By Nalin Rai
Is 2015 going to be the year for Deepika Padukone? Well the phenomenal success of PIKU, where it is her tremendous performance backed ably by amazing histrionics of Big B and Irrfan Khan has meant that it has emerged as the biggest grocer of the year so far.
Apart from the financial aspect, PIKU has taken it one step forward from the campaign that Deepika Padukone had associated herself with- My Choice-campaign where she openly advocated for the sexual preferences and the freedom and liberty of a female to use her body the way she desires, and the body not being governed by the rules and preferences set up by a supposedly patriarchal society. When the campaign was released, it divided the nation into two camps.
What is being underlined here is that she had the confidence and the self belief to talk about it openly without an inhibition and the sexual preferences that were locked in the closets started finding green shoots of a new beginning propelled the backing of star power of Deepika Padukone who led the campaign along with scores of other female celebrities.
The campaign died down, but the phenomenal success that PIKU has achieved has perhaps been owing also to the fact that in the film Deepika Padukone again talks and underlines the fact through her character that indeed having sex for a modern woman of the modern times is as essential an idea as the idea of living is, and there should not be a cloak of secrecy associated with it. Even the character of father played by Big B talks unabashedly about the fact that indeed her daughter is not a virgin and is a slap on the idea of virginity associated with the female of the species only, and the conviction to enact and utter this dialogue would have been seen out of place on somebody else but not on Deepika. One hopes that by putting the notion of sexuality under scanner, Deepika Padukone would enable the girls of the present times in the developing countries to think about doing it without an inhibition- after all, if a man can do it then why should it be restricted for the female?
It is not that Deepika Padukone has suddenly started advocating about it, she did it with finesse in FINDING FANNY as well. The character enacted by her in FINDING FANNY was the character that was widowed on the eve of marriage and the director Homi Adjania, who incidentally directed the My Choice campaign, perhaps would have got the idea to do it through the character enacted by Deepika. In FINDING FANNY Deepika had touched another taboo subject for female- widow having sexual relations- and the fact of matter way in which it was done in FINDING FANNY should have gone a long way in driving home the point that indeed a woman in the prime of her youth indeed should have the freedom to indulge in sex to satiate the needs of the body. What also was credit worthy in FINDING FANNY was that Deepika Padukone played the role of the initiator of sex in the film, a rarity in Hindi cinema, but for the situations where one is trying to seduce the hero, and she did it with aplomb.
More than two decade ago when Preity Zinta had made her debut with DIL SE, in the opening shot where she hits the screen, she had popped the question to Shah Rukh Khan- Are You virgin- from then the question of opining the views pertaining to sexuality have continued to be beaten around the bush in the world of Hindi cinema but one only hopes that the advent of Deepika Padukone would indeed help remove cobwebs associated with the idea of having sex and it would become as normal thing in a society as all other things for a common woman in daily life.
