Queen's Way or Highway

Queen and Highway, two new Bollywood releases are not only different from the usual no-brainers that the industry produces but also share an interesting common link.

In both these movies the protagonist -  Rani in 'Queen' and Veera in 'Highway' played by Kangana Ranaut and Alia Bhat respectively become accidental heroes in their own respect. 

In 'Queen' Rani is dumped by her fiancee a day before their marriage. The boy buoyed by his recent success does not consider her of his stature any more. Queen as she is fondly called decides to proceed alone for her honeymoon. She takes off for Paris...and then starts her journey that proves to be a liberating experience for her. She overcomes her fears, insecurities and her handicaps and discovers her true self - a girl who is confident, self-assuring, and assertive. Seeing her new avtar, her ex-fiancee comes back to seek her. But Rani has transformed from a coy girl to the real Queen and she can no more be shackled. Queen has liberated herself from an orthodox society where a girl is considered no better than a cattle who is tied from one stump to another, while no one to care for her wishes, her desires and her feelings. She find freedom and life!

In 'Highway' Veera daughter of an influential and rich Delhi family is kidnapped by a Gujjar to avenge the wrong done to his mother. Veera's ordeal turns out to be her liberation too. She for the first time feels free and happy. A unique bond develops between Veera and her kidnapper and both find comfort and courage to share and shed ghosts of their past. The kidnapper recounts how her mother was subjected to sexual abuse by rich and powerful and how he as a child helplessly watched his mother literally die every day while his father forced her in such a life and then tortured her for the same. Veera finally breaks her silence and shares her sexual abuse as a child by her own uncle in her own house. She also recounts how her mother silenced her for the sake of family honour. When she is finally rescued she no longer wants to be with her family. She find her love in the kidnapper who is finally shot down by the police. She however returns to her family only to break her silence and bring out the skeletons of the past in front of everyone. She rejects a family of hypocrites and finds courage to revolt against abuse.

Both the characters Queen and Veera stand for today's women who are ready to be themselves, who are courageous enough to fight the MCPs (a man whose behavior and attitude toward women indicate a belief that they are innately inferior to men) and the orthodox hypocritical society and liberate their lives. 

So when regressive politicos make regressive comments on women, they may  just be cautioned that a Queen or a Veera may be awaiting to take them to cleaners. 

Remember from now on - Its either Queen's Way or Highway!!!

Contextual Challenges

Sometime back when BBC started rehearsing the announcement of Queen’s demise, in case of an eventuality, it was seen as a proactive measure and also an attempt of to rectify the past, when one of their announcers goofed-upon big time during the death of another royal. Recently, however when they started rehearsing the possible death of the former British PM Tony Blair, many eyebrows were raised. Tony Blair is pretty young and is hale & hearty except for a minor heart scare in the past. He has three kids, with the youngest one born in the year 2000, when he was in-term. The BBC reportedly came in for a lot of flak when they started recording obituaries from the ex-colleagues of Tony. Too many steps forward or from being proactive to hyperactive! The next you know they may start recording advance obituaries for all their celebs & dignitaries and may be even for the English cricket team. Just to be future-safe, you see!
The ability to interpret contexts correctly and take suitable decisions has a lot of importance. At time certain contexts may appear similar, however they may only be so on the surface. The underlying dynamics may be completely different. As in the case of BBC, they made the mistake of looking at possible demise of Queen who is in her late eighties and that of Tony Blair, who although has a high degree of importance considering he has been the British head of state but his age & stage of life has no indication of similar eventuality in the near future, in the same light. Context is different from a situation. Context comes in a flash and disappears equally fast. However for the time that it lasts it has profound impact and hence reading and knowing how to deal with the same correctly is important. The worst thing that someone can do is to try and engineer a context, in the similar way that BBC tried to do in the case of Tony Blair.

Leaders have similar challenges confronting them. Reading and dealing with the contextual challenges goes a long way in deciding the future of organizations and engagement of its constituent stakeholders.