Dear Mom and Maatr, Let’s Have a Narrative Where Rape is Thwarted

Don’t tell the perverts our women are weak. Show them that women can f*** them right back, should they even try.

Before I get the pot boiling, let me make myself clear by telling you that I have no beef with Sridevi. I adore her. She brings back fond memories. If Rajinikanth was my mom’s hero, then Sridevi was my dad’s muse. There is no denying that when she married Boney Kapoor, she broke the heart of millions of husbands across continents. So when I say what I am about to say, consider it in the perspective of a way forward, rather than picking the nose of this mouth.

Sridevi, in Mom, plays Devki Sabarwal, a cool teacher who uses a semi-nude Salman Khan to teach biology to her twelfth grade students, but also a very protective mother who is mentally hardwired to teach anybody a lesson, should they mess with her kids.

A Revenge Plot, Similar to Maatr

The fact that Devki is Arya’s (Sajal Ali) stepmother won’t bother you, because Devki is too devout and earnest in earning Arya’s love, despite Devki having her own daughter with her husband, Jagan (Adnan Siddiqui).

Arya is a rebellious teenager – at least with Devki – because, according to her, Devki has replaced her birth mother without remorse. Arya heads out to a party hosted by her friends. When Arya steps out to make a phone call to Devki, she gets abducted by her pervert classmate and his older friends who rape her in a moving car and dump her unconscious body in a gutter.

Devki and Jagan are running after justice. But, of course, the criminal bastards have a cunning lawyer who readily pumps money into the forensic expert’s wallet. In the end, there are no surprises. The victim is still a victim and the rapists high five each other and continue to party as the sun on their dark island never goes down.

Devki is pissed, and rightly so.

DK (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) comes to Devki’s rescue when a taunting Mathew Francis (Akshaye Khanna) turns out to be as useless as a pen in a sword fight in bringing justice to Arya. Devki, with the information provided by DK, takes justice into her own hands. She eliminates the rapists one by one in the manner she deems fit – until the moment a depressed Arya asks for a vacation.

The climax gets unnecessarily dramatic with one of the rapists still on the loose, but as you all know, eventually, justice will be served. I know there are a lot of spoilers in here, but this whole ‘rape-revenge’ genre is a spoiler in itself. Maatr, a Raveena Tandon-starrer, which came out barely two and a half months ago, despite all denials to any resemblance whatsoever to Mom, was a problem child of the same parent.

Why Should Arya Have to be Weak?

Here’s why I think this movie will only cause more harm than good.

Showing that money can buy justice, showing that women are weak, showing that women can be captured, gagged and raped is like giving perverts a bible on how to commit rape and walk away scot-free. Because the kind of men who rape, apart from their narcotic fillip, are also, from time to time, looking for a refresher in pursuing newer blueprints that would help them get their fetishes sorted. Rape-revenge movies provide that fodder.

If the producers and writers are really burning the midnight oil in order to draw out the darkness in the minds of ignorant men, then it is high time that we started demonstrating women as beings capable of defending themselves.

Why should Arya have to be weak? Maybe she had a stun gun, maybe she never left the party area, maybe when she was grabbed and thrown in the car, just before they try to rape her, there is a patrolling jeep with a cop whose secret hobby is to kill would-be or serial rapists. Whatever! Make a movie about how the rapists will have it difficult, if they ever made an attempt to rape. Don’t teach them how to rape. Don’t reiterate our loopholes. Don’t tell them our women are weak. Show them that women can f*** them right back, should they even try. Show them that the country is prepared to take them down.

I am not saying that not acknowledging a perpetual reality will help reduce rapes. But if the law of attraction is anything to swear by, then showing that women are stronger and abled and there are good men out who are prepared to come to the woman’s rescue when there is a need, will really earmark a hope for change.

Because frankly, India doesn’t need another movie to convince us of how crippled our judicial architecture is.

(With a hybrid and an agile indulgence in journalism and advertising, Sundeep is a contemporary writer who works plots on motifs and theories that concern the human race. He has also ghostwritten articles for major media publications: The Economist, Huntington Post (UK), and Forbes, to name a few.)