Desi Galaxy

Vimla Patil over at South Asia Women’s Forum asks this question:

Is Bollywood debauchery encouraging adultery in our society?

Vimla is quite confused here. First of all I can not understand why she thinks that the adulterous relationship between Saif and Rosa was the reason behind Saif-Amrita divorce. She claims to know it all, she knows that Aamir Khan’s marriage ended because he was committing adultery with Kiran Rao and Akshay Kumar has adulterous linkages with Kangana Ranaut. I feel that the main reason behind the tragic endings of celebrity marriages is work environment, jealousy and negative press. Adultery is probably the most common reason behind broken marriages all over the world, not just Bollywood. But there are many things behind the news headlines that we people don’t know about these celebrities. We don’t know about their domestic lives.

I don’t know what Vimla thinks about Bollywood, but I think that Bollywood is just a popular name for Indian film industry. You can not say that Bollywood is encouraging adultery. It is just a coincidence that these men work there. She begins her article by quoting Billy Crystal saying, “Women need a reason to have sex. Men just need a place!”.

The adultry was there in Indian culture, even before Bollywood. I agree that movies have a potential to influence popular culture. But I don’t think that movies can change people’s nature. It is Men’s nature to lust, they would go for it even if Bollywood discourages them. There are many couples who work in entertainment industry and are happily married since years. Why look further, we have examples of Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya Bahduri, Shahrukh Khan and Gauri, Neetu Singh and Rishi Kapoor, Hrithik Roshan and Suzzane Khan. They are all living like normal couples. But blaming Bollywood for something that is already so common every where is totally baseless.