Tahira opens up on smashing patriarchy
Filmmaker Tahira Kashyap penned an open letter on patriarchy after the events of recent weeks in Bollywood. Tahira talked about how all women have to suffer patriarchal set-ups in the society every day. She recounted a recent episode when a relative asked her to serve food to her husband, actor Ayushmann Khurrana. Tahira said that the relative looked impressed with Ayushmann performing household duties such as serving food.
Tahira said that she feared being called names for her outspokenness like Rhea was.
"After all, who wants to deal with name-calling? I mean with 'vishkanya', 'gold digger' and 'Bengali women' doing the rounds, I do not want 'khoon ki piyaasi', 'toes crushing' 'Punjabi women' to start another wave," she said.
Tahira also talked about the unreal expectations being expected from women to ignore harassment and disrespect. She recounted the time she was groped at a temple when she was just 12 years old.
"How is ignoring a lame comment by a roadside Romeo unreal? You may ask. It is unreal. Keeping quiet, enduring is unreal. Even before puberty hit me, I have been bottom pinched so many times that I, like every Indian girl, have lost count - be it standing in queues outside a single screen theatre or lining up outside a temple waiting for a chance to pour milk over 'shiv-ling' and see the 'linga drink' it. Somehow, I never got to experience the latter as I opted out of the line after getting groped and I was all of 12 at that time, that too at a pious place. If someone had called out these filthy minds for what they are, perhaps I would not have to experience what I did," she said.
She ended her note with a shout out to 'smash the patriarchy' movement run by those demanding the release of Rhea Chakraborty.
"I cannot begin to fathom (but I do not want to ignore) what must be happening to the rest of us across different strata of the same patriarchal society. So until the equation becomes equal, 'roses are red, violets are blue, let us smash the patriarchy, me and you'," she wrote.
