In the Coronavirus world there are increasing cases of domestic violence. I thought it was the right time to watch Thappad by Anubhav Sinha and Mrunmayee Lagoo. I was not disappointed. We live in times when we are locked inside our homes and this is the best time to connect with our family. Brother with sister, Children with parents and husband with wife. But I think the film tries to clear several clots that exist in the mind around marital relations.
A film that revolves around the life of a girl Ammu ( Amrita ) who has dreams in her eyes of marriage. She wants to be the apple of the eye of her audience, who are interested in the work of a danseuse. But at a marriageable age she lets her dreams die. She marries and like she says, if not a good artist, she’d rather marry and be a good housewife. But like always the wife is overpowered by the whims of the husband Vikram ( Pavail Gulati). She is not an equal partner in life, she is just another servant who does the daily chores. Lives that daily routine where she wakes up makes her husband’s breakfast, his lunch, the breakfast tea, measures the mother in law’s blood pressure and does everything and still remains a status symbol instead of a loving wife.
For everything that Amrita does she is constantly bombarded with that cliché line by the husband – Bas Itti Si Baat or Yaar Ammu log Kya Kahenge? Dreaming to go and settle down in London’s Hampstead, while Amrita is all excited, when the plan fails, it is a lavish party where one slap from the husband turns the world around Amrita. A woman who loves unconditionally and is not wanting anything back from her husband.
To amplify the impact of the scene further, it is that sudden moment when the mother – in – law who comes and asks there are guests in the house, why are you here, all brooding. That one slap leads to a legal battle with a gamut of bitter moments. There are petitions, there are rather rude exchanges, there is a parallel narration of three different lives that unfolds and then you have Amrita becoming pregnant. As an angry husband continues to throw tantrums and exposes his violent ways, at some point it is the boss in office who actually points out that unleashing rage on a woman is not right just because she is your legally wedded wife.
In the meantime even Amrita knows that accepting everything as it is and letting everything pass is what does all the more harm. It is she who says that it is perhaps the teachings of parents to grin and bear that does all the harm. The husband too by now is apologetic that he never said Sorry for the wrongs he had done.
Amrita played by Taapsee Pannu is affected by her neighbor Shivani (Diya Mirza), her mother Sandhya (Ratna Pathak Shah), her mother-in-law Sulakshana (Tanvi Azmi), her lawyer Netra (Maya), her house helper (Geetika Vidya) )all of whom have faced the same wrath.
Ultimately a message is out, just because someone has been married, he does not have total control over the woman’s actions and her body. Thappad in many ways is about the bruised face of a woman’s self-respect. Latest reports show that NCW has received 123 complaints of domestic violence in the last 18 days during the lockdown phase. According to data shared by NCW from March 23 till April 10, a total of 370 complaints related to women issues were received by the panel, all via email.
India is currently under the biggest lockdown with around 1.3 billion people asked to stay home claiming 200 lives and infecting over 6,400 people. One of the largest groups of suicides in India are housewives–in 2018, about 63 housewives killed themselves every day. Since 2001, over 20,000 housewives have killed themselves every year in India says national statistics.
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