Bini Dahal

Movies have always been considered a mirror portraying the reality of any contemporary society. So, in a society where there is a menace of deep-rooted misogyny, reflecting the same on a mass audience may cause a huge difference.
The 2020 Bollywood film called “Thappad” (slap) can be called as one of those movies that not just indicate problems faced by women in every household, but it also gives a new perspective to coming out of it. It revolves around the life of Amu (short for Amrita) who is a homemaker. In the movie, she is shown as a woman whose life moves around her husband and the household. Her dream cherished during her college life of becoming a dancer has long been forgotten and she is shown to be more than happy to take up her ambitious husband’s dream as her own.
The husband wants to shift to the London branch of the company he works with but corporate politics shatters his dreams. So, an enjoyable house party turns nasty when he fights with his senior for not supporting him. Amrita tries intervening in the heated discussion only to be slapped on the face, in front of everyone. Now, this one slap is shown to be a turning point in Amrita’s life. It forces her to think twice about the respect and happiness she is entitled for. This realisation becomes stronger when the husband does not apologise her even once and keeps up his rhetoric about not being respected by the company he worked so hard for.
Here, we see that the husband is not even slightly apologetic about his behaviour rather attempts to defend himself for the slap. All he sees is how the company is treating him but fails to see how he has treated and internally wounded his loved one. She then decides to divorce from him. But during the whole event, everyone around her questions her decision saying she should adapt and that “it was just a slap”. Throughout the movie, she tries fighting with the husband in a fair manner, while the husband and his skewed lawyer tries playing dirty just to prevent the divorce from happening.
On knowing about her pregnancy, the husband even asks her to leave the baby after birth. Yet, in the end, he realises his mistake and amicably separates. The husband here is not completely a bad character, rather a decent and educated one who respects women members of his family. However, he fails to do the same with his wife. What truly has hit me hard is the simple notion that marriage is all about adapting and compromising. While we cannot survive without compromising and respecting personal differences, there is no point in negotiating when acts of domestic violence are involved. A single slap can grow to become something much bigger and nastier as well.
Violence caused by irritation and anger is unjustifiable. The protagonist’s want for happiness and respect is the driving factor that strongly pushes the victims to be resilient and strong in getting what they want. Decisions made on the ground of self-respect and happiness cannot be considered wrong. Everyone should have the right to independently think and decide for themselves, without any limitation from the society and its people. As members of a society, it is important for all of us to strive towards creating an equitable society for both the genders.