Thread by @vsirnate

Quick note on #Bulbbul

I watched it and it brought back a conversation I had with an army colonel many years ago where we were talking about whether I would join the Indian army. I was a teen back then and this chat may have taken place around 1995.

The colonel, who later retired as a brigadier kept saying women won’t be able to work in the army because they “lacked the killer instinct”. He said that if we watched Bollywood movies women were only motivated to kill after going through immense trauma and horror.

That trauma involved being beaten, having their husbands and children killed and their houses set on fire. According to him those were the conditions under which the “Durga” could emerge.

(Now I’m wondering how he made it to brigadier).

I was a kid but I do remember saying “no uncle women can do anything”, in this gauche and hesitant way. He had dismissed the idea outright and as kids we were never taught to argue back.

But somehow that conversation stayed with me I suppose..

because when I was watching Bulbbul I kept asking why does the main character have to go through such immense trauma to channel a “killer instinct”? Over the years I’ve thought about it in many ways. Under what conditions would a woman start hitting back at an aggressor?

Now we know a lot more about human behaviour then we did a quarter of a century ago when this conversation happened. And we know that with technology and easier access to weapons, women can be aggressors too.

I guess I just have a problem with narratives that suggest

That women can or should hit back only when they’re enraged by the injustices that have happened to them. And I thought Bulbbul kind of channels that narrative. I find it problematic because I don’t think the propensity to commit violence as a proxy for justice should be what we

teach girls and women. I think we need to teach them how to defend themselves before the trauma-creating event can occur. We instead teach young girls to wait till they’re traumatised before doing something in defence.

I don’t know, it’s just some thoughts in my head.

Note: I didn’t end up joining the army. I instead began studying it... closely 🧐

Note: I’m not saying we need women or anyone for that matter to be able to channel aggression on demand like what is required by all armies. I’m saying we need to remove this notion that women’s relationship to violence is defined by their exposure to worst case scenarios.

W.R.T the film, I don’t know why violent women seeking justice are painted as demonic, horrific, deformed: Like somehow their embrace of violence morphs them from moral beings, to something evil. I don’t know, it was a weird film.☹️