Category: equality

Parched- A Digital Success Story before the times of Corona!

‘Friendship knows no bounds, they say. But how true is this for women? Are women free to choose their friends in a society governed by patriarchy? Can a woman prioritize her friends over her spouse without spurring any controversies?

Set in a small Rajasthani village, Parched shows the lives of three women, who while dealing with their problems never forget to lend support to their friends.

Like any group of friends, they present a united front. Seeking a similar goal, that of respect and equitable treatment. They boldly face their battles rather than running away from a challenging situation and find paths to succeed even in the toughest of circumstances.

Set in rural India the movie seems to portray the dark side of our society.

Bringing forth the stronghold that patriarchy enjoys, Parched beautiful presents the contradiction in society’s treatment of men and women. It attempts to unveil the true colors of a society where a man who is publically known to fornicate with multiple women is treated with the utmost respect, while a woman engaging in a similar act is labeled polluted and impure. A society that blames a wife for her husband’s indulgences, a mother for her son’s flaws, and a woman for a couple’s failure to reproduce.

Not only did Parched, fail to grasp much attention from the masses, it was also limited in India to just 100-150 theatres that too with only night shows due to its ‘unconventional theme’. While it garnered great acknowledgment abroad, it failed at the box office.

Thankfully, that was not the end of the journey for Parched, it was uploaded on several OTT platforms and ended up gaining a massive reception by a more accepting Indian audience all over the country.

OTT as a platform though, remains inaccessible to the majority, does that imply that only a small section is willing to acknowledge the presence of such disparities?

Gender equality and the 21st century.

“Taught from infancy that beauty is woman’s Sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.” Mary Wollstonecraft – Vindication of the Rights of Women.


Women have been voicing their need for equality since times unbeknownst. While the feminist movement has been successful in gaining momentum through the centuries and achieving equality on paper, there remains the dire need for a radical change in the physical world. Though we have successfully met the need for the right of property, vote, and education, still we lag far behind in the fields of equal pay and justice against domestic violence. It would not be far-fetched to say that women in the 21st century still face an overwhelming number of challenges despite the centuries-long battle.

We live in an era where a woman earning more than a man makes headlines and cricketers donning jerseys with their mother’s names becomes a head-turner. The roots of patriarchy are sown so deep within our minds that we often subconsciously end up normalizing acts of inequality. Just the other day I came across a woman sitting on a bench outside a neighboring society, her arms and neck covered with bruises and eyes filled with tears, a crowd had gathered to watch the damsel in distress narrate her unfortunate tale. As fate would have it, she had just been mugged by two men in broad daylight, ‘a man grappled her from behind, we thought he was her husband or relative and so abstained from interfering, we only realized what was going in when he ripped the chain off her neck and sped away on a waiting motorcycle ‘ a guard narrated, while a handful of kind-hearted people tended to her wounds and brought her water in a desperate attempt to calm her nerves. Shockingly though on being asked for an emergency contact number, the lady burst into tears, stating that her husband would kill her for having worn and lost such an expensive item. She chose instead to stay put for a little while and having gathered herself went home on her own, deciding to keep the incident a secret from her family.

It would be an understatement to say that it is shameful that we live in a society where women have to face such horrendous situations every day. It is almost funny how society stands as an innocent bystander until the harm is done and only then does it open its eyes. In these times when feminism has been diminished to a clichéd concept and the need for a protector reinstated, I doubt whether we have progressed at all. The plight of covid widows during these atrocious years has surely been another great eye-opener. While widows struggle to balance themselves on the tight ropes of society, facing eviction from houses they have inhabited since their marriage, merely days after losing their life-partners, widowers seem to have it all under control, not that their loss is in any way less harrowing, it’s the inhumane treatment meted out to ‘the second sex’ that is ghastly and appalling. It makes me wonder how far are the women of today from the infamous Bertha Mason in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre.