It is not just Dr Kabir Singh who has come under the feminist lens for his misogyny, it is also his lady-love Preeti Sikka who has earned reviewer ire for her part in his misogyny. Her meekness—such a perfect foil for his short temper—her estrogen nicely mopping up all that testosterone dripping around. Sexism in the just-released Hindi movie Kabir Singh, with its fuming hero and its gasping heroine, is wrongly attributed to the lead pair. Who brought them up, that’s the question. It is their respective families that should provoke audience anger. Upbringing is the real culprit here.
It is obvious that Kabir, played by Shahid Kapoor, felt entitled to rage. As a toddler he must have thrown many a fit, taken out his temper on the aayah, and been a creepy brat at birthday parties. Somewhere along the way Preeti, played by Kiara Advani, was draped in pastels, given dolls to play with and was expected to educate herself just enough so that no bridegroom was frightened away by her degrees. The two are faithful to this childhood brief, not letting common sense interfere with the time-honoured roles handed down to them. Little-boy Kabir would have decapitated little-girl Preeti’s Barbie if they met in KG.
The trouble with Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s latest film is not the macho man on the screen with his unbridled fury and controlling behaviour or even the pale, colourless girlfriend who mutely obeys him, it is the people who brought them up to think it is okay to be this way. Kabir kisses Preeti, orders her around, manages her social circle, manhandles her… and she feels very protected, very safe.
So this is love then, they both are sure, because the filmmaker is sure. In a country where domestic abuse is a way of life for most women, male violence is sold as ‘love’ over the counter. Boys, the coveted baby in the labour room, can do as they like. Girls, the second sex born to the second sex, can’t do as they like. Silence is feminine, just as standing behind your man with head bowed.
What we see on screen is an adaptation of real-life situations, it is fiction building on facts. That man who bullies, who gaslights, who raves and rants, who throws acid on women, who comes home drunk and rapes his daughter—he is built from scratch by doting mothers and indulgent fathers.
Films like these are timely reminders of how much nothing has changed, that gender biases are alive and kicking. Men are the first race, let’s not forget that. Basic discrimination remains in place, thank god, we think, as such blockbusters show us like it is. Traditional male-female hierarchies are being maintained and all is well with the world.
It is not that we suddenly discover inequalities as adults; we are privy to this from day one. Boys can do anything, go anywhere, but girls have to fight, fight, fight for every little thing. Earth spins on its axis because the moral order is maintained by men. Everything depends on the goodness of women.
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