AND LET’S HOPE IT’S TRUE.

Mumbai, March 31: India is playing against West Indies right now, in the T20 World Cup semi-final.

India scored 192 in the first innings.

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Lakme India Fashion Week

On March 31, Carol Gracias walked down the ramp at Mumbai’s Lakme Fashion Week as she does every year. Carrying the kind of poise and confidence that comes with two decades of practice, she was the showstopper – literally and figuratively. Despite being a mainstay on Indian runways, Gracias made it to the pages of several newspapers and media outfits. It wasn’t for the Gaurang Shah handloom saree that she was wearing, but for the baby bump peeking out from under it.

“I’ve been doing Gaurang’s shows for many years now. This time as usual Gaurang called and asked if he could cast me,” Gracias told BuzzFeed. “I told him I was pregnant and he still asked if I would walk for the show… I thought, if the designer would like me in his show, then why not?”

Websites covered Gracias’s appearance as “breaking convention” and “busting stereotypes”. Social media was rife with well-deserved applause and the now-familiar “yaaass queen” brand of encouragement. While the internet loudly celebrated and intellectualised Gracias’s decision to walk a ramp while pregnant, I felt a strange relief. A reassurance. A calmness. I’ll explain.

“You girls work too hard. Kya faida hai? Anyway in two-three years, you’ll be spending time with the kids, no?”

“Spend less time at work and find a boy fast, beta. Your clock is ticking.”

“MBA? Now? Bachche?”

Our extroversion about pregnancies and motherhood stops at the workplace.

I’ve kept close track of all the unsolicited advice I’ve received from distant older relatives, well-meaning parlour aunties, and other people’s grandmothers at weddings. I’ve cross-referenced it, over Kingfishers and Classic Milds, with several female friends’ databases. I’ve found patterns.

If you’re a twentysomething woman and you listen closely, you’ll notice that you’re being nudged toward becoming one specific person. This woman is well educated, though not too educated. She has a stable job at which she’s successful, but not successful enough to be threatening. She’s thin and she’s fair and, most importantly, she plans to get married and then manifest her ultimate destiny: babies. Once she has them, her children will replace every other active sphere of her life. That last part of her trajectory is non-negotiable. It’s non-optional. It’s assumed.

Arpita Khan / Via instagram.com

Behind every pregnant woman are two overjoyed and laddoo-bearing grandmothers. In front of her is an iPhone front-camera, live-documenting the gestation in selfies. While it used to be conventional for celebrities to hide through their pregnancies (remember Aishwarya Rai Bachchan's disappearance?), that's changed in the last couple of years. Genelia Deshmukh, Arpita Khan, and Shweta Salve (amongst many others) have celebrated their journeys into motherhood publicly. And it's a relief. But our extroversion about pregnancies and motherhood stops at the workplace. Examples of working mothers are rare in our cinema, in our celebrities, and in our pop-culture as a whole.

I recently attended a conference for creative professionals where I heard a male startup head confess that he leans toward putting men in management positions, because any woman in her twenties or thirties is only good for a few more years.

“It doesn’t matter how ambitious and all they are at twenty-five, ya,” I heard him say. “By thirty, they’ll all step back… You know... I have to think of the company first.”

I know too many women who, for this reason, have been passed on for positions they were best qualified to occupy.

He smiled and moved on to banal smalltalk while I reeled at the casualness with which he’d written off the worth of an entire swath of working professionals. Including myself.

Shweta Salve / Via instagram.com

If passing comments weren’t enough, we also have pop culture to learn from. In ads, we see models playing mothers whose only highlighted accomplishment is having chosen the right cereal for her son and the healthiest cooking oil for her husband. In Bollywood, we see countless actresses’ careers come to screeching halts at the very hint of a pregnancy while Shah Rukh’s has survived three children, no problemo.

This past weekend, I watched Ki & Ka, which can only be described as a garbage truck reformatted into the cinematic medium. But within that three-hour intellectual assault, there was one scene that felt too real. Career woman Kia (played by Kareena Kapoor Khan) peed on a pregnancy test, got back "Positive", and immediately flew into a panic, mourning the immediate, sudden, and irrevocable demise of her career.

Motherhood is revered in India. Bharat Mata, Gai Mata, Mother India, Amma. That reverence stems from the genuine fact that motherhood is a concoction of selflessness and sacrifice. Implied in the reverence is an assumption that, amongst many sacrifices, one of them will be of independent ambition. So maybe that reverence isn’t such a great thing. Maybe it’s scary as hell. I don't know.

At worst, the message being peddled is this: if you’re a good mother, you don’t have the time or inclination to be much else.

As an unmarried, childless, workaholic twentysomething, these comments, facts, and anecdotes scare the shit out of me. Mostly because sexism is bad generally and all the time. But also because I really, really love the work I do. And I hope to do it for a long time. And I hope that, regardless of when and whether I choose to start a family, I’ll enjoy the same opportunities as my male counterparts do at every juncture.

The more success I’ve found professionally, the more this fear has intensified. The fear that this work doesn’t actually matter. That regardless of it, there is a choice to be made in a few years: to be a good mother, or to go to work.

It was refreshing and reassuring to see a woman owning her decision to be a mother, while carrying on with business as usual.

Last year, Quartz tried to resolve the vast discrepancy between the number of women who graduate from India’s top engineering colleges every year, and the far-smaller number of women who occupy senior positions in the country’s listed companies. A reporter reached out to over a dozen women engineering graduates from the 1990s and found, across the board, that those of whom gave up careers did so because they found it impossible to balance work with maternity. They gave up their jobs because of insufficient support from their families, employers, or both, when it came to raising children. These are smart women who were ambitious enough to get into and graduate from top engineering colleges at a time when it was rare and revolutionary for women to do either.

This scares the hell out of me.

Getty Images

So it was a relief to see Carol Gracias at work, literally (and at #WERQ, figuratively), while pregnant. It was refreshing and reassuring to see a woman owning her decision to be a mother, while carrying on with business as usual on her professional turf.

(It’s worth noting that both Lara Dutta and Malaika Arora Khan have walked fashion show ramps while pregnant, but both were celebrity guest showstoppers i.e. they were put on stage for the novelty of their pregnancy, rather than without any fanfare about it.)

I found incredible solace in the banality of Gracias’s presence there. I found relief in the mundanity of seeing Carol Gracias on a runway. Her images are stunning for many reasons, and my favourite is that it was just a woman doing her job – a job she’s done for years already, which she’s earned recognition and success for, and which she’s very, very good at. Like so many working mothers do in less glamorous sectors than fashion every day, just by showing up, Gracias assuaged one of my greatest fears.

But more significantly, I found solace in her colleagues cheering for her when she showed up to work with motherhood in tow. I found solace in the fact that a designer chose her to be his showstopper, supported her career at this juncture, rather than discouraging it. I found solace in her changing body gaining acceptance and applause in an industry where success has long been predicated on possessing one very specific body type. I found solace in the fact that she was praised, rather than rebuked or criticised or discouraged as so many Indian working mothers have been for decades, for striving to earn a living.

I found solace in the mainstream’s loud, thrilled acceptance of the fact that a woman has decided to become a mother, and that she’s going to keep showing up to work while she does it.

Eat, pray, colonise.

The European In India is a collection of drawings curated by Charles Doyley and published in 1813. It depicts the lifestyles of European settlers in the subcontinent and now, 200 years later, sheds light on the lavish lifestyles they led.

"An Indian servant washes the feet of his European master."

Hulton Archive / Getty Images

"An Indian servant watches his European master smoking a hookah."

Hulton Archive / Getty Images

"A young European leans back in his chair and takes a drag on his hookah while his Indian servant reads to him."

Hulton Archive / Getty Images

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Modi ji. I love you. But we need to talk.

It's widely acknowledged that our honourable Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi Ji Sir is a goddamn stud.

For instance, in the GIF above, he's sporting a suit with his own name pinstriped onto it. WHAT A GUY.

BuzzFeed India

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Find an answer here so you’re prepared for every family function.

How convenient to have toilet paper delivered to our homes every morning.

It's been a while since the Catcallers of India has unnecessarily attacked a woman – but fans of sexual harassment, do not despair.

Simply take a glance at this story on the front page of today's New Delhi edition.

Times of India / Via pressreader.com

Let's just recap for one second. Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton was PAYING RESPECTS TO SLAIN INDIAN SOLDIERS at the Amar Jawan Jyoti yesterday.

MANISH SWARUP / Stringer

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Enough is enough.

Nope.

Karima Khan

NOPE.

Instagram: @yusufzaidi

NOOOOOPE.

Instagram: @johnny_bravo23

N-O-P-E.

Instagram: @a_n0nym0us_

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That’s a solid hug.

Mega-star Aishwarya Rai married Abhishek Bachchan in April of 2007, and here they are, adorable as hell, nine years later:

The two acted in Mani Ratnam's Guru that year.

Instagram: @bachchan

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I’m warning you. You’ll get exactly what this headline says you’ll get.

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Tinder India

This past weekend, Tinder released a video ad on Facebook, presumably geared toward potential users in India. Unfortunately, it revealed how little the company knows about Indians already on the app.

(And that’s a considerable number of people; a representative told BuzzFeed that India is among the company’s top 5 markets in the world.)

The ad opens with a young woman getting ready when her mother enters the room. The scene that plays out is all-too-familiar: Where are you going? Are you going with someone? When will you be back?

The daughter doesn't mention she’s going on a date. Instead, she mutters something about “stepping out for a bit” and a theatre festival nearby, and asks for her mother’s opinion on her outfit.

On her bed, the daughter’s phone lights up with incoming Tinder messages from a Samrat. Noticing them, the mother’s expression changes from one of blank curiosity to the Indian-ad-staple-concoction of softness, affection, and hope. She gives the outfit a verbal right-swipe.

(This isn’t a cute metaphor; she literally says the words, “right swipe.”)

This is the point at which we’re supposed to wistfully ponder the beautiful mingling of old ways and new.

As the mother leaves, she lingers in characteristic mom-fashion to say, “Put on some kajal; it has its own charm.”

The word “Tinder” flashes on screen, overlaid on footage of the daughter looking in a mirror, obliging her mother’s advice.

Presumably, this is the point at which we’re supposed to wistfully ponder the beautiful mingling of old ways and new. Dating app, meet mom’s approval. Swipe-based-romance, meet kajal-for-nazar. 21st century sexual liberation, meet sanskaar.

Except: Fuck that.

The ad, no doubt, was borne of the insight that a chhi-chhi-yucky-yucky-sex-app reputation isn’t ideal for a log-kya-kahenge kinda market. Good move, ad agency suit.

So then why are my Twitter and Facebook timelines in such clean consensus that it feels wrong? How come the Indian internet, which notoriously refuses to ever agree on anything, agreed that this was weird as hell?

I did a casual survey of a few extremely active Indian Tinder users – i.e. I introspected and then I WhatsApp’d some friends – for reactions to the ad. Across the board, the introduction of motherly hopes and approvals into this universe of low-stakes flirting and low-lighting bar-dates has made us, in unison, balk.

Left-swipe. Superhate. Unmatch.

A chhi-chhi-yucky-yucky-sex-app reputation isn’t ideal for a log-kya-kahenge kinda market.

“Tinder wants me to believe my mother would "right swipe" my going out on a date with a complete stranger,” one colleague wrote to me. “My mother doesn’t know what Tinder is.”

“If ma knew her daughter is on a hang-and-maybe-bang app, she’d kick me outta the house, not sweetly send me off to drunk-make out with a rando,” another said.

“My parents think I’m actively looking for a wife,” a dude-friend said, laughing off the possibility of his mother condoning the casual relationships that he turns to the app for.

Here’s the thing. The dissonance between our parents’ mindsets and ours is why so many of us are on Tinder to begin with. It’s why we tolerate the misleading group photos, the extra-cheese-wala pickup lines, and, on occasion, the accidentally ruined social dynamics.

We grew up with equal access to our parents’ values and those on display on Friends and Sex And The City.

For urban middle and upper-middle class twenty-somethings (as far as I can tell from being one and knowing many) dating with parental approval means dating with the intention of marrying, not dating at all, or dating within a strict set of requirements. And by “requirements,” I more or less mean prejudices.

I asked my colleagues if they’ve had any positive Tinder experiences with someone their parents would’ve swiped left on. One colleague got along and stayed friends with a Muslim girl, a dalliance made possible by his Hindu parents’ ignorance of it. Another colleague did some casual happy flirting with a French dude, despite her parents’ lifelong insistence that foreigners were off limits. A third colleague got involved with a filmmaker, ignoring her parents’ bias toward “stable” (read: conventional) career trajectories.

A majority of my generation of Indians may well have internalised their parents’ mindsets about matrimony and romance. But, for very many of us who grew up with equal access to our parents’ values and those on display on Friends and Sex And The City, the latter option felt much more palatable and, honestly, much more fun.

In every wrong-side-of-the-tracks right-swipe, there is subversion.

Left now in an Ajay Devgan-style two-car straddle between “Mummy, main tayyar hoon” and “How YOU doin’?”, we’ve turned to Tinder to lead the latter life without having to explain it too much. To swipe right on people of wildly faraway regions, of laughably unstable careers, of religious beliefs and political stances and personal ambitions that would make Sheila aunty’s head spin. In every wrong-side-of-the-tracks right-swipe, there is subversion. It’s goddamn beautiful.

Tinder, and other apps like it, are in the unique position to free more Indians from century-old prejudices, biases, and arbitrary spousal prerequisites every single day. For the first time, such freedom comes with the privacy of a passcode on a personal device.

The popularity of the “Simran, babuji kabhi nahi manenge!” premise that dominated Bollywood’s plot lines through the nineties is evidence enough that feeling restricted by our parents’ requirements for our romantic partners isn’t, by any means, a new emotion. But for the first time, opting out of that pressure (or at least easily delaying the age at which we succumb to it) is an option.

Tinder is positioned to help a generation internalise this fact: we can really like people who really aren't like us.

Don’t bring the fam into this.

Taylor Miller / BFF / BuzzFeed / Via instagram.com

Thank you for making sure I always get home in one piece, no matter how unearthly the hour and how far out of your way my place is.

Thank you for coaching me before all stressful events in my life, ranging from Most Important Job Interview Ever, down to There’s A 5% Chance I’ll Run Into My Ex Tonight And I’m Freaking The Fuck Out.

Thank you for saving me from disastrous emotional decisions. If it weren’t for you, I would’ve quit every job for a stupid reason, and given mom permission to start finding me a boy.

Thank you for keeping sanitary napkins in your bag because somehow, despite being a grown-ass adult, my period still surprises me every month.

Thank your for being in such sorted relationships that they help me believe such a thing exists. When I’m spending my entire Friday night Tinder-swiping, I think about you and your happy relationship, and it makes me believe, fleetingly, maybe, love could be real.

Thank you for having hand sanitiser on you at all times.

Seriously, how the fuck do you do that?

Thank you for becoming an adult at, like, 12 so I could remain an irresponsible child well into my adulthood.

Thank you for calling me as soon as you see my drunk and shameful Snapchat stories and telling me to delete them.

Thank you for telling me the dress looks like shit BEFORE I buy it. I know we fight about our differing fashion tastes sometimes (and I can think of a few outfits you should burn immediately, tbh) but you’ve saved me from pinstriped dungarees and neon orange jeans and blonde highlights and, for that, I will be ever-grateful.

Thank you for teaching me how taxes work.

And thank you for never telling anyone that I didn’t know how taxes work.

Thank you for being my Google, Shazam, WebMD, Zomato, Just Dial, Maps, and BuzzFeed.

Thank you for remembering to buy two each of everything you think I’ll need but know I’ll forget to buy myself. I owe you like, ₹2000 in Colossal Kajals and deodorant.

Thank you for being the only person in our friend group who is enterprising enough to turn WhatsApp group plans into actual fuckin' plans.

Thank you for remembering exactly what I order from each establishment in the city.

And thank you for ordering food for me when I’m hungry but don’t feel like talking to someone on the phone.

Thank you for always agreeing to take the phone and give directions to the Ola guys, the delivery guys, and literally anyone ever coming to any place we're at. Including my own home.

Thank you for confiscating my phone when I’m schwastyfaced so I don’t text “miss u” to all my exes.

Thank you for consoling me the next morning when I manage to drunkenly outsmart you and, despite your best efforts, text “miss u” to my exes.

And thank you for saying "I told you so" only a manageable and justified number of times.

Thank you for liking all my Instagrams, including the ones that you tell me privately you don’t actually like.

Thank you for being so all-round sorted as a person that my parents feel safe knowing I’m with you. This is sweet and all but, more importantly, it means I’ve always used your presence as a way to get their permission to go to sleepovers and clubs and parties. I owe you one, bro.

Thank you for being such a mature, reasonable adult that you won’t make it awkward when I tag you on this post. Seriously. Don’t be weird. Love you. Let’s never mention this again.

Revisa tus privilegios.

Jen Lewis / Via BuzzFeed

The progressive powerhouse NOBODY saw coming.

When Alia Bhatt debuted, there was no indication that we were being introduced to a powerhouse. She was a conventionally attractive star kid who came to us via the fluffiest possible film.

Dharma

But in the four years since, Bhatt has made it her business to make us feel stupid for ever having such low expectations. In 2016, it's finally time to say conclusively: we should be glad to have Alia Bhatt. Here's why.

Because in an industry notorious for having a stick up its butt, she made goofiness and self-deprecation really, really cool.

When Bhatt was the butt of the internet's jokes for a general knowledge gaffe on Koffee With Karan, she teamed up with All India Bakchod to release a video about her fictional quest for intelligence.

All India Bakchod

Because while her contemporaries prefer uncontroversial, diplomatic statements, she just doesn't have the time to mince words.

Via Twitter: @aliaa08

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I mean aside from all the history she’s made.

Because you can tell by her constant grin – even when NOBODY else is smiling – that she truly loves what she does.

Rebecca Conway / AFP / Getty Images

Because she knows her worth.

Source.

Emmanuel Dunand / AFP / Getty ImagesS

Because she's talented enough to be bratty AF but isn't at all.

Source.

Rebecca Conway / AFP / Getty Images

Because she's more interested in slaying in real life, than in dreaming.

Source.

Afp / AFP / Getty Images

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Иногда особенность своего положения трудно заметить

She already became India’s first 2016 Olympic medalist, winning a bronze at the women’s freestyle 58kg wrestling event last night. Now her goofiness, sincerity, and passion will win your heart too.

Because she's totally 100% candid about the real reason she worked to get to the Olympics.

ESPN / Via espn.com

Because of this pro-level goofiness.

The Quint / Via youtube.com

Because her passion has brought every skeptic on board.

The Quint / Via youtube.com

Because she would've been equally happy if one of India's other two women wrestlers, Vinesh Phogat or Babita Kumari, had medalled instead of her.

Sanjay Kanojia / AFP / Getty Images

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Since we can’t all be his permanent roommate, just make do by watching everything he’s ever been in. You’re just supporting the arts. It’s not creepy at all.

The Viral Fever

The Viral Fever

First, as a reward for giving me a page view, I will give you some attractive photos of him. Here's one.

The Viral Fever

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Come, come. Feel old.

Richard Gere caused national furore by kissing Shilpa Shetty on the cheek.

Strdel / AFP / Getty Images

Shah Rukh Khan took over from Big B on Kaun Banega Crorepati.

Star Plus / Via youtu.be

We lined up to buy Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows and devoured it in a night.

Prakash Singh / AFP / Getty Images

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インドのITの中心都市、バンガロール。治安が比較的良いとされるこの町の繁華街で、2016年の大晦日の夜、多くの女性たちが性的暴行を受けた。ところが、バンガロールがあるカルナータカ州のパラメシュワラ内相は、被害に遭った女性たちの「欧米的な装い」を非難した。

性的暴行に遭った女性たちが、被害に遭ったことを自らの責任にされる。このことは、今に始まったことではない。

被害者の責任を問う風潮は、程度の差はあれ日本にもある。BuzzFeed Indiaは、男の子のいる親に、息子たちに女性を暴行することは許されないことだと教え、女性に敬意を持つよう育ててほしいと呼びかけた。

BuzzFeed India編集長Rega Jhaのメッセージを翻訳した。

AFP PHOTO / STR /時事通信

Ritam Banerjee / Getty Images, Frazer Harrison / Getty Images

The Indian internet today provided déjà vu: an Indian actress at the peak of her Bollywood standing, now forging a path in American entertainment, was under a brutal microscope and coming up short.

In September of 2015, it was Priyanka Chopra. In the throes of launching her ABC show Quantico, Chopra was heavily scrutinised and criticised.

Her accent, her clothes, her jokes on talk shows – nothing seemed good enough to the millions of Indians watching from a distance.

An Indian actress is under a brutal microscope.

Today, it's Deepika Padukone.

On a promo tour for her Hollywood debut, xXx: Return of Xander Cage, she made her maiden American talkshow appearance on The Ellen Show last night and, all day today, didn't catch a damn break.

CBC

Padukone's prime criticism seemed to be that she isn't Priyanka Chopra.

In a hilariously amnesic plot-twist, though, the prime criticism of her seemed to be that she isn't Priyanka Chopra.

"She could barely match Priyanka Chopra’s poise and confidence," declared one article. "Padukone appeared a bit nervous and air-headed, while Chopra gave off a superbly rehearsed and sophisticated vibe."

In comments and tweets, many agreed.

After a few hours of Padukone taking a bashing, a few folks did come to her defense.

Only, like a snake with impossible standards eating its own tail, the quickest defense of Deepika Padukone seemed to be trashing Priyanka Chopra... Again.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I'll say this now: I haven't watched either Quantico in full, or xXx. I haven't even seen all of the talkshow appearances that launched the comparisons. I don't know which of the criticisms are true and which are harsh nitpicking.

For all I know, it may well be true that Padukone was air-headed and Chopra was poised, or that Chopra was "fake" and Padukone was "super real".

But, even if those praises and critiques are all true, what reason exists to compare the two?

What reason exists to compare the two?

In Hollywood, one is the lead of a two-season deep primetime TV drama, transitioning into playing a villain in Baywatch.

The other is a debutante in an action movie.

Given what we know so far, there's no reason to compare their careers in the United States.

Via youtube.com

Both are also choosing different styles of American celebrity – Chopra allowed herself to relapse into her teenage Massachusetts drawl; Padukone has retained her Kannadiga accent in full.

Chopra ate chicken wings with Jimmy Fallon, Padukone improvised lungis with James Corden.

CBS

In fact, the only reason to compare them – i.e. the only thing they have in common – is where they come from and where they are now. India, and Hollywood.

And yet, we never do the same to pairs of American movie stars in Hollywood, if they have different career-paths and personas.

Nobody is comparing Jennifer Lawrence's disposition with Gwyneth Paltrow's. Nobody is asking why Sean Penn doesn't make as many jokes as Chris Pratt.

It feels natural for us to accept a Hollywood with hundreds of American actors of varied styles and personas. And to simultaneously launch arbitrary comparison between the only two Indian actors in that industry, even though they have nothing in common aside from their Indianness.

Imagine, as a thought experiment, that a non-Indian writer – make them white American in your imagination for maximum effect – wrote a story comparing the talkshow performances of two totally different Indian actors trying to make it in Hollywood.

It would feel arbitrary and, in fact, outrageous. We'd cry "racism!" (and trend #racism) and we'd be right.

Ritam Banerjee / Getty Images, Alberto E. Rodriguez / Getty Images

Because what would make sense is to critique them individually and, if we must draw some comparisons (which is tempting, sure), then to compare them to others in their Hollywood trajectories.

For instance: to compare Padukone to Léa Seydoux, who came from years of French cinema and got her major Hollywood roles in action movies Mission Impossible and Spectre. Or to compare Chopra to Chris Pratt, who came via years of television, into big budget films.

It may turn out that in these comparisons, Padukone and Chopra fall short.

Praise them, criticise them or totally ignore them, but don't compare them.

But at least their competitors would be determined by their actual work, instead of by race.

Don't we do them a (racist) disservice when we imply that their yardsticks should be others of their origins, and not others of their genres and ambitions?

This is all to say: praise them and criticise them or totally ignore them. But when we compare them, we might be projecting internalised, self-inflicted racism.

So until we have a valid reason, let's just not.

And if you're looking for reasons to utter their names in the same sentence (why are you doing this?), choose any of these:

Priyanka Chopra and Deepika Padukone are Hollywood actors.

Priyanka Chopra and Deepika Padukone have different backgrounds, personalities, and choices, but are both hardworking, ambitious, successful women.