Mamta Kalia

afraid of you all that if she accepts any
money you — women activists will say
she has sold herself. So we have deposited
the prize money of three thousand pounds
in her bank.” Well, there was no other
alternative as the cheque was in
Bhanwari’s name, but the money had
not yet reached her. Mundhra’s friend
wanted half the money for himself. In
response to my query on the phone,
he shouted, “I took great pains to get
her the money and now she is acting
pricey that she does not need it.” If
this cheque did not reach Bhanwari ,
my gift to her had no chance. It too
got lost in this fraud.
The 2002 IIT ‘Distinguished Alumnus
Award’ was given to Mumbai’s ex-student
Jagmohan Mundhra. This was an
achievement for him. He deserves
applause as he succeeded in changing
his soft-porn film maker image. The film
142 :: April-June 2010
ran in Mumbai for 5 weeks -- not a
bad financial proposition. Even I gained
the credit of writing the film. The only
one who suffered was Bhanwari . Kavita
Srivastava’s words reverberate in my
ears, “Boys in school really trouble
Bhanwari’s son. They tease him, “how
much money has your mother taken,
you son of a bitch...aren’t you ashamed
of living off your mother’s fucking.”
Bhanwari’s son has now come to
Jaipur. He often writes letters to my
friend Urmila Pawar asking for financial
assistance for admission in another
college. His letters and Kavita Srivastava’s
words prick my conscience.
It’s an irony that we , the so called
‘creative’ artists, actors, writers, merely
use the struggles of flesh and blood people
for our selfish purpose, our name and
fame. What role do we play in helping
them to achieve their goal?
Sudha Arora, born 1946 at Lahore, is a feminist author and activist
who is also involved with theatre and films. She wrote the screenplay
and dialogues for the controversial film ‘bawandar’ and recounts her
frustration at film-writing. She is not the first to face the fire. A
number of creative writers have been drawn to cine media and have
felt disillusioned. She has written and edited a great number of books
on women’s issues. Honorary director of Vasundhara, a book centre
at Mumbai where she lives.
Seema Sharma is professor of English at Jaihind College, Mumbai and
translates from Hindi to English and vice versa.