No! The power and the right. The answer. And, the questions!

This column has also been published at Readomania.


“Pink is not just a movie. It is a revolution,” team Pink has recently said. I wish. I wish to believe. I wish to believe in the strength it has just handed out to me. The strength of rights over the petty pity of sympathy. I am floored by the brave attempt by team pink. I have no words, but silent gratitude.

Think of it! Pink did not seek your sympathy of any kind. Exactly how it should be. We don't need your sympathy by being poor, by having carefully dressed up, by cracking a difficult admission test, by being the only daughter, by being the puny, fearing kind who doesn't dare give friendship a chance lest the friends prey on her. We don’t seek your sympathy by playing the game low key, by the rules of safety and pepper sprays. No.

And then, Pink didn’t play the cliché “us” and “them” too. It didn’t mark a gap between genders. It picked up the issue, instead. It pointed out the patriarch staleness in men and women alike, and the call of equality, in rights and respects, again in the both of them.

Pink started in each of us a thought process.




Through a courtroom scene that stormed the internet down; a question of virginity and its safekeeping, and of matters and discussions best kept under wraps. But, who says? Your morality is not my law. And we don't need to earn your compassion with obedience, for that matter, you see! What we need and ask for is our right. The right over our own bodies and minds. The right to say no.

And thus arrives the simple two lettered mono syllable. No.

“No” - A word. An expression. A decision, in its own right. Without reasons, without debate, without negotiation. Without force. No. A right!

You come out of the theater, braver and stronger. Prouder. Powerful. Chin up. You know, that "no" is your right. The right to say "no". The Right!

Pink is among the best things that have happened to us in recent or even far past, I maintain. I feel deeply gratified that the film pink was made, shown and watched.

Pink gives us strength, over sympathy. Pink gives us rights, over reprimands. Pink gives us back, under the magic of the silver screen, something what we should have had all along. Equality.

And then, in the magic of Pink, for a moment you even forget that Pink is, still, just a film. It will not change anything, as soon as you step out of the theater. Or, will it?

Really! This is exactly the question I want to ask today:

Will Pink change us?

"Pink won't change the mindset of feudal people," a friend tells me. But wait. I cannot totally agree with that. Of course it would be insane to imagine they'll come out of the theater shouting feminist slogans, but having said that, some of them will stop to think. Reform is a long, messy process. Nothing happens overnight. But this has started something, and we can only be hopeful. Now that the whole film ran and was watched, we’ve got to be patient with them. As long as people stop to think over #pink, it has achieved what it could ask for!

They should understand that no means no, when they hear it. Each of the men, who has come of the theater. They should. They must. At the least, a thought process has begun.




But... 


What about us?


After the initial shockwave settles down, i cannot but find myself investigating a further nuance. A nuance, below the surface of the motion. A nuance, perhaps typical to certain parts of the world more than some else. A nuance, easy to overlook in the outcry, when we celebrate or seek freedom. A nuance, that is still left to be solved, nevertheless. A nuance, I do not want to shout down under the slogan.

And that is, do we know that no means no, when we say it?

Really! Will we stop saying no when we don’t mean it? Do we stop playing coy, and rise to seek what we want? Do we learn that to get we need to ask, than play? Do we learn to make first moves, make offers and create positions? Shall we, once, learn to shed off our own adages of girliness, so that we awaken to a new freedom?

Shall we celebrate our newfound status with an assertion, a profound yes, the next time we want it?

Shall we?

Shall we change too?

“Tu khud ki khoj mein nikal.

Tu kis liye hataash hai?

Tu chal.

Tere wajood ki,

Samay ko bhi talaash hai!”

Read more about Pink here:

http://sinjinisengupta.blogspot.in/2016/09/pink-to-suzette-jordan-to-us-and-to-you.html