Put up, shut up, and move on...

Whatever the merits of the Preity Zinta-Ness Wadia case, it is the commentary around it that is truly troubling

First up, the disclosures. I do not know either Preity Zinta or Ness Wadia. I was not present at Wankhede Stadium on 30 May. I don't know what happened during the altercation between the two co-owners of the Kings XI Punjab franchise of the IPL. So, I can't find for either the defendant or the plaintiff (which is, in any case, a matter for the courts). But what I do find extremely troubling is the commentary that has swirled around this case ever since Zinta filed a complaint at the Marine Drive police station.

So, here in no particular order of importance, are just some of the reactions that have left me gobsmacked.

* Women who are rich and famous cannot be abused/harassed. And certainly, it would be impossible to humiliate a successful actress like Zinta in public.

Really? If you believe that, I have just two words for you: Zeenat Aman. She was abused and slapped in public by the irate wife of one of her lovers at a society party. Did anyone come to her aid? No, they looked the other way obligingly, pretending that this was not happening. And we all know this happens all across 'high society' not just in the glamorous world of the movies.

* At a time when young girls are being gang-raped and killed in villages, women of privilege should not file 'frivolous' suits like this one.

This is a bit like saying that I should not complain to the police about a burglary in my house because there are so many murder investigations that they are dealing with. The truth is that it is incredibly silly to draw some sort of equivalence between crimes, or try and grade them in a sliding scale of 'seriousness'. A crime is a crime is a crime. Each one needs to be dealt with appropriately and with the full force of the law. And maybe if all of us had the courage, the patience, and the energy to report the 'minor' abuse we put up with in our day-to-day lives, there would be less 'major' stuff to deal with.

What's even more offensive about this 'whataboutery' is that it turns crimes against women into an either-or category. There is no contradiction between standing up for rape victims in India's villages and standing up for the right of an actress to seek legal redressal for harassment. One does not negate the other, it just reinforces the policy of 'zero tolerance'. And I suspect that if this zero tolerance policy was applied in our villages as well, the incidence of rape would only decrease.

* What is the big deal if an ex-boyfriend calls you a 'f***ing b***h' or a 'w***e' in public? Get over yourself and sort it out with him behind closed doors. Or just give an interview to the media and get it out of your system. Why go to the police?

Because we all know what a breeze intimate partner violence – whether verbal, emotional or physical – is, right? Not like 'real' violence at all. And if you must air dirty linen in public, why not get some media attention why you are at it? After all, isn't that exactly what you are after?

Actually, no, it isn't. Sometimes taking a public stand is not enough. Especially if the harassment is consistent and ongoing. Naming and shaming is not enough. The only way to wrestle some control back is to take recourse to the law. And that is your right, no matter what your previous relationship with the accused.

* In any case, if you are currently in or have been in a relationship with the guy, harassment doesn't really count. This kind of thing happens between ex-lovers. Call it a lovers tiff, if you will. Or an ex-lovers tiff, if you want to get all pedantic about it.

This is the kind of language used by people who use the word eve-teasing to describe harassment and who think that stalking your ex is just a bit of harmless fun. No need to get your knickers in a twist about that! Perhaps somebody should explain to these people that today's stalking can easily turn into tomorrow's molestation, just as today's abuse can escalate into tomorrow's violence. This kind of thing needs to be nipped in the bud, and now.

* A beautiful woman of 39 years is an 'ugly, washed-up hag' who can't bear the thought that her ex – a very eligible bachelor indeed, at a mere 44 years of age – has a new, younger, hotter girlfriend.

Ah yes, the sexism and the misogyny! It's never very far away from the surface, is it? She has never gotten over the fact that he didn’t marry her. And now she's taking revenge because he has fallen in love with someone else. Her acting career is washed up, so she is trying to stay in the headlines by filing frivolous cases against her ex. Never mind that no matter how much of a 'has-been' she is, Zinta is still a far more famous and recognizable figure than Wadia. And that both parties have been in relationships after their break-up without this kind of ugliness surfacing.

In any case, just a cursory look at some of the pictures surfacing now will tell you that Zinta is still pretty darn stunning. In fact, even more so, because a woman never looks better than when she is standing up for herself – and by extension, for all of us.

A tale of two women

Sunanda Pushkar and Valerie Trierweiler; and the many parallels between their stories

Two women have dominated the headlines over the last couple of weeks. One of them is Valerie Trierweiler, the now former First Lady of France, whose first public appearance post her separation with Francois Hollande at a charity event in Mumbai created quite a stir. The other is Sunanda Pushkar, the tragically deceased wife of Union minister Shashi Tharoor, who graced the columns of page three while she lived and was splashed all over the front pages after being found dead in a five-star hotel room days after she had ‘outed’ what she believed was an affair between her husband and Pakistani journalist, Mehr Tarar.  

But while their stories played out many thousands of miles apart, the parallels between the two women are all too apparent.

Both had been married twice before, had kids from their second marriages (three sons for Valerie and one for Sunanda), before finding love a third time around. Both were strong independent women who took pride in being successful professionals, Valerie as a senior journalist for Paris Match magazine and a television presenter and Sunanda as a businesswoman (her declared assets included several flats in Dubai valued at 93 crores; and that was just part of her wealth). Both resented being perceived as arm candy for their powerful husbands. When Paris Match put Valerie on the cover calling her Hollande’s ‘charming asset’ she tweeted her outrage “Bravo Paris Match for its sexism. My thoughts go out to all angry women”. Sunanda, for her part, ascribed the IPL scandal in which she became embroiled as an emblem of the sexism and misogyny of the Indian media.

Both wanted a strong identity for themselves in public life. When Hollande was elected President, Valerie declared that she was not going to be ‘une potiche’ (French for trophy wife) and would have her own agenda in the ‘Madame Wing’ of the Elysee Palace. Sunanda, too, didn’t believe in mincing her words while going against the declared position of the Congress party on such contentious issues as Section 370, which she maintained discriminated against Kashmiri women, both Hindu and Muslim, on property rights.

Unfortunately, the central irony of the lives of these women was that despite their best efforts to project themselves as public entities in their own right, both found fame only because of the men they married/lived with. It is hard to believe that national TV channels would have interviewed Sunanda Pushkar and sought her views on political issues if she hadn’t been married to Shashi Tharoor but was just another attractive, successful, late entrant on the Delhi social scene. And certainly, Valerie Trierweiler would not have been invited to Mumbai to promote a charity if she was just another French journalist and not the partner of the President of France.

Another striking parallel is how both suffered, albeit in different ways, because of Twitter. Valerie sent out that now-infamous tweet, supporting a rebel candidate in a French election against Francois’ previous partner, Segolene Royal, because of her pathological jealousy of her former love rival. Segolene lost the election but Valerie lost in the court of public opinion, and many now believe that may have marked the beginning of the end of her relationship with the President.

Sunanda’s indiscretion on Twitter was even more explosive. She sent out a series of messages on her husband’s Twitter account to ‘expose’ his alleged affair with a Pakistani journalist, Mehr Tarar, whom she dubbed an ‘ISI agent’. Tarar responded in kind. Tharoor hastened to clarify that his account had been hacked. Sunanda was having none of that. She gave interviews to insist that she had sent out the tweets in question. And a messy situation got messier and messier.

Sadly, both Sunanda and Valerie found their private lives unraveling in a spectacularly public fashion around the same time. But while in Valerie’s case, it was Closer magazine that revealed that her partner had been cheating on her with a French actress, Julie Gayet, Sunanda’s privacy was invaded by Sunanda herself. And while Valerie survived her heartbreak despite being rushed to hospital after ‘taking one pill too many’ (according to some reports in the French media), Sunanda was found dead in the Leela Hotel of what was described (as I write this) as a possible drug overdose.

What lessons can we draw from the lives of these two women, who lived, loved, rose and then fell dramatically in the public gaze?

Well, first off, don’t hitch your wagon to a man, no matter how much you love him (as Valerie insisted to the end that she did) or how much he worships you (as Tharoor clearly did). Relying on or reveling in the status you derive from a relationship is a dangerous business, no matter how glamorous and desirable it may seem at the time. So, don’t sacrifice your career for a ‘job’ from which you can be fired at any time without any due cause.

And secondly, remember that it’s called ‘private life’ for a reason. It is not supposed to be for public consumption. Because while people may express faux sympathy for you, once your back is turned they will be pointing and laughing. Until, of course, the laughter turns into tears.

The bimbo eruptions

When it comes to cricket commentary, it’s not a fine leg that matters

If you ask me, it all started with Mandira Bedi. Yes, the same Mandira Bedi who materialised on our TV screens nearly two decades ago, resplendent in noodle-strap blouses and low-waisted saris to hold forth on fine legs, cover drives, hook shots and maiden overs. Bless her, she often didn’t get them quite right but who could tell? Everyone was so transfixed by that one bare shoulder (Was she wearing a blouse? Wasn’t she?) and glimpses of that washboard stomach that nobody cared if she got her silly point mixed up with her square leg.

And thus began the cult of the Indian woman sportscaster as bimbo. Don’t get me wrong. Many of the women who have since graced our television screens holding forth on everything from tennis to badminton, from football to cricket, have been pretty darn knowledgeable about the games they commentate about. (Well, okay, some of them have been pretty darn knowledgeable.) But for reasons that I find truly baffling, they all have to fit in with the Mandira paradigm.

That is to say that while their male colleagues can sit back and relax in their suits and ties (and matching turbans in the case of the irrepressible Navjot Singh Sidhu) the ladies have to squeeze into impossibly tight dresses that stop well short of their knees, leave at least one shoulder bare and expose just the right amount of cleavage to keep the punters interested.

Actually, the promos of IPL’s Extra Innings just about say it all. It has all its presenters running into frame and then freezing as they get up to all sorts of ludicrous poses. But while the men hop, skip and jump in their well-tailored suits, or T-shirts and jeans teamed with sports jackets, the women run in slow motion in tiny black dresses and billowing skirts that pouf up tantalisingly so that you feel for one heart-stopping second that you may just glimpse their bare essentials. It’s all very Marilyn Monroe, except that the girl in question is a brunette not a blonde and is wearing a red not a white dress.

But these small details apart, it’s staggeringly clear what the game plan is here. The men are there to add gravitas, to talk intelligently about cricket, rib each other good-naturedly, tell long and tedious anecdotes about their own cricketing days and when things begin to get a little boring, spice things up by making nudge-nudge, wink-wink references to the scantily-clad girls in the middle who are supposed to chat up the cricketers in the breaks. “Ah,” says one bearded fellow as the sixes and fours become a little scarce on the ground, “Let’s see what Archana/Shibani have for us in the field.” Snigger, snigger.

In case you haven’t been watching, that’s Archana Vijaya, a model and veejay who has now graduated to hosting such cricket shows as the IPL, and Shibani Dandekar, who describes herself as a model and singer and has recently returned to India after growing up in Australia and working as a TV anchor in America.

Now I would have no problem with how scantily these girls were dressed – God knows, they are showing much less skin than the cheerleaders doing their stuff on the sidelines – if they had actual cricketing conversations when they are down in the field wielding a microphone in front of some hapless cricketer or the other. Instead, we are treated to a stream of inanities while the action continues tantalisingly out of range. So while Archana/Shibani is asking some bowling coach how he is feeling about the team’s chances, a ball goes whizzing past the boundary line, a close call for a run-out is missed, and finally a wicket falls. And then, thankfully, the adults in the room upstairs take over and the little girls are told to make themselves scarce.

They can come back when all the action is over, the trophies have been distributed, the man of the match interviewed, and then they can do a little jig with Shah Rukh Khan as he teaches them how to achieve the right angle while attempting Bollywood-style pelvic thrusts.

Honestly! Is this really all that women are capable to contributing to a cricket game? Isn’t there one woman who has enough cricketing knowledge to sit in the studio beside Harsha Bhogle and Ajay Jadeja and hold forth authoritatively about the match?

Oh yes, actually there is. She’s called Isa Guha, and has played cricket for the England women’s cricket team and is part of the ITV sports commentary team. So, I was quite pleasantly surprised to see her sitting next to Harsha one fine day, speaking such absolute sense that it made me wish that Sidhu would take a permanent leave of absence from the studio and leave the lovely Isa to regale us with her wisdom.

But guess what? Nobody seemed to be paying the blindest bit of attention to what she said. The social media was all agog about her outfit, twitter was abuzz with talk about her cleavage, and Facebook was busy rating her charms against Shibani and Archana. The poor girl could have been spouting Swahili for all it mattered.

I don’t know about you, but I blame Mandira Bedi.