Enkayaar, Bollywood Trade News Network

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A director like Rakeysh Om Prakash Mehra apart from holding a mirror to all of us to look inside and using the man as a metaphor has a very poignant comment to make about the manner in which the society deals with the women belonging to the lower caste through DELHI 6. Any other actress could not have much better expressed the disdain that he has been able to eke out from Divya Dutta when placed in this dilemma in DELHI 6. And this is precisely the reason why Amitabh Bachchan was mightily impressed by her acting prowess.

There are two contrasting scenarios which have been juxtaposed and presented before the audience and have interesting comment on our formulations and our beliefs about the social structures that we function in, and the attempt of the old order to maintain its predominance. One is the scene where Abhishek Bachchan is literally dragged by Waheeda Rahman and her hands are literally scrubbed with sand for the simple reason that he had the audacity to help Divya Dutta pick up her basket of waste material from the house.

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The second juxtaposition is the innocent query of the children who after smoking a part of the cigarette given to them by Pavan Malhotra approach Divya Dutta and sort of demand from her that she help them in achieving them their adulthood, it is a subtle pointer to the reality of our society that the people and particularly ladies belonging to the lower caste still are used for ushering in of sexuality of the males in general. This is a pithy and stark comment on the status of the society that the by-lanes and mofussil towns, and may be even the big cities would continue to hold this worldview.

It is more of objectification of the female as a commodity for scaling a new phase in the life adulthood, and it being uttered through the mouth of children is also a pointer to the fact that they have been privy to this communication from the adults. By the same logic they are demanding it from the character played by Divya Dutta. The creation of demand in itself is a comment, which arises from the observations that Rakeysh Om Prakash Mehra must have made while living in the bye-lanes of Delhi.

This sub-text of the subject under played through a commercial film like DELHI 6 should lead to further probing of the nature of the society and could open up quite a lot of formulations that are canker of the society through a new stream of film making, which is exemplified by the attempts of Rakeysh Om Prakash Mehra.


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