The Great Indian Chicken

 

I have developed the habit of watching atleast one movie daily, now that the Over-The -Top (OTT) platforms are so good and one has a wider choice of movies and serials to pick from.

With the subtitle facilities on, there is no need to stick to one language.

That the local cinema halls can be avoided too is indeed a great pleasure by itself.

I still remember my youthful indignance and anger whenever the  posh cinema house switched off the AC once the movie started, in our city, during my college days.

The owner believed that once the customers became engrossed in the movie (!) they will not realise that the AC has been stopped...

Why is it that the majority of people who make it big financially are very small in their minds!?...🤔 

A happy good bye to some of the rude ticket vendors, and to multiplex owners who do not allow our own snacks inside the halls , in order to make the maximum profit of their own (mostly lousy) food stalls.

So it is home made idli dosa upma chapathi coffee lemon tea varutha pori (fried puffed rice) thaalis containing a limited meal of veggies vegan curd and a vegan dessert....the list of food and snacks is as endless as the movies. Potatoe chips and a cold soft drink being my all time favourite... trying to replace the soft drink with home made iced lemon tea for health and environmental concerns.

I now have a recliner - and the set up is as complete as can be.

Today my TV screen suggested that I see a movie called The Great Indian Kitchen.

I remembered reading what one of my young friends had written about this movie a few months ago.

He had said that every Indian ( or was it every human being?..🤔) should watch this movie atleast once.

But what made me click on it was a clipping of some delicious looking dish cooking on the stove....anything related to eating is interesting to me.

And ironically, veganism has made me not only a happier & better cook but also more versatile. Till we decide to close something completely the alternatives will never open up to us. And now new and tasty vegan dishes keep popping up into my field of vision.

I enjoyed the movie.

The scenes were realistic, the male chracters done well enough for us to hate them.

The homely looking heroine gets our sympathy with her good emoting.

Whether the average housewife's life now in Kerala is as bad as this girl's is, is debatable.

The actress playing the mom in law had done an excellent job and her body language conveys it all.

A typical feminist movie which would have done a great job in creating awareness had it been made a few decades earlier......say, in our 😁 younger days. Still, one can watch this movie once.

In my opinion, a great movie is one which can be repeated with equal if not more enjoyment atleast once in six months. Each repeat usually shows me a new perspective - maybe it shows how little I had followed the first time....🙄,

but this one does not tempt me to do that.

As i write this, i am reminded of a short movie I enjoyed watching several times over on you tube and still do.

It is called 'Juice'....👇

https://youtu.be/R-Sk7fQGIjE

The same story told in about fifteen minutes with a more subdued and excellent acting which was not acting really....no exagerated gestures or body movements and an effort at extreme emotions distorting the face.

And we dont hate the men here, we just smirk over their idiocy and smugness.

The husband here is not the cinematic villain of TGIK but someone whom we see on a daily basis.

He with his friends are probably the men who say that women do nothing but gossip.

In the fifteen minutes it plays, the movie has seamlessly and effortlessly managed a few messages too - like male chauvinism so subtle and yet so glaring, class and gender discrimination and the fact that women too are  responsible for the perpetuation of these in the society. 

The last scene of Juice remains forever etched in my mind.

If one wants to know what 'Priceless' means - it is the look on the five mens' faces at the end.

But this is not about the movies I saw, it is about my reactions to them.

The girl in TGIK is taken for granted and does all the housework without a complaint, she is not allowed to do what she wants to, her work-load increases day by day and she is  systematically abused by the husband on a daily basis. She is not allowed any freedom of movement or even freedom of speech, but the thread that keeps her tied to this situation is not an actual thread - it is the system, which keeps her imprisoned and wondering what is right and what is wrong....

The tragedy is that this system is looked upon as normal and as an adjustment to fit into the husband's prestigious family, by everyone, including her own mother. She says that it is her daughter's duty to serve the husband's family.

Funnily enough, the one exception to this is the mother-in law...she understands the girl's plight and tries in her own way to support the girl, but in vain.

The bottom line here is the mentality of all around the girl who think that her situation is normal and right.

That enrages us but then we also know it is true because we see it happening in many families around us till date. Domestic abuse is of many types and this kind is not easily recognised because, for one it is not physical and for another it has been accepted as the done thing through ages and ages in the history of the marraige contract.

It shows the human mind which not only blocks the thinking process when it comes to ones own affairs or pleasures, but believes itself into being normal, naturally right and dutiful.

And while we all get worked up over the plights of these women, we - the onlookers, have not till date realised that we ourselves have an ongoing engagement with physical, mental abuse and torture of sensitive emotional Animals who are also females and  mothers themselves.

What we do is worse, in that the animals we abuse are not only actually tied by a real rope, caged, and live in abominable conditions- which one sees daily but never stop to think about - but are also brutally murdered after serving the humans  throughout their wretched lives.

This was the undercurrent running through my mind when I watched this movie TGIK.

So when in the end the heroine triumphs in her own way, 

I did not get the satisfaction which I should have, being a woman myself and having gone through milder forms of such abuse in my youth and childhood.

The human female race is slowly releasing itself from the cruel ties which were binding it through millenniums.

And most of us have the capacity to do so if we put our minds to it.

But the animal - prisoners who are  on a death sentence will never get relief unless WE put our minds to it..simply because we the perpetrators, cannot or do not want to understand their cries of agony.

We are all so attached to the pleasures of the tongue and other pleasures like a perceived luxury, auspicion and beauty in dressing up during weddings, where not only the bride but women of all age groups dress in flowing silk.

Surprising how a product of unbelievable cruelty is considered auspicious! An excellent example of double standards.

In actuality we men and women- both are similar to the men of TGIK indulging and taking pleasure in cruel practices but refusing to reconsider it under pretexts of taste, habits and health.Sometimes we also put up philosophical points like 'This is how the world is and we should accept it'.....

as though we are the victims!

And try to argue with anyone who speaks up for the innocent Animals by putting forward outdated and inhuman points.

The tragedy here is that we truly believe what we say...or bury down deep, the guilt which emerges everytime we eat meat....