Attack On Anushka Is A Shame

Blaming Anushka Sharma for Virat Kohli’s failure and India’s defeat defines the deplorable manner in which some Indian fans view their cricket. It is a relief though, that far more fans have stood by the team and condemned such behaviour.

Long time ago. I must have been 10, maybe 11 years old. As I stood on the sidewalk, I heard a much older girl yell, “Shut up. Don’t you have a mother, a sister?” It had been said in Hindi, of course.

A young boy smiled. “Yes, yes, naturally. But they are at home. My lovely words were for you, babe.” I had heard him mumble a couple of lines moments earlier. Just didn’t know who he had been talking to. A kid, that what’s I was, you see.

The girl glared at him and walked away.

I went home, dashed into my mother’s room, and shared my memories of the verbal exchange. Poor lady, she just heard me out patiently and said, “Well son, it happens.”

I didn’t understand what she meant, and had serious doubts about my maturity. But I tried to fake understanding, nodded my little head, and walked away.

“It happens.”

More than three decades later, memories of my encounter with utter incomprehension have come rushing back to me. You know why. India were pummeled by Australia, a superior team, in the semis of the ICC World Cup 2015. Virat Kohli, India’s man of the present and, possibly their mascot by the time the next edition of the World Cup comes along, messed it up, scoring one off 12 deliveries before he tried to play an ugly shot to wriggle out of the zone of pressure. The momentary loss of calm cost him his wicket.

He went back with his head bowed. His film-star girlfriend Anushka Sharma, who had come down to Sydney to watch him play against the mighty Aussies, was shattered. How do I know it? Not because I had been sitting next to her, but since the camera found time to dwell on her.

Wrong priority. But it happens.

Within a few hours, countless losers who call themselves fans of Indian cricket launched an assault on her. Vulgarity rained and reigned. Sensible human beings condemned the nasty attack; yet, too many tongues continued to wag.

Uncivilized conduct knows no Reason. This time, the person at the receiving end was Sharma because she was present when her boyfriend put up a flop show; cheered for the Men in Blue when they took to the field as every other fan, both sane and insane, did; and yet, had no right to be there, since she was ‘a bad influence’ on India’s most talented batsman.

Being his girlfriend and not his wife, and that too a ‘star’ who has ‘seduced’ the most eligible bachelor in the country – every star is a real-life escort of a smuggler, remember? – Anushka would have been shattered by what happened after her boyfriend was dismissed. Virat wouldn’t have returned to the hotel room with a smile on his face either.

He would have known what a loss in a World Cup semis implied. He would have been shocked by his non-performance. Anushka, who would have known that jobless word mongers were attacking her on Twitter and even burning her effigies on the streets after India’s bad loss, wouldn’t have shared these stories with him.

In any case, like every other girl in India, she surely knows: it happens.

Today, she is a star, a known face on the big screen. But she has had a normal upbringing, too. She knows that foul-mouthed men who cannot stop themselves from hurling ribald comments exist.  For them, any woman passing by is a commodity, a lifeless thing that isn’t expected to feel any emotion when words hit it. Most men believe in it. Women live with it. Life goes on.

Twitter is a just another open space, and she, a woman first. That gives men the right to say anything about her, right?  In India, and it hurts me as I write this, it happens.

Why just in open spaces? This happens inside most houses where the woman as the person, who follows orders without questioning and reports to the man of the house, is the easiest and the ‘right’ person to be with. When women are ‘powerful’ since they earn their own money and have a strong personality of their own, many men are uncomfortable in their presence. A woman with a personality of her own that frequently overpowers the man’s is a misfit in a patriarchal system, you see.

Anushka is a star, and that too, his girlfriend. Virat loves her, and openly expresses that love in social media. Stupid man, many men think. Why does he need to be so obsessed with her when he, being what he is, can treat her like a use-and-throw razor?

Forgetting her sensitivity, her humanness that lies deep within her, these peddlers of misogynistic nonsense are assaulting her because she is a girlfriend – not a dutiful, subservient, obedient, wife as she is meant to be.

Arre, a girlfriend, yaar.

Timepass stuff, not-to-be-taken-seriously types, who has no business to hang around in Sydney when her boyfriend is engaged in serious business. She has played the spoilsport, they are suggesting, when he was engaged in the business of playing a serious sport at the highest level.

They have forgotten that she has just released and starred in a self-produced film at such a young age. Her identity isn’t dependent on Virat’s, and in no way will her fan following diminish if she walks out of his life.

After facing the sort of humiliation she has, with the odd maniac calling for a boycott of her films, it is even possible that she will wilt under pressure because of accusations whenever he under-performs. She is the one who walks out of his life.

If that happens, whom shall we blame? Shall we turn around and blame her for destroying Virat’s career by leaving him without realizing that we are the ones who were responsible for it?

No. On the contrary, we will say that, being a female star, she viewed him as a part-time lover. He took her seriously, and now, he has paid for it.

Being a star, but importantly, a female star under constant public gaze, she is destined to be a victim, a tortured soul.

But then, why did she meet and fall in love with Virat anyway?

Her fault, right?