IT STARTS AT HOME: PARVATHY

Actor Parvathy deconstructs sexual harassment in the industry and her own struggles to overcome it

Actor Parvathy, who is a prominent name in the Tamil and Malayalam film industries, is all set to make her Hindi film debut with Qarib Qarib Singlle. Ever since she made her Malayalam debut with Out Of Syllabus (2006), she hasn’t looked back.

However, the actor reveals her journey hasn’t been easy, as she, too, had to face sexual harassment à la Hollywood, where actors and artists have confessed to being sexually exploited by people in positions of power.

“Yes, I have met such people, and have experienced it (sexual harassment), too. It’s not shocking, and that makes it worse. [There has been] not just sexual, but mental harassment, too. Being used that way, being threatened to make you go out of work—I have gone through the entire spectrum in the last 11 years.”

However, Parvathy points out that sexual misconduct goes beyond the workplace. “When it happens in your own family, you’re told ‘Chhodh de, uss bare mein baat nahin karni hai (Let’s not talk about that).”

“[It’s just] what Alia’s (Bhatt, the lead actor in the film) character in Highway (2014) says, that when something like this happens within your own family, your relatives are more worried about what the society will say. Since this is what we are told when we are children, when it happens at the workplace, our first thought is not to tell it to anybody,” explains the 29-year-old.

PHOTO: WASEEM GASHROO/ HT Parvathy recalls the final outburst of the character played by Alia Bhatt in Highway to point out how attempts at calling out abuse are stifled by one’s own family and peers