Who is the real victim?

Victimhood narratives risk eclipsing the shared struggle of building a family, whose quiet cost is shared by both women and men.

Women empowerment or feminism has always been a favourite topic of Indians over a cup of tea or informal social get togethers. Predictably, films, advertisements, and streaming content have often waded into this terrain, exploring the manifold challenges women face. Movies like Toilet: Ek Prem Katha, Pad Man, Queen and Thappad, along with numerous workplace-themed ad campaigns, have addressed issues ranging from domestic violence and sanitation woes to the quiet indignities faced by housewives and the relentless need for spousal approval.

By and large, Indian media has done an admirable job in shining a light on the overlooked intricacies of womanhood. Yet, of late, a noticeable pattern has emerged, particularly in Hindi films and television serials: a singular, almost obsessive focus on how marriage extinguishes a woman's dreams. This narrative of ambition sacrificed at the altar of family has become a trope, if not a trope du jour.

One wonders whether this focus on post-marital female sacrifice becoming overwrought? And why is there so little attention paid to the dreams men relinquish when they step into the labyrinth of family life? Bollywood's market calculus is clear: women make up a major share of the audience, and stories centered on female victimhood are a proven draw. Consider Sukhee (2023), directed by Sonal Joshi and starring Shilpa Shetty, or the daily soap Anupamaa, or Mrs. (2024), a Hindi adaptation of The Great Indian Kitchen. Each pivots around a woman who, having lived a spirited, independent life pre-marriage, finds herself gradually subsumed into the thankless role of family caretaker. Their hobbies and passions wither on the vine, while the male protagonists for not doing enough for the women in the house to be able to pursue their careers or forgotten goals.

It is indeed a tricky situation. Are we getting habitual in conveniently forgetting that regardless of gender, both men and women have dreams they put aside when they struggle for an independent existence without any support with parenthood in tow? Dreams are fragile things, easily bruised by the demands of survival, and parenthood is no less demanding for fathers than it is for mothers. Men, too, forgo ambitions, sublimate hobbies and sacrifice parts of themselves to keep the machinery of family life running smoothly. They may stop singing, painting, even dreaming aloud, but seldom does their silent surrender find its way to the silver screen.

Hobbies do take a back seat, especially the ones that add no value to the upbringing of the children or to the overall ‘betterment’ of the family. Do men not sing? Do they not dance or do they not paint? Are they born to work hard and earn money like robots? This wave of portraying women as the only victims in Indian marriages is getting to be a bit biased when it comes to the argument of who has made more sacrifices.

Raising children, ironically, is no child’s game. For a flawless and efficient execution of daily tasks involved in the process of raising children, either the father or the mother is compelled to take a back seat. It has to be a mutual decision that has no scope for any miscommunication or sour feeling. This is the most practical and viable approach. However, the question remains, who will take a backseat? We are conveniently used to assuming the fact that the women in the family will take a back seat. We do take a back seat, and after reaching a point of saturation, we feel we are the victims. Especially when other women in our social circles are going head in head in their respective careers, we feel even worse. To add to the trauma, Indian films, with their penchant for simplified emotional storytelling, often swoop in to validate that festering sense of injustice, portraying women as inevitable victims of marriage and motherhood. But what if the roles were suddenly reversed - if Indian men volunteered to become house-husbands - how many women, in a society still riddled with notions of male primacy, would readily accept it?

Victimhood, when justified, can be a source of solidarity and strength. But when it becomes a narrative crutch, endlessly replayed, it risks overshadowing the shared humanity, and shared sacrifices, that bind families together. True empowerment lies not in creating new myths of suffering, but in acknowledging the quiet, unglamorous heroism that all caregivers embody, regardless of gender.