Imagine a scenario where in Hollywood they decide to make a biopic on Oprah and to enact her on screen, they chose Scarlett Johansson instead of Viola Davis!  What could be more ludicrous than this?  Something similar has actually transpired here in Bollywood.  To make a movie on the life and career of the female boxing world champion and Olympic medal winner Mary Kom is a legitimate creative aspiration for any film maker.  More so when she has made all the Indians proud considering she faced so many hardships in life, being a woman and coming from North East, such a neglected and isolated part of the country.  She has literally punched above her weight to get where she has.

I know that aesthetics, authenticity and attention to detail has never been Bollywood’s forte.  But in this instance, I would like to point at their utter disregard for even the basic norm when it comes to making a so called ‘’biopic’’, and it’s that the person playing the character should have a close resemblance to the subject matter.  Anybody familiar with India would know that people hailing from the North Eastern region of the country share the same mongoloid features as their brethren in other South-East Asian countries, and for the faithful portrayal of Mary Kom, the least the film maker could have done was to have picked some talented girl from there who closely approximated the boxer in terms of looks and features.  But what do they do?  They draft a simpering Priyanka Chopra, one of the many Punjabi actors the Hindi film industry is infested with.  Now Priyanka Chopra (PC for her adoring fans) is one of the biggest movie stars in India and a huge box office draw (though I don’t like her, but then that’s just me poor sod!).

Even if I stretch the bounds of credulity to its breaking point, I cannot imagine Ms. Chopra in the persona of Mary Kom.  And with all due respect to the gritty champion that Mary Kom is, even she would agree that she’s nobody’s idea of a beauty queen.  I have not seen the movie nor do I intend to, by all accounts it has been an indifferent and a lazy effort but that’s hardly my point.  PC must be over the moon, thinking that she has done one better than Hilary Swank in ‘Million Dollar Baby’.  The sooner she disabuses herself of this notion the better.  Say what you will about Hollywood, they don’t display insincerity when it comes to depicting real life people.  Whether it’s Ben Kingsley essaying the role of Gandhi, Denzel Washington playing Malcom X, Sean Penn as Harvey Milk or Nicole Kidman enacting the role of Virginia Woolf.  And what can one say about Daniel-Day-Lewis, he not only played Lincoln to perfection, but he became one.  Do the Indian film makers believe that our notion of womanhood should confirm to the stereotypical standard set by the lowest common denominator?  In this mad rush for commercial bounty, must they throw even the most basic requirements of movie making to the wind?  By selecting PC as their Mary Kom, they have shown, in my view, a shocking lack of sensitivity not only for this petit champion from Manipur, but to the entire womenfolk of the North Eastern region.