Kubbra Sait the woman of the year, you are not alone

What Kubbra Sait has done in her memoir, entitled rather impishly as Open Book Not Quite A Memoir , should serve as an example to the entire Indian entertainment industry. Let me be honest about celebrity memoirs: they are markedly dishonest. Even Rishi Kapoor who prided himself for his outspokenness (and to an extent, rightly so) resorted to selective honesty in his memoirs with the excuse that telling the absolute truth would hurt many families. Fair enough. In that case, don’t do it. Lying in a memoir, or telling half-truths is akin to beating around the bush in a church confessional. You are fooling no one but yourself. Kubbra Sait is always a brutally unvarnished version of the truth on screen—and those who have seen her play the gender-challenged Kukoo in Sacred Games or Saif Ali Khan ’s friend in Jawani Jaaneman would vouch for this—has gone the whole hog in her memoir.

By speaking about her enduring abuse in the hands of a family ‘friend’ and a benefactor she has pulled the rug off under our socially equanimous feet. We like to perceive ourselves as a civilized society; but only when no one is watching. When Kubbra speaks out against her ‘Uncle’ grossly violating her private space, we clearly see what we are not meant to. Ours is an intrinsically sick violent society where the daily wrongdoings are shoved under the carpet. There are so many wives in the entertainment industry who have suffered domestic abuse in silence to protect their husbands’ image. Rati Agnihotri was brave enough to speak up against domestic abuse (although she eventually went back to her marital bliss) but Zeenat Aman never spoke about the abuse she went through. When a celebrity woman especially from the entertainment world, speaks of her abuse, she gives more strength to the common woman (or that matter, man) out there who may be suffering in the hands of a parent, spouse, relative or a total stranger. When an empowered woman speaks of abuse she gives strength to other woman in similar situations who do not possess the financial independence that Kubbra Sait possesses today. I wish she had the financial support at the time when fatherless, she and her family had to depend on Creepy Uncleji for sustenance. There is only one thing worse than a financially strong man using the wrong muscles on those dependent on him: those close to the abused woman(or man) refusing to believe she(or he) is being abused. To women like Kubbra’s mother who quietly watch their children being scarred for life, I have only one thing to say: shame on you. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely, there are very few films on child abuse in Hindi. Sujoy Ghosh ’s disturbing but diluted Kahaani 2 was about the sexual abuse of a six-year-old girl by her uncle played by the once-cherubic Masoom Jugal Hansraj trying to break away from his angelic image. This was the first mainstream film featuring a big-name actress Vidya Balan to go into the dark zone of sexual violation of children. Sujoy Ghosh used to read about little children being sexually assaulted, and that too by members of the family. His blood boiled. The tendency to hush up these crimes against innocent children really rankled and rattled him. He had to address this issue. Prior to Sujoy Ghosh’s Kahani 2 filmmaker Onir had also addressed the theme in a sensitively made film entitled Abhimanyu which was part of Onir’s omnibus entitled I Am. Onir’s story was based on the traumatic childhood experiences of painter artiste Ganesh Nallari. Sanjay Suri played the abused child who grows up to be a sexually and emotionally confused character, while filmmaker Anurag Kashyap, himself a victim of childhood abuse, played the abusive uncle. Ganesh was initially apprehensive about opening up on his abuse, but he realized that if he wanted a change, he needed to be the change. He was conscious about his personal and professional lives converging. Ganesh painted and danced all through his abuse. After watching the movie, Ganesh was reassured that talking about his experience would help other victims. Unlike Kubbra, in Ganesh’s case, no one in his family was aware of his trauma. Filmmaker Anurag Kashyap too was an abused child. Someone close to his family sexually abused him. Anurag shared this awful secret with me in 2011 after he played a child abuser in Onir’s I Am.No actor was willing to play the child abuser in Onir’s film. Having gone through the ordeal, Anurag realised it was very important for the victim and for the attacker to be played properly. Anurag hated himself for playing the perpetrator of such a crime. But someone had to do the job or the story would remain untold. So, my dear Kubbra Sait, you are not alone. The history of abuse in Indian entertainment runs deep. Some day we will be able to talk about all the torture this gorgeous actress faced at the hands of a superstar before she fled the marriage. Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook ,  Twitter  and  Instagram .