Yours, Unfaithfully: Talking about Infidelity with Neena Gupta (and others)
This is a column by me that appeared maybe five years ago.
Back in my prolific, column-a-day phase, when I was unable to make ends meet by writing novels (before my Ramayana) and column-writing and book-reviewing was preferable to hacking it for the film and TV worlds.
Although, to be quite fair, I did do my share of TV work.
In fact, in the column below, when I mention Neena Gupta and Saans, what I don’t say, but can say now, is that I was actually writing for her.
She contacted me one day from out of the blue and asked me to come aboard her ‘team’ and write scripts for her.
I worked briefly on Saans, Siski, and another serial by her that never saw the light of day (a common occurrence in TV then and now).
It was an experience with mixed results – I can’t say I enjoyed it hugely, but she was at least better than most producers and directors out there.
And I got paid all my dues, which is truly the rarest occurrence of all.
The rest of the column speaks for itself…
BOMBAY BITCH
Ashok Banker
Looking for a Gautam
Even the most admired of independent women may not live the idyllic married lives we assume, writes Ashok Banker
Talking casually to Neena Gupta recently, the star-producer-director of Saans.
“All the marriages I know of are failures,” she said. “The women are all unhappy. The men…well, they must be getting what they want one way or another. But the women are miserable.”
So why don’t they get out, I wondered.
Well, for the same reason that Priya, the character Neena plays on her serial, accepts her husband Gautam back even after his long dalliance with another woman.
In fact, Priya doesn’t just accept him back, but even accepts the fact that the other woman has some legitimate association with him – even if it’s only that of financial support and the status of ex-wife.
What is it about Indian women that makes them so accepting of their men’s vagaries? Why do they prefer to stay married unhappily ever after? Why not just call it quits and start over again?
Is it because of the children?
Well, as the product of not one but two broken homes I can vouch for the fact that after a certain age, the children don’t really qualify as an excuse. Better one happy parent than two miserable, squabbling ones, I’d have said.
More likely it was because the women were too well settled in their marital ruts.
I remember meeting one such woman on a recent trip to Delhi.
She was an old friend of the male friend I was with. We bumped into her at Khan market.
They said the usual Hi-Hellojis. And then my friend made the mistake of asking her how things were at home.
She took off like a Diwali rocket, exploding into a golden fireball of glittering resentment and loathing.
Apparently, her husband was filthy rich, and spoiled her children rotten.
Teenagers both of them, she felt they were spiralling out of control.
If they wanted anything that took their fancy – a car, a fabulously expensive designer outfit, a night at a chic disco, a vacation abroad – he would let them have it without argument.
It had gotten so bad that if she withheld anything from them – “You can’t just give kids everything they want, after all,” – they would simply call up Papa who would say “Of course, bete,” and get back to his wheeling dealing.
The result: She felt completely sidelined, frustrated, and unnecessary.
After we escaped from her clutches, heads still reeling from her tirade, my Delhi friend told me that most ‘happily married’ women she knew were in the same boat.
Trapped into comfortable, wealthy alliances, they were neither needed for their feminine charms – that department was left to the ubiquitous mistresses and girlfriends that every such husband possessed – nor were they truly essential for home-management or child-raising.
No wonder these educated, professionally qualfied women felt so frustrated and wasted.
Coming back to Neena Gupta.
Her Saans may not be seeing its best days – in my opinion – with the story taking a definite downspin since the resolution of the Gautam-Priya-Manisha triangle.
(My sources suggest that the serial may be on its way to a final wrap-up in a few months).
But during its heyday, besides ruling the TRPs, the show also attracted a huge feminine following for Neena.
“Women open up to me instantly because of Saans,” she said. “They come and talk about all sorts of things, their marriage, their husbands, their kids. I can’t count the number of times women have come up to me at parties and said, ‘You’re showing my story in Saans’.”
Surely there are exceptions though?
“I don’t know anybody,” says Neena. Which begs the obvious question.
After all, she’s reputed to have had a pretty wild lifestyle herself.
Until her controversial marriage to West Indies cricketing legend Vivien Richards, from whom she has a daughter Masaba.
Surely she’s struck out on her own terms, found a match that meets her expectations? Surely she’s a woman of independent means, not the kind to take any BS from a man?
Sigh.
All of the above are true.
Except for one thing.
Sure, she isn’t Priya of Saans to accept her fate stoically.
But even she can’t create a man to her custom designs.
And the fact is, as Neena Gupta puts it so memorably in a candid, personal and wholly revealing comment: “I wish I could find a Gautam for myself. I’m still looking.”
What she means is with all his faults and straying, Gautam is still as close to the ideal Indian husband as any Bhartiya nari is likely to get.
Leaving the unasked question: Are there any such men out there? She doesn’t think so.
This entry was posted on Monday, September 5th, 2005 at 8:16 am. It is filed under Ashok.
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