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Just when we thought it was impossible to love Kangana Ranaut even more, for her spunky interviews on all wrong with Bollywood today, we find we were wrong.
Just when we thought it was not possible to love Kangana Ranaut even more, what with her spunky interviews and gutsy comebacks for everything wrong with Bollywood today, we find that we were wrong.
Kangana is back with a bang! And this time with AIB. Pointing out all things unfair (yes, once again) in Bollywood, but this time in a song parody brilliantly composed by team AIB. In the said video, Kangana is a Bollywood actress whom the director doesn’t recognize as a ‘female lead’ or a ‘heroine’ and can only recognize her when she identifies herself as the ‘love interest of the hero’. She tells the director that her character who is a scientist cannot sing lines like, ‘slather Iodex on my chest with your lips’, to which the director replies that they need to titillate the audience.
The hero then makes his entry with the background score of Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham (ahem, Karan Johar!) and the director welcomes him with an aarti ki thali. To add insult to the heroine’s injury, when the hero gives the same suggestion about the Iodex line to be removed, the director is more than happy to oblige him.
After that starts the real fun! Kangana starts dancing to a parody of the popular Bollywood number Chittiyan Kalaaiyan Re and boy, she takes pot shots at everyone and everything that’s wrong in the film industry today!
With lines like:
“Inse zyada broad minds hain baboons-ke” (referring to the filmmakers)
And then,
“Mann ja re, mera role bada de
Mann ja re kach ke ceiling girade
Sirf chaddi mein nachiyan re”
Finally, comes the best line of the song,
“Coz I have vagina re
Na sunti meri
Coz I have vagina re”
How many times do we feel unheard because we are women, because we possess vaginas? The discrimination doled out to actresses starting from asking them to dance in item songs, to paying them a lesser compensation than the hero, to the glass ceilings in Bollywood, everything was addressed in the song.
Then the male lead in the video start with the usual retort of accusing a woman of being a ‘feminazi’ whenever she talks about equality. The men say that they made the female lead a modern ladki by letting her smoke cigarettes and spew gaalis, as if that is what women are looking for – a token of modernism while being relegated to item numbers or defined only by their heroes in the movies!
She then takes on the token appreciation trend started by some heroes of putting the heroine’s name before their own in the film credits, by saying that even then, ‘your pay check has more zeroes’ thereby asking those heroes to talk about issues that really matter.
Next, she challenges Bollywood’s trend of casting older men in their mid-forties with women who are barely in their twenties (because you see, men never grow old!) while throwing aside most heroines after they barely reach their mid-thirties.
‘Buzurg hain mera piya,
It’s almost paedophilia
Karoon jo shaadi I’m done, done,
But he’s still No. 1
Romancing my bitiya
While I sell tikiya’
Then her famous take on nepotism hits hard once more,
‘Papa ne tujhko launch kiya re
Main bolti to tune taunt kiya re
Tu karti victim play’
The theme of the song that, ‘Because I have a vagina, so whatever I say, I become a diva’ rings so true even beyond Bollywood to our own lives as women. Yes Kangana, we need a role model like you who won’t shut up despite people’s opinions of her, or despite them accusing her of ‘washing dirty linen in public’. You see, it is because of women like Kangana that many other women are inspired to gather the courage and speak out against the wrongs meted to them. So even if your haters say, ‘Kangana bohut bolti hain’, keep speaking, woman!
A lot of us, vagina owners, are listening and learning how to fight back!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9ggjCbv5ck%20%20
Kasturi’s debut novel, forthcoming in early 2021, had won the novel pitch competition by Half Baked Beans Publishers. She won the Runner Up Position in the Orange Flower Awards 2021 for Short Fiction. Her read more...
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