In Bollywood, stars don't support small, meaningful cinema. They are more inclined to support a leave-your-brains-at-home kind of cinema, if only it … - Vivek Agnihotri

In India, people fight with all their might to kill an idea. The privileged people. The biggest problem with our establishment is that it has no space for a new idea. Art, cinema, and media haven’t developed enough to present new ideas for adoption. They are engaged in the politics of survival and therefore the outcome is mediocre and very often regressive. Most of the ideas are perceived as dissent. As disruption. As treason. Sometimes ideas like Naxalism, become violent and seditious. Despite being a democracy, in our country there is very little room for an alternate narrative. Whenever a child comes up with an innovative idea, parents, neighbours, teachers, and society crush the idea by telling him 'Kyon apna waqt barbad karte ho, yahan kuch nahin hone wala—don't waste your time.’ It can't be that all of them are idiots. They speak from their experience. 'Aise hi chalta hai … don't be stupid '…. Nothing is going to change… you don't know their power.'

But after this show with Barkha, they stopped taking my calls and till date, I don’t know what made an advanced negotiation stop without any further discussion. I found it strange and I had no idea then that suddenly I had created lots of Gudsa Usendis who didn’t want me to succeed with this film. They were using all their tactics to destroy me. I had only two choices: speak up or shut up. I spoke up.

My pain? This was the pain of an Indian girl. These girls were mostly from Delhi and a few from Bangalore and Mumbai. Normally, the story of an Indian girl’s pain comes from the victims, survivors, or the feminists. A regular girl's suffering in her day-to-day life doesn’t ever feature in the national feminist narrative. They have been conditioned to accept it as part of living, as an everyday struggle. A part of the culture that wants to crush their dreams. Their aspirations. Their confidence.