Arjun Kapoor-Kareena Kapoor Khan’s ‘Ki & Ka’ is hitting hard on gender discrimination and how!

Bollywood, occassionally, comes up with beautiful and refreshing creations. An uneven love story, a single mother’s struggle, a child and his aspirations; life has so many stories hidden under its sleeves! When they are made into films, they are fascinating enough. We can’t help but fall in love with filmmakers who try to capture life with its truest purposes. After seeing how R Balki with his latest directorial venture ‘Ki & Ka’  is trying to re-foster a truth, we have added him to our favourite list as well!

‘Ki & Ka’ features Arjun Kapoor and Kareena Kapoor Khan in the lead roles. Arjun & Kareena who play a married couple in the film, exchange their responsibilities in the family. Swapping their functions, Kareena (Kia) turns a working woman who earns and runs the family. On the other hand, Arjun (Kabir) becomes a ‘house husband’ who committedly takes care of the household. This is simply to show that no gender is limited to any specific tasks and all it takes to stay together is mutual understanding and consent. In your face, gender discriminators!

Honestly, the society is pretty much messed up with preset gender roles that we blindly follow. As rubbish as ‘a man shouldn’t cry’ or ‘a woman should speak softly’, come more rigid gender roles, wrapped inside compulsion. As a result, a man’s potentiality as a groom is merely judged by the amount of money he earns. When it comes to a woman, how well she cooks and how ‘obedient’ she is to her man are the determining factors. Any exception is termed abnormal. A man who would rather choose to stay home and take care of the household is named shameless and a woman who braves to earn and run a family would be named extrovert. Create such a suffocating system so that people are left with no other options than to fall on the blind queue.  Demeaning enough!

What if these norms could be banished one day? What if we could look at our functions beyond genders? What if roles were just roles and not gender roles? What if the world learnt to respect personal choices? What if responsibilities were to be carried out in accordance with one’s capability and not gender? What if men,and women too, themselves chose their own ways to contribute to the family and the society stopped poking its ugly nose everywhere?

So many questions! The best part is that these questions are being raised and that too using the medium of films. Considering all forms of mass medium, Bollywood is the one to have strongest reach. Nothing better than using Bollywood to mould opinions!

We really hope ‘Ki & Ka’ is able to strike us hard. To break a stereotype which has been there for so long, one needs to hit hard, very hard. We are glad to see that the initiatives are pouring in from Bollywood itself.

Balki deserves a round of applause for picking up a very sensible and relevant subject which, if rightly executed cinematically, would change hundreds of minds. We can’t help but appreciate Arjun Kapoor & Kareena Kapoor Khan for daring to play characters which oppose the very basic of gender roles.

Not just questions, it’s time you start finding answers as well. Fingers crossed!

Ranjini Maitra

Journalist. Writer. Reader. Enthu cutlet. Mood-swing machine. Day dreamer. Sandwiched between ‘live life fully’ and ‘lose some weight’. Mantra of life: Love and love more.