For\nme, the worst thing about watching a film on television is the distraction. A\npile of laundry starts moaning for attention. Tea leaves in the bottle jump up\nand down crying out to be boiled. The Amazon delivery agent keeps calling to\ndeliver groceries I\u2019m too lazy to go to the store for. Not to mention work\nrequests on Whatsapp and bad jokes on Twitter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Almost\nalways, when I watch a film on TV, I’m not really ‘watching’ it the way I would\nin a film theatre. At the movies, I’m an active observer, consumer. At home, on\ntelevision, I merely exist on the same plane as the film, grabbing once scene\nhere, one action there and stringing together my own film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Which\nis why I shy away from watching non-kuppai\npadams<\/em> on TV \u2014 for fear of not respecting the film enough. Or not taking in\neverything the film gives me. Or worse, not having the mental energy at the end\nof a long workday to enjoy the film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Which\nis why, In spite of all the tweets and reviews reminding me about Soni<\/em>, I procrastinated. Until..<\/p>\n\n\n\n Within\nthe first ten minutes of the film, I’d lost the ability to be distracted.\nPerhaps because I was watching it with subtitles, I had to keep my eye on the\nscreen at all times. More likely because it touched a chord, something in my\nheart wanted to listen to the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I found myself physically reacting to every scene in the film \u2014 a tear that fights to escape, a lump in my throat, a Like the scene where a policewoman laughs off workplace harassment \u2014 a man asks for her phone number on an emergency hotline \u2014 perhaps because there are larger fish to fry. Elsewhere, Soni smells her clothes to decide if they need to be washed \u2014 for someone who is hardly worried about not having Or like the scene where a friendly neighbour advises Soni to wear Sindoor to avoid street sexual harassment. She stays stoic about the suggestion. I began thinking if she rejects the idea of dressing\/behaving a certain way to be treated with respect. Nah ha! A few scenes later, she gives very similar advice to a young girl, just as casually as the friendly neighbour had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The overarching idea that I took away from both Soni and her superior, Kalpana, is their mastery of listening, ignoring and carrying on. Both of them at some point get told about taking up an easier job, they both ignore. Kalpana’s husband \u2014 who is also her superior \u2014 tells her repeatedly that she’s too soft. In fact, in a scene, the couple is in bed reading. She asks her husband to reconsider the punishment to Soni. He lectures her about taking too much interest in her team’s personal life. She listens, ignores, and persists with her request.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This\ndoesn\u2019t mean they don\u2019t do anything. Far from it. Kalpana and Soni intervene\nand take care of every woman in their lives, albeit in varying capacities. They\nfind both violent and subversive ways to protect women in need. Yet, they do it\nwithout pomp and glory, like they always knew this is what it would be like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ivan\nAyr tells the stories of two women and their unconventional and volatile lives\nwith empathy and compassion. It is almost as if Ayr had no message; just the\nwish to show us a slice of life that is not often shown. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In doing that, he doesn’t cut corners, he doesn’t hurry to the point. Every scene is lingering and delicate. He lets the camera stay, watch and capture life Soni and Kalpana are two women navigating their lives in the corrupt, patriarchal, uncaring Delhi, with the unfair hand they are dealt with. Yet, they play, if only to stay in the game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For me, the worst thing about watching a film on television is the distraction. A pile of laundry starts moaning for attention. Tea leaves in the bottle jump up and down crying out to be boiled. The Amazon delivery agent keeps calling to deliver groceries I\u2019m too lazy to go to the store for. Not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tharkuri.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tharkuri.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tharkuri.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tharkuri.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tharkuri.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tharkuri.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tharkuri.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tharkuri.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tharkuri.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}