Queen Padmavati and the talking parrot
Parrots are such beautiful birds, decked in alluring green feathers with red beaks to devour guavas and chillies. In Brazil, I travelled to the Pantanal, a bird sanctuary and the Amazon forests where I saw parrots the size of ducks, having plumages of bright red, orange, yellow, blue feathers. They were a sheer delight . They were never frightened and walked right up to you to be fed.
However, I never encountered any talking parrots in Brazil. Folklore has it that parrots in India can be trained to talk. In the 1980s, when I lived in a large villa in Jor Bagh, Delhi, I had a pet parrot. For many nights, I tried to teach him to say a hello or namaste, but I failed. Either he was a poor student, or more likely I was a miserable teacher.
Anyway, I’m glad I could not teach him to talk. Otherwise he may have blurted out my secrets. Some research on the film Padmavati or Padmaavat, taught me that the entire story started with a talking parrot in the 15th century.
The earliest mention of Queen Padmavati is in an epic poem, Padmavat, written by poet Malik Muhammad Jayasi in the 15th century. The poem describes her as a beautiful princess of Singhal (Sri Lanka). The ruler of Chittor heard about her beauty from a talking parrot called Hiraman. This inspired the Rajput ruler to woo and win her hand and bring her to Chittor. Alauddin Khalji, the sultan of Delhi, heard about her beauty and laid siege to Chittor. Had the parrot not squealed about the pretty princess in Sri Lanka, the history of Rajasthan and the fate of Bollywood producer Sanjay Leela Bhansali would have been different.
Now, the fuss around the release of the film is a miserable reflection of the fractured times in our country, due to the brand new assertiveness among some conservative groups.
The film has not even been released; the public has not even seen it. Yet groups have indulged in demonstrations and pressurised the government, the censors, the filmmaker and the artistes. Their grouse that history has been distorted is based on rumours.
Whenever a movie is made on some slice of history or a personality, some artistic liberty is involved to make it viewable. As long as there is no distortion of facts or character assassination, we should not object to the work. We love the movie Mughal-eazam. How are we sure that Anarkali danced to the song, ‘Pyaar kiya to darna kya?’ in the presence of Emperor Akbar?
Instead of agitating against filmmakers, the demonstrators should be grateful to them. Had it not been for the film, many would not have known of the queen of Chittor and her sacrifices. The legendary Rajput queen of the 13th-14th century committed ‘jauhar’ (self-immolation), to protect herself from Khilji, the Muslim ruler of Delhi. We should honour her memory, not fight in her name.
Presumably, the wrath of the agitators is against the image of Queen Padmavati in particular and that of Indian women in general. If we are genuinely concerned about the status of women, we need to explore means of stopping the death of many babies whose only fault is that they are born as girls. According to Union minister Maneka Gandhi, “You have 2,000 girls who are killed in the womb every day. Some are born and have pillows on their faces choking them.”
This should preoccupy us Indians, not a movie.
HAD THE PARROT NOT SQUEALED ABOUT THE PRETTY PRINCESS IN SRI LANKA, THE HISTORY OF RAJASTHAN AND THE FATE OF PRODUCER BHANSALI WOULD HAVE BEEN DIFFERENT