Is Kangana the wrong feminist icon?

Since the time I landed back from Goa last night, I have been literally inundated with requests to express my views on the ongoing Kangana Ranaut public scandal: whether I think she’s the ideal feminist and if I support her in her raging battle cry against Hrithik Roshan and now Adhyayan Suman.

I have, in my own interest, quite honestly, patiently listened to her various interviews given to media channels over the past hour, that I realize is a cleverly timed PR strategy to make the most of her day-long visit to the national capital to collect her third National Award, because at each one of these Kangana’s spiels sounded more or less the same.

A pretty, PR campaign, carefully worded and mouthed with immaculate precision, like a well rehearsed dialogue that we can guarantee will get the right whistles and loud claps.

The same old making-it-big-in-Bollywood-sans-a-Godfather saga that almost always gets us teary-eyed in an industry known for sugar daddies and the proverbial casting couch, how her period blood is not gross and how Indian women are squeamish about their menstrual cycle, how successful women achievers are perennially slut-shamed in our misogynistic nation and how she’s lived the life of the ‘outsider,’ her sister Rangoli (also an acid attack survivor) – Kangana’s personal soiree is quite the Bollywood potboiler from the word go, with her tumultuous relationship with her father who grudged her decision to join films somehow setting the tone for her flawed, fractured relationships, starting with the much-married Aditya Pancholi, who allegedly aid to flop star Adhyayan Suman when he was dating the actress, ‘welcome to the circus!’

I kinda liked Kangana and thought in a male-dominated Bollywood she was making an earnest effort to take on difficult roles of real life women battling drugs and schizophrenia, of enacting parts of small town girls who sleep their way to the top, of women who are not pristine and pure, but broken in places.

However, honestly speaking, I thought Tanu Weds Manu Returns was the worst example of feminist victory, much like Queen and that there are far better regional film actresses who deserved the National Award this year for cinema that is real and not three hours of candyfloss entertainment.

I mean Tanu in the second installment of the hugely popular film needed to get drunk and hit on men outside the lakshman rekha of her staid marriage, in London and land her goody two shoes, boring husband in a mental asylum and flirt with ex-lovers in UP hinterland to prove she could still rebel against chauvinism and conservatism. Just like the way in Queen, Rani, the character she essays, must kiss an Italian awkwardly while making gol-gappas and still come back and return the ring to her fiancé, instead of giving in to temptation, instead of having a fling with her dishy, firang flat mate who nurses a whopping crush on her.

And yet, we lauded Kangana – every media interview since then is nauseatingly calling her the Queen of Bollywood. A lop-sided, unfair industry that survives on machismo and mardangi – that whips up strong female characters who must act tough like men – swearing, kicking villains, playing cops and lawyers, or mothers seeking bloodied revenge. That hushes up affairs, fakes accents, deceptively packages plastic surgery and hardly ever bothers about married, aging heroines. That thrives on cheap gossip and malicious slander. Where open marriages are the order of the day and heroes call the shots on the sets, recommending co-stars and aligning themselves into powerful, biased, camps.

As I read statements of Kangana’s lawyers and the teary eyed version of Shekhar and Alka Suman who are naturally also cashing in on the media circus and trying to get their two seconds of short-lived national fame, I can’t help question Kangana’s motives and why she suddenly chose to go public about Roshan, and the nature of equality that she seems to be championing for women in a country where stars are worshipped and followed like celestial deities.

I mean does a woman’s strength lie in taking on men and teaching them a lesson? Is revenge the route to easy adulation? Can’t my achievements, my adultery, my affairs, my attitude, and my autism be talking points in themselves?

Also, somewhere this constant male-bashing feels like a shrill, deafening screech because, in this case, who knows really what transpired between Roshan and Ranaut and if there is any truth to the mails that are being circulated widely on social media?

And since when is washing one’s dirty linen in public a sign that women have come of age – and that now we are looking at some primitive form of gender equality that is voyeuristic and virtual, that bases itself on cheap publicity and gossip columns. Also, just curious, if Kangana, as she insists, isn’t interested in Roshan admitting they truly had an affair and were indeed lovers at some point, what’s the whole legal and cyber crime cell fuss all about and what is the media and junta so glued to, on a daily basis?

Or, is Kangana the symbol of a peeping tom generation that loves shows like Big Boss and MTV Roadies, where reality television makes up for the gnawing urban loneliness we all battle.

And really does anyone care if Kangana and Roshan had a fling or if she is making this all up since she’s nursed a huge crush on him, as is also being circulated? Or if, as alleged, he’s a womanizer and she, a bi-polar?

Is Kangana’s personal life on full public display now to prove she’s the trail-blazing feminist icon that we all need to look up to and emulate? Is the actress also desperate somewhere to be one-up in an industry that has never really respected the fairer sex or paid them equally, where she’s had a tough struggle and always been seen as slightly out of the stereotypical heroine material?

Is she worried what after this recent successful streak? A few flops in a row? The next, mufat, ‘bold,’ newcomer of tinsel town with a soppier, more sordid saga that sells better, than hers? Her shelf life as flimsy as her allegations? If she stops winning…

Also, is Bollywood that significant in our lives?