Pink Saris

This is a documentary on the struggles of being a woman, and more so in Uttar Pradesh, India. Uttar Pradesh has been known for it's low literacy rates, backward societal behavior and near nomadic means of living, but one cannot imagine the level of crass existence till they are potrayed with something like this.

The documentary follows Sampat Pal, a woman who calls herself the 'messiah' for any woman in distress and the story of how she goes about creating the 'gulabi gang' to fight all injustice and stand pillar to any woman who needs her. Through the 90 minutes, we glimpse through various 'cases' that she has chanced upon and we see her navigate, handle herself to solutions for each of them. The movie definitely has it's sensibilities in place with no lopsided feminist approach or unrealistic male bashing. Her life is just the finding of solutions to everyday problems, and the movie does just that in all honesty.

But quite simply, the movie isn't about the story, it's the extraordinary strength of a woman to bear, its an eye-opener to a world that we think doesn't exist. It's disturbing, painful and scary tale for any woman to know that helplessness could exist just a doorstep away, and we live in a far more protected environment than we realise. This movie shows the extraordinary courage that a UP girl has inculcated in herself simply because she is born into a world of bastards.

Apart from that the movie excels in it's content capture, research and a near perfection protagonist find. Sampat Pal is a woman of amazing character, command and value. A story like this couldn't have been told without a character like this, but then a story like this wouldn't have existed had it not been for a character like Sampat.

Though it's sad that the context of U.P. is not established, making it dangerous for a non-Indian audience to think this is India.. ! But that debate definitely doesn't belong here because this is in parts the story of every woman's struggle.