What's Really Wrong With Films Like Kabir Singh

I don't know about you dear reader, but I was profoundly shocked with the kind of rave responses the film, Kabir Singh got this year, breaking box office collections and whatnot. I fail to understand why the director has felt that this was a story worth telling. Toxic masculinity is a concept that has led to an uncountable number of acid attacks, rapes and immeasurable emotional and physical harm inflicted on women. Consent is another concept unfamiliar to the director- how is someone planting a kiss on your cheek without even asking/ knowing you a gesture of love? If those kind of things are still allowed, then we indirectly accept every stalker/ harasser who have made girls/ women/ even guys feel uncomfortable or vulnerable under the pretense of "loving them." Either the director is unaware of the reinforcement and real-life imitations the largely narrow-minded audience, or he chooses to deliberately ignorant of the powerful medium of the film. I have had some of my close friends telling me of how watching this film made them incredibly uncomfrtable, since they recounted their own nasty experience of stalking with me. Saying "Yeh bandi meri hai" to the entire college will not hide the misogyny at the core of the film, no matter how many soul-thumping melodies try to cover up for it. It's sad that an educated, millenial girl like Preeti, aspiring to be a doctor herself is depicted to be meek, emotionally dependent and invested in someone else whom she didn't even know before so very soon into the relationship. Let me be clear, I do not have a problem with people who fall into the habit of drugs/ alcohol. But to not adress it, to harm everyone who has ever cared about you, in the most distastefully unapologetic manner shows the leniency we still accord to males in today's world. Botched up notions of love do not make a good story, even if it's Shahid Kapoor's verifiably good acting trying hard to convince you. Do not agree, ladies and gentelmen, remind yourselves of the centuries old tradition of gender inequality and raise your voice against acts that grossly support this injustice. Make it count.

Signing off in the hope of a better future for everyone.