Lillete Dubey: For Women, Freedom Means Education & Financial Independence

At a time when the world is debating women rights, questioning patriarchial set-up and passing laws banning triple talaq, a persistent question about the need of having to fight against the same society, that we all are a part of, hovers above us. A battle that won't be an easy one, there have been some phenomenal women who never took the path well-trodden. They made a splash by walking to their own rhythms and making waves by creating territories unexplored. Today we celebrate one such woman achiever who made an unplanned entry into the limelight only to make it one believable conquest.

HerZindagi spoke exclusively to revered film actor, director, theatre personality, sister, daughter, mother, wife and now a proud grandmother Lillete Dubey about what freedom means to her and if there's one Azadi she is still seeking as the country is set to celebrate its 72nd Independence Day.

Is it time to rethink the notion of Raksha Bandhan that a woman needs the protection of a man?

I think we have to reinterpret this. I am not a big traditionalist. In that sense, you are talking to a person who does not believe in any kind of rituals and superstitions. I am not bound by any kind of religiosity or rituals.. I am a non-conformist that way. I am deeply spiritual as an individual person when it comes to my connection with the god or the divine connection with my creator but I am not into temples, even though I love going to a gurudwara or a church. You feel there’s a kind of spirituality in those places but I am definitely not a believer or follower of all these (traditional) things. So if I do send my brother a rakhi on Rakha Bandhan, it doesn’t denote all these things. We have to reinterpret things. We can’t be caught up with what we meant in our cultural, social ethos, of say, 5000 years ago or 200 years ago. We have to interpret things in our own way. If we just become so rigid about things, the way they were, and can’t move beyond that set pattern, then these things have no meaning.

I am extremely close to my brother and my sister. We are like rocks for each other. We lost our parents some years ago so we’ve always been incredibly close. My sister and I are like soulmates. My brother and I are extremely close and I can talk to him about anything in the world, he is my go-to person, if anything happens in my life, even though he is five years younger than me. But what is important is that my brother loves me and he’s someone I love dearly, he’s my emotional support system. When I send my brother rakhi, it’s not that I am following some old traditions. I mean it and I love him and I think it’s a very cute thing to do on rakhi. In fact, my brother is equally crazy. He never takes the rakhi off. So it symbolises love for me, love of my brother for me and mine for him and that he’s there for me. But then it could be anyone else also who could be there for me. But because it’s one of those things we do.. its symbolism for me is very appealing. It doesn’t denote somebody who is weak, and needs helps. So these symbols have different meanings and we have to interpret those meanings afresh. We should make them our own in our contemporary times. So even if you are doing Karwa Chauth, you have to re-interpret the symbolism of those things and that too if you want to do it. We all have choices. I think no woman has to send rakhi, has to keep Karwa Chauth, has to do several other things. Let’s first accept that we are free, we have freedom of choice. Nobody is forcing us to do anything. You are azad in every way possible and can make these types of choices. Maybe there are other choices that you can’t make, or you find the struggle to make, but these are definitely the choices that you can make.

How would you define “Azadi” for women (in general) in the current scenario?

I have a very simple one-liner. I think all freedom for women, earlier, today and in the times to come, will be that of having economic freedom. The day a woman is economically independent, it is so empowering that she does not have to take it from anybody. All other freedoms, to me, tend to fall short in front of economic freedom and this is a freedom that more than half of women in our country do not have. Women suffer mental, physical and emotional abuse in relationships, their family, their marriage.. they are doing it, out of most of the times, due to not having a choice. I think literary and economic freedom is a cornerstone for any kind of woman. All other kinds of freedoms are related and stem from that. If you come from a family which is literate, it is the women who perpetuate that.

We are educated women and we make sure that even our daughters are educated. Of course, our sons will also be educated but we will be more than focused to get our daughters educated. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be other problems, but those are the problems that we would be choosing. We have to figure out how to deal with them and that’s absolutely fine. I always say that one of the things that we keep teaching our girls is that you have to get married. Though I have no issues with 'getting married' part, what really bothers me is that why our lives are defined by our marital status. If it has to happen, it will happen. These are the kind of choices that we do have but this again is related to money. So I think any choice with a woman, and how she practices it, revolves around her being economically independent.

What is Azadi for you? Are you seeking Azadi from anything?

To me it means to be able to be on my own, look after myself, make my own choices, mistakes or not. This is Azadi to me that I don’t depend on anyone. I depend on myself and I don’t mean economically only. I think Azadi also means, to me, that we should be the architects of our own lives. There’s so much of unhappiness in our lives since we depend on other people for that. If we can be happy with ourselves, have our own money, have our own time, everything else can then be a bonus. Of course, you can meet love, companionship, friendship but we should not make ourselves dependent on all this so much as we are today.

Yes, I am seeking Azadi but that’s more on a personal level. I am seeking freedom from ego, from dependency for my emotional well-being, from too much attachment to materialism. I seek freedom from this dependency. So my freedom, given my age, is a different kind of freedom that I look for. Freedom to go, evolve as a human being, freedom from being caught up with the world that we are living in and many other things.

What were the bandhans you have to deal with at an emotional level, while growing up or when you made a splash in the big competitive world?

Bandhans are there because at the end of the day a human being cannot run away from attachments. So I don’t think that you can ever be completely free from attachments or bandhans. Right now, I am totally attached or bandhofied to my two little twin granddaughters that Neha has had 10 months ago. They are the love of my life. So bandhans can also be something that you enjoy being enslaved to, you enjoyed being bonded to. So enslavement is not always a bad thing. It doesn’t always have to be something bad. So we all, whether we like it or not, but are bondage to something or someone in our lives.

What I mean by that is that you love your children, you love your parents. So you don’t have to be enslaved in it. But then it doesn’t have to be a bondage. How I look at it or how I would like to answer that is I don’t think I am in any kind of bondage. However, a bandhan is a strong word since it has a connotation of negativity. So I don’t think I am in bondage to anybody and I would never like to be either. There is a kind of bondage I have with the theatre which is happy bondage. I have always been a very individualistic and independent person. I have fought many things through the years to become the person I am today. I think we owe it to ourselves to not be in any kind of bandhan. We can be attached to love, to things, to our passion. They don’t have any negative connotations.

What were the stereotypes that were thrown at you as a woman who wasn't willing to give up? (pay parity/equal contribution vis-a-vis your male colleague at work/the war over credit/who is the master and all)

I didn’t really have to face any since I come from a modern family. My father was a gynecologist. They were not the people to constrain me, restrict me or suppress me. When I wanted to do theatre, there were no restrictions. Even the theatre, luckily, is very democratic. I can say it very proudly that theatre is one place which treats women as equal. A woman director is respected as much as a male director and the same goes for actors. Bias is more out there, in Bollywood, where the films were always carried by male superstars.

But I must say that one woman who broke this long time ago, and incidentally, a play on whom I am currently doing, was Devika Rani. She was one such path-breaker. I was always infatuated by her story and thankfully I am doing that right now. The kind of glass-ceilings that she broke, she was way ahead of her times. She set up a studio at a time when no woman ever ran a studio. So even I didn’t face any of that when I chose a profession. I had the freedom to choose my calling in life. But then I am an accidental actor, who got into one without much planning. It was in my mid-40s when I actually started working. Being the personality that I am and in the kind of age that I am in, no one ever tried to mess with me. I think when you make it very vulnerable for yourself, when you are hungry for something, people will then take advantage of you. I was never hungry or needy.

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Do you think we are walking the talk when we say that women today should be empowered (financially, mentally, psychologically)?

My mother used to tell me that you need a man to have children. But if we are talking empowerment today, let me say this, even at the fear of sounding too bold, that women can even have a child of their own without physically having a man. You just need to go to a sperm bank, get sperm for yourself and have a child. So why do you need a man? You can have a man as long as you enjoy being with a man. But if it is a compulsion that you need to be with him, it is just a lot of nonsense. Though I would like to say that it’s wonderful to have a companion. I am not at all refusing that. It’s nothing like sharing your life with someone with whom you would love to be with but it’s definitely not a compulsion. That’s the difference.

Do you think there are still certain bandhan or restrictions that women should adhere to?

One thing woman has to learn to live with and it is for all the young women, working there, that you are not going to have it easy as compared to a man because you are a pro-creator. You want to have a child and a flourishing career and you will have to juggle both simultaneously. People will make remarks that “oh you haven’t given enough time to your child”, “oh you are too ambitious” or “you are ignoring your children” and all of the other things...It is kind of a general thing that women have to deal with. Come to think about it... some of the most successful women, be it actors, or dancers or writers, they never had children, never had a marriage because they knew that if you want to excel in something they have to give up that side of life. Women somehow can’t have it all and that is something we hear from people all the time. Somehow it’s okay with men to not focus on kids and have a career as a priority but for women, that’s not the case. This is the kind of bandhan that women really have to deal with. They are not able to break away and say that why can’t a guy look after the children since I also need to look after my ambitions.