She doesn’t feel so important most of the times, her Twitter description says, but National Award-winner Kalki Koechlin silences a noisy auditorium in Chennai with just her presence as she walks on stage to rehearse for her soliloquy, Soul of a Woman . Known as much forbeing a feminist as a versatile actor she is known as an artiste, Koechlin, excited yet composed, speaks to The Hindu in a dusty little corner of the Music Academy about why it is important for men to be feminists. Excerpts from an interview:
On the one hand, you have women-centric films in the Hindi film industry like Queen , NH10 and Margarita With a Straw doing really well. On the other, you have actresses insisting that they are not feminists. Why?
This is not a situation only in the industry, it’s happening all over. Feminism has become a highly politicised term. Most actors who make such statements are actually unwittingly feminists. Many people also don’t know the ABCD of feminism. It is essentially a fight for equality; all these actors are fighting for equality. I keep saying this: If you’re not a feminist, you’re a bad person ( laughs ).
I also think this has somehow become a gender war when it isn’t. It’s become men versus women. Someone asked me on Twitter: ‘What is the difference between feminism and feminazi?’ This is a fight, and like all fights it gets ugly at times. The real answer to all this aggressiveness is that men need to become feminists. Only when the fight is if unified will such problems (associated with the term) not be brought up.
You’ve spoken about sexual assault and child abuse. Do you think it’s important for celebrities especially to speak about these things?
I think it is good for people to talk about these things. But I don’t comment on everything; I don’t comment on things I don’t know enough about. I feel people should talk about something only if they feel strongly about them.
You are very active on Twitter and you have used social media a lot to get your message across on rape, the functioning of the media, and other subjects. Is social media empowering?
I like social media as it cuts out the middleman. You can be yourself, you can’t be misquoted, and it’s also useful for me to get information about my theatre shows across to people. But everyone has become a journalist on social media.
It can get consuming though. We’re all the time on our phones all the time, and we value ourselves according to the number of ‘likes’ we get. You need to take a breath once in a while.
The negative also is that people get trolled. Do you think women get abused more than men?
No, I think everyone gets trolled. I don’t think it’s particularly difficult for women. I haven’t seen the brunt of it from a guy’s perspective, but I’m sure they get trolled too.
In your video ‘The Printing Machine’, you said that the media reduces every issue to a statistic; that it doesn’t treat issues with compassion.
Yes, that wasn’t just a rant against the media, it was a rant against how we have become as a society, as consumers. We’re so distracted, we only want quick fixes. We buy products knowing that they are coming from places that are not responsible and sustainable. Anyone who says ‘no, I’m not’ is under some illusion because it’s a system that is so strong that you’re harming someone even when buying a bottle of water. There’s a book called No Logo by Naomi Klein. Some inspiration for the video came from that, some from reading headlines everyday. We get really outraged for two days about something and then forget about the issue and move on to something else. It’s really important not to forget our horror stories. It’s important to keep talking about them, to keep finding ways to talk about problems. I wanted to reiterate that.
But doesn’t the media do that? After December 16, for instance, talk about sexual assault has increased.
It is happening. This stuff that’s getting printed… it’s one day going to become our history. And that’s the last stanza where I say it (in the video). When we talk about elections we think it’s nothing. But that’s what is going to form our children, our society, our history, so it’s very important.
You identify yourself as a theatre actor, Bollywood actor, activist, feminist. What would you say is your primary identity?
I’m a ‘multi-facedist’! I don’t think you can box people. We all want to talk about something today but we want to talk about something else tomorrow. We don’t expect someone in a bikini to stand up for women’s rights, we only expect a girl in an ‘NGO outfit’ to speak about it. It’s as much as the right of the girl in the bikini to talk about it as a woman in a kurta . We need to embrace that multiplicity.
Which brings us back to how actors talk about these issues…
Yeah, a lot of women are doing that. But the difference would be when men also do.
Do you think men in the industry talk about these issues?
Farhan Akhtar really stands up for women’s rights. Shujaat Saudagar is also very strongly for women’s rights. But apart from them I can’t think of many names. There should be, it’s such a huge industry.
We see a lot of women writing, performing, talking about women’s rights. Do you know of men writing, performing, talking about the same?
Well, my first video was with AIB (All India Bakchod). So, that was a bunch of guys who wrote that script; they went out there with ‘It’s Your Fault’. ( Pauses for a long time ) I feel like there must be more… umm… this is really depressing. I can’t think of anyone. I want to stand up for men more! But I can’t think of anyone. There are a lot of socially aware men in theatre but I can’t think of any names right now.
