her skin on stage. But that is just a horribly tiny fraction of what she exposed. What she exposed was hypocrysy. Not the one she was talking of. But she exposed hypocrycy of another kind.
We blame her and we call her names. We say that Mallika started a trend that is going to destroy cultural and moral values in our country. We say that Mallika was a bane and needs to be banished.
We said all that. And thereby Mallika exposed us.
Mallika didn’t start the trend of skin-show movies. She only groped in the unexplored territory. And guess what? We lit the candle!
Marches aren’t started by leaders. They’re started when followers queue one by one. She started no trend by her "bravery". It was us who, one by one, watched every single "skin show" movies with relish who started the trend. Sex sells all right and it sounds scandalizing all right. But only when we talk about "sells". It’s ok if we buy sex. That’s ok. Don’t blame me. Blame someone else.
Mallika exposed this.
And she did one heck of a job!
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