Q: What do
these women
have in
common?

By Siddharth Srivastava



NEW DELHI - A: They both let their countries down.

They are products of two contrasting societies, yet they break any gender stereotype that is associated with the fairer sex. In a country such as India, still steeped in defined roles for men and women, with the latter usually expected to toe the male line, the stories of United States Private Lynndie England and Bollywood star Mallika Sherawat come as a bit of an awakening.

The photos of 21-year-old England, in which she is depicted purportedly participating in Iraqi prisoner abuses, have been splashed across the world. But Westerners may not be familiar with 28-year-old Mallika. Mallika has not been accused of the kind of crimes that England is alleged to have perpetrated and some may say that it is even unfair to talk of her in the same breath as England. Yet there is one definite similarity: both have, knowingly or unknowingly, proven or unproven, treaded on paths that have been traditionally associated with the men folk - duplicity and lies - though in the case of England the accusation of torture is actually a crime of a much more serious nature. Mallika's are more of a survival tactic that is not legally a misdemeanor, yet an indication of what to expect as gender barriers get smudged.

Though England's case still awaits an inquiry, the fact that she seems directly involved in prison torture does gall, especially when there is a movement of sorts in this country to man police stations with women constables, so as to reduce harassment and third degree treatment. Her life story, culled from various news reports, also tells a tale of a woman who has led her life very much on her own terms. She seems to have stuck to her stand of working her way through a college degree to study meteorology, despite offers of help from her family. Her impetuous streak is reflected further in the several relationships she was involved in at a relatively young age, including an annulled marriage at the age of 20 and an affair with co-prison reservist Charles Graner (aged 35), a partner in the torture drama, with an alleged history of being mentally ill. One does hear of women suicide bombers in Chechnya or the dedicated women cadres of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka, but it is rare to witness such aberrant female behavior in a mainstream society such as the US.

Mallika traverses a different league as she has been recently hailed as a youth icon by CNN (that is, before her real story broke) - she is a budding Bollywood film star with a very promising future, given her looks, histrionic talents as well as dare-bare roles, quite bold by Indian standards. She was first noticed just a year ago as a model in a couple of popular advertisements with stars such as Amitabh Bachchan and Shahrukh Khan and then in a movie called Khwaish, which unofficially remains the Bollywood movie with the maximum number of kisses (some have counted 17, others 19). However, Mallika has really come of her own in a movie called Murder, which has been declared as the first Bollywood hit this year. Director Mahesh Bhatt, who usually delves into the subject of human relationships, is behind the movie, which is about an extra-marital affair, allowing Mallika ample opportunity to display her well-toned body as well as execute a number of steamy kisses and more. By Indian standards Mallika's sex scenes can be compared to the kind of attention Sharon Stone drew in Basic Instinct or Kim Basinger in 9 1/2 Weeks. All very regular up to now, as the Mallika episode can still be canned as a happening linked to changing times and cultural crossovers, with many aspiring starlets having taken the same path to fame and fortune.

The twist is in her personal life. In order to gel with the masses, her publicists, as well as Mallika in innumerable interviews to the press, talked about her struggles to make it in Bollywood - a poor girl from a lower middle class family who fought her way through the big bad world of model coordinators in Delhi and then Bollywood directors in Mumbai. She talked of the difficulties of being born and brought up in Rohtak, a small town in the state of Haryana that is a far cry from the hustle and bustle of urban living and accented private school upbringing. She also spoke about the strained relationship with her "conservative" father who opposed her entry into the world of glamour. But, she stuck on and through sheer hard work made it big. Her story was the story of a young girl, who mixed good values that count with the right dose of pragmatism, hard work, honing her talent and bending a little more to allow directors to push the borders of prudishness to suit their needs. This was viewed as the price to pay for fame and fortune as well as the absence of a godfather, in an industry where a majority of actresses owe their presence to direct links with powerful film families. Mallika, in short, soon became an inspiration for hundreds and thousands of small-town girls in India, some of whom migrate to Mumbai and Delhi in the hope of making it big in the glamour world. Indeed, CNN anointed her as a youth icon of India and Newsweek featured her in an article on New Bollywood.

Mallika's story has turned out to be false. She belongs to an affluent Jat (community in Haryana) family, settled in one of Delhi's posh localities, studied in a prestigious private school, led a privileged existence with a well networked family with powerful business and political links, has probably never been to Rohtak, her real name is Reema, she is much older than the claimed age of 21, and has been married and divorced with her former husband leading a quiet life in the capital.

Her father said in an interview that he regularly interacts with Mallika and she told him that in the film industry such an image has to be built for good publicity. "I guess I have to understand when she says she need to say these things to get media attention," said her father - truly not a very conservative point of view. In short, though Mallika is a talented actress, she did have a few other factors, including the support of her family, going for her that surely must have helped.

As mentioned earlier, it may not be correct to talk of Mallika and England together, yet they smack of a betrayal - England for the alleged violation of human rights and Mallika for painting the wrong picture for girls around the country who dream of making it big, all on their own.

Siddharth Srivastava is a New Delhi-based journalist.

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