Don’t just jump with joy yet. We are talking about Raksha Bandhan here, which, in a few more hours will greet you through the radio with Mithun Chakraborty film songs, take over low-news hours on news channels with grainy videos of the same and spam your mobile phone with offers – on vacations, cutlery, video games and ice-cream parlours.
It’s another thing that Rakhi has turned into an asexual, homely counter-part of something like a Valentine’s Day, killing off most of what could be its charm. However, much before sms-marketing invaded your phones and life – Bollywood, systematically killed Rakhi for the country. And you don’t have to be a feminist to figure out why.
Bollywood and Rakhi, interestingly, freeze into one single image in popular memory.
Bollywood and Rakhi, interestingly, freeze into one single image in popular memory. No, it’s not the oh-so-cute Ek Hazaron Mein song from Hare Krishna Hare Raam. Rather it’s a stock sequence that sits in one corner of every Bollywood script, where pony-tailed, talkative, dripping-sugar sister ties a Rakhi on her brother’s wrist and solemn, rising-to-the-occasion brother pledges to ‘protect’ little sister or even big sister too in certain sequences. Think Dance Dance of the Halwa wala fame. Think little boy oscillating from wide-eyed wonder to dramatic precocity as he mouths his Rakhi lines, dunked in Bollywood rhetoric of valiance. Think how, rob-the-brother Rakhi turns into save-the-sister Raksha Bandhan in one frame.
If you are a Bollywood sister, you are probably an average looking, pining side kick to a cocky leading man. You have to be rescued by the brother even in his next life (Karz) or avenged for by a lot of punching and blood-spitting (several Salman Khan films). You are the break, we need to finish our popcorn between two frames. Except for a rare instance like Juhi Chawla in My Brother Nikhil, you are no one that any one would probably fancy becoming.
