In 1937, V Shantaram made Duniya Na Mane/Kunku, about Nirmala (Shanta Apte), a poor, young orphan woman, who is trapped into marrying a rich old widower. But so spirited is she, that she refuses to consummate the marriage. The guilty old man eventually commits suicide, leaving a note asking Nirmala to remarry.

Fast forward to 2022, 85 years later, when we are in fact going ‘fast backward’ to the caveman era. We have Shanker Raman’s Love Hostel, in which a newlywed interfaith couple, Ahmed and Jyoti, are on the run because Jyoti’s grandmother wants to ensure her honour killing. Another young Indian woman, in a web series, is literally beheaded. Real life is not far. Last month, police revealed that Aftab Poonawalla hacked his live-in partner Shraddha Walkar’s body into 35 pieces in Delhi, before disposing them of. They said Poonawalla had prepared for it by watching a lot of crime movies and Dexter, a series about an American serial killer. And of course, there’s the horrific Kerala case where a top actress was sexually assaulted by a gang in 2017, allegedly arranged by top Malayali actor Dileep. After the Women in Cinema Collective (WCC) was spontaneously formed to support the survivor and fight for women’s rights to a safe working environment in the film industry, Dileep was in judicial custody for nearly three months, before being released on bail. Responding to WCC’s public interest litigation, the Kerala High Court ruled in March 2022 that all Malayalam film production houses must have an internal complaints committee to investigate cases under the ‘POSH Act’ for the prevention of sexual harassment of women at the workplace. Meanwhile, many WCC members were ‘punished’ by being denied roles, shamed and trolled by the deeply misogynistic Malayalam film industry. And Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan has so far completely suppressed the Hema Committee Report, submitted in 2019, that investigated gender issues in the Malayalam film industry.