If you are an Indian, chances are quite high that you must have been brought up on Bollywood tunes. Whether you hum them while bustling about your work or use them in context of your daily life situations, Bollywood songs, and infact even the movies, play a major part in our lives. Major enough to change our behaviour though?
No, of course not! Well, we do keep rewinding all the songs in our heads over and over again, we do worship the actors and we certainly do look up to those characters that we see on the silver screen. So much so that we come to emulate them in our real lives. The dressing style of the heroine, copying the strut that the hero had, the hit dialogues of a popular movie. But have supposedly some of us take that even farther? Case in point an Indian man who got away with stalking accusations, by blaming Bollywood for his behaviour!
Sandesh Baliga, a 33-year old man, was accused of stalking two Australian women. He had lived in Australia for three years before the said situation had occurred. But incidentally those three years of living abroad couldn’t indemnify the deep rooted inappropriateness of the so called ‘Bollywood Behaviour’. This was just last year, during the era of enlightenment. Believe it or not, the Australian judge actually ruled against his conviction and let Mr. Baliga go free citing his cultural background. His lawyer, Greg Barns, said in court that this was “quite normal behaviour” for Indian men. Normal Behaviour, he said! So apparently you can stalk a woman, torture her, suffocate her, until she finally has no option but to bend to your ways and then then they call it normal. And then they wonder why Australia has a record of racism, huh mate?
Although you might think that this is some cock and bull story, it is not. In fact not enough of this has been made aware to the people of our good country. So All India Bakchod, a team of independent creators, came up with a video yesterday showcasing how Bollywood songs actually have inherently and discreetly spread the message of harassment being normal. Got to stalk a woman to gain her love? Chalta hai boss! Got to sneak up into her room to show your machismo? Ekdum Jhakas! Got to mentally manipulate her so that she finally gets so confused that she says yes? Sahi Hai! AIB has, in their own brand of comedy, shown us that the industry we revere is also the reason for our downfall – at least partly so.
We propagate being the most cultured civilisation of them all yet, our films teach us how to trap gullible girls through cheap tricks. We worship female spirits and goddesses to no end in our movies yet we treat our girls with utmost disrespect. We make films that have lovers singing around trees and fighting for their love yet we have ideals of only arranged marriage since eons. It is so ironic that it is tragic. And this very element has been captured by AIB in their latest video featuring Richa Chadha, Mallika Dua and Vicky Kaushal. So if you want some food for thought and laughter for your Tuesday tirades, then check out the video. Hopefully this time around we will have a generation of Indians who ardently follow their future as we see them following girls now.
