Is making a choice really that simple?

The Vogue video featuring Deepika Padukone has been on my mind ever since its release. Unlike other short films in the series (like the Going Home video which paints the picture of an ideal world where women can take a lift in a car from unknown men in the middle of the night and Boys Don’t Cry), this one left a bad taste in the mouth. It evoked no positive emotions and I found most of it artificial.

Her comments on sex outside of marriage have naturally got the maximum attention, and justifiably so, since they seem to be giving a green light to infidelity. Is that the kind of choice and empowerment we are talking about?

 This ‘My Choice’ seems a frivolous description of the makers’ idea of empowerment. It can be compared to ‘meri marzi’, which leaves no room for responsibility.

Is making a choice really that simple, as we are made to believe in the video?

Do all women have it so easy?

As a lot of us know, it’s not. I know a woman who works as a domestic help. She has five children. The first three were girls so obviously they had to have another child. He turned out to be a boy, but sadly was born deaf. The husband blames her for it. So another baby came along. Another boy, but thankfully ‘normal’ this time. What is her life about? What are her choices? Does she have any? Her eldest daughter, who is a teenager, helps her mother run the household whereas the husband whiles away his time drinking and abusing them.  She is worried all the time. 

There are many educated women in cities whose lives are no better. They don’t have the courage to walk out of a bad marriage or probably no family support. I read recently that an actress suffered domestic violence for 30 years before taking the decision to move out. Thirty years is half a lifetime! She was not an illiterate woman in a village. What were her compulsions?

Choices affecting lives should be made after a lot of thought; they are about responsibility and co-existing. It may be easy for some people in a room to think infidelity is a choice, but you’re sending out the wrong message. You were not talking about buying clothes in a store! Now if both partners were to agree on an ‘open marriage’, that would be a choice!

Several people have written about this video. I couldn’t stop myself because I feel strongly about such things. For me the biggest turn-off is having different sets of rules for men and women. This video wants to advocate the same rules for both genders – but gets the vitals wrong.

If you really want to empower women, encourage them to study, to work, to have the confidence to step out, to leave bad marriages, for their families to support them, for men to respect them. For men and women to respect each other. Focusing on Size Zero or 15 and encouraging adultery is frankly just ridiculous.