Essentially, she realized that leading a double life was the price she would have to pay for the freedom to live the life she wants without having to deal with the emotional distress her mother caused her - for simply choosing to be herself. So I started living the way I wanted, and at home, maintained that image she wanted… At home, I became a person I didn’t recognize,” she says. “This led to quite a few major fights and panic attacks… That’s when I realized that honesty is not the best policy with my controlling and traditional mother. Initially, whenever she went back home during vacations, she refused to “give in to whims and wishes.” That didn’t go well. Many Indian Families Express Care Through ‘Bullying,’ Creating Patterns of Abuse Until twelfth grade, she describes herself as an “obedient nerd,” who “didn’t have many friends” and rarely “went out.” But once she moved away from home to study in Pune, “I realized I could live better without constant control of my mother,” she says. “ a constant feeling of choosing between two distinct versions of myself, with each decision feeling like a betrayal,” Harsha Nahata wrote in HuffPost.ĭhvani, 29, says her family has no idea she is sexually active, consumes alcohol, is in therapy for anxiety, and is a feminist. If you Google “Indians leading double lives,” you will be inundated with stories of Indian adults across different socio-economic backgrounds being forced to hide their true preferences and experiences from their families.
The couple finally relented when she developed depression, but only on the condition that he converts to her religion. After they got secretly engaged and she told her parents she intended to marry him, her parents took her to priests to get her “cleansed” and forbade her from meeting her fiancé. Her fears weren’t unjustified in the least. “I had to lead a double life to be with the man I loved,” says Shamima, who lied to her family for seven years in fear of them disowning her for being in a relationship with a white, non-Muslim man. There are many, many Sanjays living in India - hiding their lifestyles, their sexualities, their partners, their careers, and much more from their families. But Sanjay’s fears hit too close to home for me - instead of inducing laughter like it was meant to, it sent shivers down my spine. But since this movie was a comedy of errors, unlike Sairat (2016), a Marathi romantic tragedy film, no one died.
At the root of Sanjay’s absurd choices lies the very real fear of confrontation with one’s family - which could possibly lead to harassment, and not impossibly, honor killing. The movie explores the tussle in the mind of Vikrant Massey’s character, Sanjay, who has to pretend his girlfriend belongs to the same caste as him and even hire fake in-laws to keep up appearances. If you happened to watch 14 Phere this summer and could relate to the reality embedded in the ridiculousness of the plot, you’re hardly alone.