‘From the Reel Gangu to the Real Gangu’, the woman as well as the psychologist in me wants to say so much but Gangubai’s khaasiyaat was making everyone speechless, then how would I be spared?
This being Women’s day week, the character of Gangu will definitely be celebrated as a woman, but from the perspective of a psynema review, how do we miss out what this character taught us?
No matter how much I love Freud and the inner me trying to find a bit of Freud in everyone, Gangu is a pure Victor Frankl! For people who might have heard Victor Frankl for the first time, he is someone who talked about Existential Psychology. While we see Gangu’s trauma, she makes it her opportunity to grow and redefine herself. If you observe the beauty of this character, it lies in her pain itself. Her pain is not her weakness, it becomes her purpose in life. A will to meaning in life. And well, what does one require in life when one has found its purpose?
At every point of her life, Gangu made sure she never forgets the scars but also uses them to make everyone else remember her. Its not the sadness of our lives that stops us, its we trying to stop it that eventually stops us! What Gangu did, well she just used the sadness itself to pave a way for herself.
Well, It would be a complete injustice to not mention Carl Rogers here. I’ve never seen a character as empathetic to themselves as Gangubai. Not once has she judged the choices that she made to survive. Yes, her ideal self and her real self at the age of 16 were different. But the moment, she decides that she won’t survive and she will in fact live the choice that she was eventually forced to make, she converted her ideal self to her real self. And trust me, neither in reel life or real life, has that ever been easy!
Gangu never seeked validation, because that need was killed, the day her dreams were. But she created a validation for herself from people she validated in return. Instead of seeking it from the people that weren’t living in her shoes, she never let them have the power of telling her how to tie the laces. What Gangu taught me is, when you’re waiting for a certain validation from someone else for a long time, ask yourself, are you looking in the right direction?
I do think Gangu would have excelled as a therapist, well a person who can so beautifully accept themselves, how can they not accept anyone else! But again, I feel she wasn’t a therapist, because the world eventually got them, what the world would have missed on is Gangu : A woman who lost it all and made it all.
- Aishwarya Kale
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