All those associated with the making of Pink, please take a deep bow : finally, a

powerful, brave Hindi mainstream film which focuses on real young women who
live real lives and deal with thorny day-to-day issues, which young women the
world over will identify and relate with.
I know where the young leads in Pink are coming from. And I know too many
women who have been in their place, or missed being there by a scary, scarring
whisker.
Bottomline, when a girl says no, she means no. En O, which means `nahin, nada,
dont want. It means go away, dont bother me. It can also be a prelude to stronger
language if the aggressor in question refuses to back off. The young woman can
wear short skirts or jeans or Tees. She can be present at rock concerts. She can
laugh and reach out to a young man in a friendly fashion. She can have a drink or
two in his company. She can even be, shudder, sexually experienced.
Hearing the phrase are you a virgin in a Bollywood film in a meaningful, nonsmirky manner? Fantastic. Underlining a womans freedom to own her sexuality?
Priceless.
Watch Video | Amitabh Bachchan, Taapsee Pannu Starring Pink
Releases: Audience Reaction
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When she says no, it means only one thing. No grabbing. No forcing. Take that
groping hand and mouth away. She isnt easy. She isnt a person of loose morals.
She is not, never, ever, asking for it.
That it has taken Bollywood so long to make a movie which says it so clearly,
without beating about the bush, without prevaricating or using obfuscatory
language, tells us a great deal about the country we live in, and the social mores
that its women have had to live by, buried under crippling patriarchy and misogyny
and a sense of mistaken shameif you are pawed or worse, you must have done
something to provoke your molester. So cross your hands across your chest, put
your head down, and keep shut.
Also read | Pink celeb movie review: Amitabh Bachchan film is
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The three female protagonists of Pink are your regular young women. Minal
(Taapsee Pannu) is an events manager, whose work can extend into the late hours.
Falak (Kirti Kulhari) works in a corporate set-up where image is all. Andrea
(Tariang) is from the North-East (Meghalaya, she says, but clearly no one is
interested in the specifics : girls from the `North East are fair game, even if they
are covered from top to toe). The girls share a flat in a posh South Delhi locality,
and we meet them first when they are heading back in a cab in the early hours of
the morning, disturbed about something that has just happened.
As the plot (oh joy, a plot, verily), terse and on-point, unravels, we get to know that
the trio was in the company of three young men, after a rock concert in Surajkund
in Haryana. Things take an ugly turn after the dinner that follows. The women have
to make a run for it, and one of the young men ends up needing stitches in a deep
bloody gash above his eye.
It doesnt a genius to discover that the political might backing the injured Rajveer
(Angad Bedi) and his friends, Dumpy (Raashul Tandon), Vishwa (Tushar Pandey)
and another fellow (Vijay Varma) who wasnt there but is happy to engineer and
participate in the humiliation of the women, will try and turn the tables: instead of
being the victims, they will be painted as the aggressors. How do you silence a
courageous young woman who has the temerity to ask questions? You label her
cheap, slut, whore: the film mutes the word rxxx, but you can see it emblazoned
on the face of the guy who says it out loud and the girls who have to hear it. You
can see it in the body language of the female cop (Shankar, just so) who helps nail
the wrong person for the crime.
Talking to indianexpress.com, Pink actress Taapsee Pannu said, Not just that, I have been
touched inappropriately in DTC buses. Rubbed at wrong places while in a bus.

Pink reminded me of Jodi Fosters The Accused in which her character is gangraped in a bar: because she wears a short skirt, and has been drinking, she is made
out to be a woman on the make. Something similar happens here, but it is all three
women who have to bear the brunt of the rage that such male entitlement comes
with: aisi ladkiyon ke saath toh aisa hi hota hai.
Pannu, Kulhari and Tariang, all very good, typify the dilemma of the modern
working young women ( they live in Delhi, and the young men who accost them
are very much a part of a certain kind of coarse North Indian ethosthey bully but
are too cowardly to do this on their own, needing patronage and protection from

the nexus of `netas and police which exists only to protect them, not call them out
on their wrong-doing), but this could happen anywhere , and not just in India.
The young men are also spot on. Bedi exudes menace : when he snarls out that
awful expletive during the trial, you feel like shrinking, and wondering how did
we fail this generation, this youth of today, if they still feel like this? Or is it just a
continuation of the way generations of men, only surface smooth-and- suave, have
felt about women? Scratch a little, and putrid patriarchal pus comes pouring out.
The other three guys are the kind of hangers-on who slip stream alongside a strong
leader : if he is having fun (`mazey is the word used, and you feel faintly grubby
after hearing it used in this manner), then so can they. Behti ganga mein sab haath
dho sakte hain, and girls who refuse to give in and lie back and enjoy it, be
damned. How dare they?
The major weak link in this film is the elderly lawyer played by Amitabh
Bachchan. (Piyush Mishra takes away some of the sobriety in the court scenes by
his unsubtle notes, but he is not so germane to the films scheme of things). Deepak
Sehgall, we are told, is suffering from bipolar disorder, which means mood swings,
which means Bachchan alternating between chewing out dialogue and being
growly and forced. He takes on the girls case, and we want to cheer because he is
the Bachchan and will make everything come right. But because he is Bachchan,
the director handles him with kid gloves, and there goes the naturalism with which
everyone else is playing their parts so effectively.
Watch | Amitabh Bachchan and Taapsee Pannu-starrer Pink Trailer
here.

For the most part, the thespian comes off mannered, and you want to shout out and
say, no, this film doesnt need Bachchan to be in a pulpit of his own, when he is
meant to be taking apart those who are in the witness box. Only occasionally
during the second half ( most of which is spent in the court-room with the excellent
Chatterjee as the presiding judge), Sehgall forgets he is Bachchan the Baritone, and
lights up the screen with a couple of superb moments. It is in these moments you
are face to face with the One and Only Bachchan, who should have been in exactly
that mode through the film: why are his directors so chary about telling him what
to do and how to do it, when he never tires of saying that he is a directors actor?

Those sporadic moments make you nostalgic. Is there anyone out there who can
craft a solid, challenging role for Bachchan? Anyone at all? Being awe-struck is
not a good place for a filmmaker. I am waiting for the return of the actor who, back
in his day, used to routinely blow my socks off in a way no one has even come
close to, in all these years.