Essay

Rakhi Sawant’s interview and our embarrassment
- Abhinaya Thapa

My friend was startled by the attitude and ‘indecent’ courage of Indian model and actress Rakhi Sawant in her interview at one commercial channel. According to him, her blatant answers and plastic gestures was what amazed him. I was quite surprised by his reaction, because he grew watching sleazy- greasy Hollywood gossips and even used to narrate it in amiable way. He added that Sawant appeared in the T.V while being with his parents and due to understandability of the Hindi language the embarrassment was unbearable.
I also watched that interview and surprisingly our reactions were quite similar. How it could be when even explicit and blatant acts of western figures never produced such awe and discomfiture in us. But a little provocation from neighbor’s daughter rattled us. There could be numerous of reasons and answers; our masculinity consciousness, our patriarchic, feudal upbringing and even Sawant's insidious acts for attraction.
But before any recourse to any subjectivity, the nature of the matter has to be looked quite carefully. The interview in T.V is in form of reality or virtual reality, the thing exists almost as your existence in front of you. So, it forces reaction through senses after being affected. Due to this, the power of conscience (knowledge) is almost mediatory. If the matter was in form of words, then the reader has to study word first and relate it with other things and words for meaning and comprehension. Therefore in the course of the reading, the consciousness has constant need of person’s ‘knowledge’. It affects in the outcome of one’s reaction, as the senses is in authority of intelligence, which in many cases first takes decision in order to react and express.
In interview form Rakhi Sawant was a ‘live being’ and she expressed and reacted against her questions and questioner. The 30 minutes of time of interview is a part of her life or ‘segment of living’ and it stands similar to common sense of culture’s, ‘way of living’. It was trouble with her culture. It confronted and disgusted us, as her ‘culture’ was part of the bigger one (sub- continental) under which our own exists. We both have to recourse to the ‘bigger one’ for our values and meanings, thus there’s mutual sharing and recognition between us. So, Sawant is one of ‘us’, not like the ‘others’. Due to it there’s a feeling of something similar to familial sentiments, where the ‘recognition’ notion confirms the some rights over the recognized. If it was the case of man, then there could have been the feeling of brotherhood or the immense hatred as against traitor. But, the matter was of ‘She’, an inferior in our ‘social knowledge’ in relation to us. The only immanent sentiments could be same as those towards our ideal ‘sisters, mothers and daughters’. One can argue the case of Miss Sawant was different. But the same distortion and transgression of cultural meanings and values while remaining within as its part was carried out by Taslima Nasreen too. The extreme reactions it followed show that Sawant personality was negligible importance.

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