JOIN US'I will go wherever life takes me'
Rahul Bose doesn’t hesitate to call his mother the greatest soldier in his life. He was in the City recently to champion the cause of women and gave full marks to the youth of the City.
“In the course of my interaction with the youth of Bangalore, I have seen that they are not as aggressive as the youth in other parts of the country — they are open and more cosmopolitan. They love art and music,” says Rahul.
The actor has been fighting for the cause of women for the last eleven years. He feels that the notion of equality of women needs to be instilled in children at a young age. “For me, things were different. My mother was the fiery one — she pulled up a traffic inspector for being rude and neighbours for ill-treating stray dogs. My father, on the other hand, was very meek,” he explains.
Ask him to name some of his favourite women and pat comes the reply, “I like Arundhati Roy’s knowledge, Konkona’s sense of humour, Hillary Clinton’s intelligence, Aparna Sen’s sense of beauty and Mother Teresa’s compassion.”
He distributes his time between fighting for this cause — which he obviously feels very strongly about — and shooting for his films. “I tried to create awareness regarding the plight of women among the boys in Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand. Though they say that they respect their women and consider them to be avatars of the goddess Lakshmi, there is still discrimination. I have been able to change the thought process of many of my friends. I can’t take all the credit, though — they are equally responsible,” he informs.
When it comes to Bollywood, he says that women-centric roles don’t always mean what they seem. “Many women-centric movies are misogynistic in nature. However, we can now proclaim that we have bust the myth that only men sell at the box office,” he says.
The actor has a strong opinion about item numbers. “Item songs are disrespectful to a film-maker. However, I don’t believe in banning or cutting anything out from a film. People should stop watching them; they can step out of the hall and come back when the song is over,” he says.
He also says he is open to doing films in all languages. “I am like a taxi, I will go wherever life takes me. Currently, I am doing Sesher Kobita, a Bengali film, and a film called ‘Moth Smoke’, based on a novel written by Mohsin Hamid,” he concludes.