Fact Fiction and Freedom
There are times I wonder about the purpose of art. There are multiple perspectives on what art is supposed to achieve, the most accepted being a tool for making life worth living. Art could do this in two ways – either transporting one through a portal beyond reality or painting his mind using complex tools to reveal the harsh truths on life using different forms as reality is not hard hitting. Art has always seen challenges and the recent protests to prevent the screening of the movie Padmavati is only an extension of what it has faced since time immemorial. The protesters claim that the movie is disrespectful to the Queen Padmini. The irony lies in the fact that she never existed. The earliest fictitious account was by Malik Muhammad Jayasi which is dated to the 1540s, more than 200 years after Alauddin Khilji, the emperor of the Delhi Sultanate passed away. There is no historical account that Alauddin Khilji decided to conquer Chittoor lured by the beauty of Padmavati, who wa...