It has been over a year since actor Rima Kallingal's 'fish-fry' remark stirred serious debates on feminism and gender issues within Malayalam movie industry. The actress, who delivered a talk at TedX meet in Thiruvananthapuram, pointed out that gender disparities begin at home, where a girl is forced to compromise a fish fry in order to feed a male family member. Rima faced scathing criticism from the patriarchal elements of society for the remark while her courage was lauded by many. However, Mollywood was divided into two over debates on feminism. Movie-lovers also took to social media discussing and debating over feminist thoughts.
A year-and-a-half post the debates, Bollywood star Aamir Khan has shared a micro-film made by his wife Kiran Rao on Facebook, which upholds a message similar to Rima's controversial example. The film shows two children, a boy and a girl, in school uniform sitting on the floor of their house awaiting something. Soon, a woman (apparently their mother) hands over a glass of milk to each. While the boy's glass is filled with milk, the girl's glass is half empty. Disturbed, the boy pours some milk from his glass to his sister's and makes the quantity equal. The 10-second movie ends with a powerful message against gender disparity within household. The movie posted on June 18 became viral within minutes and got shared by millions.
Interestingly, Rima has also shared the film as she found an uncanny resemblance between its message and her controversial fish-fry example. She captioned the video as 'Fish fry' which was viewed by hundreds. Several other M'town celebrities shared Rima's post commenting on the undying relevance of her example. Actor Parvathy Thiruvoth and director Aashiq Abu are some among them.
Some of the comments to Rima's post, that came from laymen, reads 'when a woman raised her voice against gender disparity, people criticized. Now when a man said the same thing, people are all in support.'
Rima cited the fish fry example from her own personal experience as a schoolgirl. But a prejudiced group of people on social media attacked the actress and shamed her for crying for a fish fry denied decades ago.