Padmini

Padmini.
That’s the name of the queen of Chittor and also the movie that’s being made about her.

What a chaste woman she was.
At the first hint that her husband had been killed in war and the lecherous Muslim king, having won the war, was marching towards the palace and its principal chamber that was her abode, she ran to the huge pit of fire and jumped into it, as was customary those days for women of high honour. She would rather burn into ashes than let another man touch her. Such was her chastity and that of a thousand other women of the palace who jumped into the pit of fire. Also, of all the women of those bygone days…

The director of the movie based on her life has chosen, for the role of Rani Padmini in his film, of all the actors in the cinema industry, a woman who, in her half educated but over enthusiastic video on feminism, outdoing all other feminists preceding her, said, ‘Sex outside marriage, my choice!’
The actor isn’t married but her statement is in congruence with the promiscuous life she has lead so far.

Irony, tragedy or joke? Perhaps all of them.

Rani Padmini’s beauty was sung far and wide, and it was to make her his captive that the Muslim king had come marching with his army all the way.
The fact that this actor is an ordinary plain Jane in the context of the queen’s legendary beauty bothers me much less than her views on chastity or rather, her complete divorce from it.

Its just a movie, no big deal.
This is just a thought, no big deal either.