Nobody should grudge Priyanka her personal choices and happiness. She has delighted us as an actress, fashion icon, cause ambassador and women’s rights speaker long enough to earn our respect. So she has all our wishes for her intended nuptials with American pop singer Nick Jonas. But by virtue of being a very public international success and role model, who is known for her professional dedication and excellence and having set standards of multi-tasking, her walkout from the Salman Khan-starrer Bharat has for the first time singed her spotless career graph. If the producers are tweeting against her “unprofessionalism,” it should not be seen just as a egoistic campaign unleashed by Superstar Khan for being left in the lurch but a deep distress at a huge logistical fallout of a mega-costly production.
For Priyanka had not only signed a full-fledged contract but was to take up shooting a Holi sequence this week for which the sets had been readied. So she could have worked around her schedules, fitting in a short wedding break, or knowing that an engagement/marriage was on the cards, should not have committed herself at all in the first place. Yes, she is not infallible but the problem with being an icon is that one professional misstep and she is reduced to the cliched interpretations of the male gaze, one that sees working women as compromised by marriage and motherhood. For an entire generation, ordinary women have made hard choices silently, toggling both family and work, never making one an excuse for not fulfilling the other. But when somebody like Pee Cee prioritises one over the other, everybody gets brushed by the taint paint. And that’s sad.