Ashwiny Iyer’s latest project Bareilly Ki Barfi is releasing on August 18.
A woman’s struggle to have an identity at work is regardless of the position she enjoys, and the field she is in. It is so prevalent that beyond a point she stops caring. At least that’s how Bollywood director Ashwiny Iyer feels when people address her as Dangal director Nitesh Tiwari’s wife.
Ashwini, who made her directorial debut with the much-acclaimed Nil Battey Sannata last year, is now waiting for the release of her second venture Bareilly Ki Barfi. Ashwiny Iyer says that she has stopped getting upset over the identity crisis she is often subjected to owing to gender bias.
When asked about it, the director said, “I don’t care and I don’t think he (Nitesh) also cares. We still belong to a male chauvinist society. If I go to a clinic, people ask me, ‘Miss or Mrs?’. I say, ‘Ashwini Iyer,’ because my passport has this name and Nitesh didn’t want me to change my name. So, at the clinic, they asked me, ‘What’s your husband’s name?’. I said, ‘Nitesh Tiwari.’ So, they said, ‘So, we will put Tiwari after your name.’ So, these things will always be there. That’s how we have been raised. In Aadhar card, you have the father’s name but not the mother’s name. I was quite upset about it. Then I thought, why am I upset about this? They don’t even care if they need to have the mother’s name or not. But it is not that India is not changing. It is changing but some things that happened in the past haven’t changed.”
Even as Ashwiny assured the media-persons that she has made peace with the patriarchal society we live in, she was interrupted by the PR of Bareilly Ki Barfi. The filmmaker then laughingly said, “Bohot questions pooch rahein hain feminism pe. Dil ki bhadas bahar aa rahi hai (They are asking questions on feminism. I am getting to vent out.) So, you don’t come in between.”