kartik kannan's space on the web

KhushBOOED....

My take on the khushboo issue is that the actress...might have erred on the wrong side..by apologizing to the so called "political activists" who are bent on ostracizing her. She should have taken the rebuttal by the political activists by the scruff of the neck and quashed their so –called protest. Her tame apology, certainly doesn’t send the right signal or vibes to any woman who wants to air her views ,as it will now be perceived that there exists an imaginary veil that prevents people from speaking their minds out. In one form, I feel the political men folk are showing their chauvinism too far, that poses serious implications on women’s rights. The way these PMK political cadres, behave when they say that she has no right to say whatever she said, projects an image that the role of the Indian woman in the society is just of a child bearing machine and not beyond that. What if the same comment had been said by some one like shah rukh khan or surya ? would the protests be of the same level and intensity so as to dethrone them of their position in tinsel town ? Her comments on female virginity, pre marital sex..were off the cuff comments , or more so views aired by her at an AIDS summit, where she advocated safe sex.. and said "premarital sex was ok as long it was done with protection.." . I am certainly not arguing and saying this statement was right or wrong ,but I believe that she as a democratic Indian Indian has every right to pass her views to a magazine on what she believes is right. Suhasini, a former actress and wife of the Indian film maker Mani ratnam...rightly supported khushboo in this regard. but going by the grapevine ..i guess she too would beat a hasty retreat by retracting back her statement ..and being forced to eat humble pie.

The Tamil political society at large ...(especially the goons who fill up the political vote banks and the ones who address gatherings in white and white ..masquerading a "heart for public service" ) makes me feel inherently queasy about their mental thought process...with all their actions ..Being highly prejudiced ...and dictated by the whims and fancies of their leader's plans to come one up against the opposition by stirring some hornets nest. I feel that people out here tend to get a touch uncomfortable when reality bites them.... as anything said or depicted openly evokes a huge hysterical opposition from the public (powered by the politicians and driven by the common man heh !!).

Digging further … khusboo made statements that “no sane guy can expect his wife to be a virgin “ was probably driven by the increase of pornographic acts on the web, like the DPS school video case and various other videos on the web.It is a true fact that the age girls take to say “yes” to experiment with sex is slowly decreasing to below15-16… and the girls today are more open than they were ever before, but for the tamil society to generalize that this statement was said “to debase the Tamil culture “ wholly speaks of extremely poor reasoning .

The tamil culture as such is said to be pure and respected because of the literary compositions,Vedas,slokas and a traditional form of life in the tamil households which also speaks volumes of the attachment the tamil community attaches to music .No where does it say that “sex” or the act of sex ..tends to debase culture. If one were to observe any famous Hindu temple in the south, the murals depicted here and the idols of the various gods adorning the walls or the gopuram’s show female gods in the nude and even in certain positions of love making. We were the people who taught the world what “kamasutra “ was and here we are living in a self imposed veiled society where having sex is great,but speaking about it evokes a strange protest from sects of people as though “sex” was something they renounced ages back.

Its not just the Tamil culture ,but this is prevalent in several places in India ,where sex is seen as something immoral and debasing and sense of moral policing takes place (in Mumbai the shiv sena , I heard used to ransack shops selling valentine day gifts because they thought”love “ was too western a culture….) , a kind of double speak ….which is now perfected by politicians and filmmakers to speak politically correct and not from their heart and maintain have their share of the vote bank.

Politicians and their diatribes are diluting the strength of the common man and his rights and unless we have a unanimous wave …that rebuts such peevish acts of petty revolting curbing a woman’s basic instincts to speak her mind out,we as a country ought not to have the “democracy” tag attached to our nation. The need of the hour is to reform this whole system with younger blood which thinks rationally and practically ,and not be prejudiced into devious and superstitious ways of thinking. Secondly we need to accept the act of sex for what it is and stop spreading a veil around it…as by doing this we are only increasing the curiosity levels of younger adolescents who with half baked knowledge ,try some juvenile voyeurish thing ,which would only need to further bottling up of our emotions about what people call “sensitive” topics and would result in a society that never speaks its mind out.