In a new motivational video that Shabana Azmi has made on the issue of women’s empowerment, the actor is seen reciting the lines of Maya Angelou’s hard-hitting poem And Still I Rise.
This is the latest in a seemingly long line of celebrity motivational videos emerging from the entertainment industry.
Explaining why an actor-activist of her indomitable stature chose to go the designer-motivational way to empower women, Shabana says: "When the Creative Service Support Group (CSSG) came to me, I agreed for two reasons: One is the fact that the video is based on the voices of women from all walks of life. The focus is not on the celebrity voice. It’s on the problems that women face as expressed through letters."
Incidentally, Shabana has shot a separate solo video for CSSG while other actresses like Dia Mirza and Aditi Rao Hydari have shot a compendium video for CSSG.
But why read feminist lines by an American poet when we have so many astonishing lines of poetry on women empowerment by Indian poets?
Shabana explains, "I was deeply moved by Angela’s lines. Moreover, this is a video with a global resonance. The voice of empowerment can come from anywhere. But I assure you the next video in the series would have me reciting Urdu or Hindustani poetry."
Defending Deepika Padukone’s much criticised My Choice video on women empowerment, Shabana says, "Women have been oppressed for so long that when we come down to negotiating for equality, women have to start from a position of extreme aggression so that finally, the negotiation for gender equality brings them on the same level as men and gets them what they really want. It’s like any negotiable issue. If you start from a position of compromise, you end up getting nothing. All the aggression that you see in motivational videos comes from the anxiety to finally bring women on a par with men in the social hierarchy."
Photograph: Abhijit Mhamunkar
