Why films like Kaabil need to stop.

Heads up: This shall be inundated with spoilers but the film was such a shit-show that spoilers only add value at this point.

I walked into Sanjay Gupta’s ‘Kaabil’  with dreary anticipation of an overly dramatic depiction of disabled people fighting the system, but walked out with utter disgust at the plot line’s laziness and utter lack of sensitivity. So the movie opens with Rohan( Hrithik) meeting Supriya ( Yami), two blind individuals, falling in love and getting married in a quick span of approximately 20 minutes ( complete with two forgettable songs and scenic backdrops of Juhu Beach). A couple of nauseatingly corny lines of ‘ sharing darkness’ are uttered, romanticising how difficult it is being blind BUT THE FILM IS STILL FORGIVABLE till this point.

A day into their marriage, Supriya gets raped by some local goon and an MLA’S brother. Owing to the rapists’ political influence, the police lock up the couple so as to remove medical evidence and the couple return defeated in their search for justice. Nowhere in this narrative has Rohan addressed the immense struggle his wife is going through and while I’m trying to understand why- this happens.  They return home and she begins to call him to dinner and tries TO COMFORT HIM by claiming that she ‘ understands this changes how he views her, how he feels for her and is perfectly willing to end the marriage and continue her job’. Any response barring utter outrage towards these views would have been unacceptable but the stoic Rohan gives us some stoic silence as HE goes through ‘suffering and anguish’. The burden of handling her husbands emotional baggage after she underwent this horrific trauma is treated as a given as Supriya smilingly cajoles him to go to bed. The following day, he goes to work, leaving his wife alone at home a mere day after this incident cheerfully preparing parathas and naturally, she is visited by the same goons, subject to the same oppression and kills herself. An emetic suicide note is revealed where she claims she did this ‘because she knew her husband couldn’t bear to watch her suffer’ again placing his emotional baggage as a priority over her own violation.

A respectful two minutes later, we cut to an item song in a bar that does nothing to forward the plot but was required for objectification ( duh) .The rest of the movie pans into an action drama of Hrithik fighting literally everyone to exact revenge for his wife, using cunning and his brute strength. I am tired. This plot is tired. It is archaic and it needs to stop. Bollywood’s use of horrific oppression of women as a mere plot-mechanism to showcase the hero’s glamorous machismo is  nothing short of disrespectful and grossly insensitive to survivors of sexual abuse. Why is it so unfathomable for female characters to have more agency than just ‘ get abused and die’? From Ghajini to Action Jackson to this, this formula is so overdone and unidimensional. To reduce the VERY REAL abuse of women as just a trigger to the hero’s tragically romantic battle for revenge silences the emotional journey sexual violence survivors go through and denies them the ability to take back ownership of their stories.

What’s most unfortunate is that this film could have been so much better. The narrative of disabled people is one that desperately needs telling, and this film could have relied on its successful star-cast to do just that. Tell me more about their jobs, tell me how they adapt to a world that ignores disabilities, tell me of their immense resilience. If you cannot rise above your laziness, unoriginality and lack of nuance, then don’t  hide behind the veil of disabilities as a publicity prop and an attempt at being progressive/ sensitive.