The best a movie can get

Were all aware of the sort of male stalking that endangers women in public spaces affecting their mental health let alone basic security that one cant talk about enough And one mustnt stop either Therefore this is not to even vaguely compare the gravity of crimes mdash but I have been stalked twiceOnce a decade ago when the persons relentless 24x7 text messages would eventually heat up my cellphone into complete collapse while some of them would relate to what Im wearing mdash having stepped out of a building elevator When I did report the case to the citys top cop upon one of the messages that sounded suicidal the police tracking phone records apprehended the person in less than a few hoursThey found her to be mentally imbalanced shed apparently watched films sitting next to me at press previews and assumed that wed been watching movies with each other She was strongly warned No case registered I didnt know the person Still dontThe second one more recently claimed over the phone that someone had been impersonating me in Delhi and harassing her mdash even claiming to marry in a threeline MS Word file over email Preposterous as that sounds of course you feel for someone going through such stress The charge against the alleged imposter if he had slept with this person promising marriage is rape Something the Indian judiciary in 2017 Justice Pratibha Rani of Delhi High Court took notice of as a mounting problem of soured relationshipsbeing brought to courtrooms as rape casesExcept over the next few weeks with this aggrieved person who Id never heard of let alone met rotating between multiple phonelines socialmedia handles strange Whatsapptext messages and missed calls in the dead of the night I figured it was probably me who needed saving from her more than her from the supposed impersonatorimposterA senior cop I met for this particular case suggested to me a series of sections of law that I must mention in a formal complaint which the citys cybercrime cell did take cognisance of Only that none of the sections concerned the actual mental harassment stalking For no such section exists In the eyes of the law a man can never be stalked by a womanShould this be looked into Not for me to say It is for people regardless of gender to be sensitised to the possibility of such a phenomenon Me taking up such a cause even if minor in the larger scheme of things is pure advocacy Folk at large feeling for crimes that hit humans mdash even if not from your own gender caste religion incomelevel etc mdash make for the kind of universal empathy that strengthens societies against harassments and misdemeanours of every sortWhich is the one thing I wouldve preferred in the recent film Section 375 starring the supersorted Richa Chadha as the public prosecutor taking up for a female survivor and Akshaye Khanna in his careers best work as the defense counsel standing in for a male movie director accused of rape mdash could we have flipped the genders of the lawyers arguing the case Perhaps for the betterThis is to take away nothing from the fact that the accused is a 100 per cent jerk Actor Rahul Bhat accurately plays this part of a person drunk on an aphrodisiac called power that inevitably comes with a sense of Godlike useandthrow entitlement This disease is perhaps true for every profession mdash showbiz simply not being the exception At no point do you root for Rahuls characterBut the case itself isnt as straight and simple as most things seem on socialmedia where the mere mention of gender politics and religion fires up people to stand divided on extremes until either side falls Judiciary and law enforcers one would hope dont work the same way But how often do you expect a film to delve as deep into the grayness of an issuecase without taking the obvious sides while being empathetic at the same time walking on such thin ice and yet never falling offSmartly scripted screenplay credited to Manish Gupta with additional work by Ajay Bahl brilliantly directed by Bahl full disclosure close friend is one of those rare films that owes slight debt to Chaitanya Tamhanes Court for its trilingual realism and Sidney Lumets indoor classic 12 Angry Men for twists and turns in its arguments But it totally stands out in the age of MeToo which led to a muchneeded massive cleanup at workplacesAnd yet thereafter it fizzled out by way of real debate turning it into only about individuals or turfwar between genders at least online Which was never the point of that media movementYou care for the woman in the film throughout Some could even care for the guy in terms of the charges against him But eventually if we understand that no one should suffer mdash if wholly innocent or for more than the crime committed mdash I suspect the film like the law itself wouldve done its essential jobMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the 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