Rahul Bose talks gender pay gap, says he was paid a fraction of Kareena Kapoor Khan’s earnings for ‘Chameli’-OxBig News Network

New Delhi, 27/03/2023. Rahul Bose (President Indian Rugby Football Union ) Kalyan Chaubey (President AIFF) during the Sportstar Natioanal Sports Conclave in New Delhi on Monday, March 27, 2023.
| Photo Credit: MOORTHY RV, The Hindu

Actor Rahul Bose on Wednesday said he was paid a fraction of what Kareena Kapoor Khan earned for the 2003 film Chameli as she was the bigger star and could draw people to theatres.

Speaking at the ‘Mardon Wali Baat’, a national conference on men, masculinities and gender based violence, Bose humorously called himself a starlet.

“Men have also been starlets, and I am a shining example of that… I was the starlet in ‘Chameli’, Kareena was the star; she gets more people into the theatre even today than I would. Simple as that. I was paid a fraction of what Kareena was paid. It’s completely logical… The people who actually govern who will come in, you better take the ratio. It has happened. It has happened to me throughout my career. I am never the guy who brings people into the theatre.

“I have produced two films. I would not pay me more than what I got. So I don’t buy this (gender pay disparity); the film industry is super equitable in that way. You get the money, you get paid, you don’t get the money, you get paid less…” said Bose, claiming that the number of women working in the film industry is more than any other industry.

Discussing the portrayal of masculinity and violence against women in Indian cinema, the 57-year-old actor acknowledged that cinema, being highly visible, often becomes the favourite “whipping boy”.

Bose said it simply reflects the realities of society, for better or worse, and likened cinema to a “faithful younger sibling” of society.

“As soon as the elder brother does something, we latch on to a trend. That’s it. We don’t create trends, we latch onto the trend.. We are looking to see where is the ‘hawa’, what is catching, and then we pick it up, sometimes you do it well, sometimes you don’t,” he explained.

Bose, star of acclaimed films like “Mr and Mrs Iyer”, “The Japanese Wife”, “Jhankaar Beats”, said it all starts with society.

On the depiction of violence against women, he noted that since the ’50s, the portrayal has been inconsistent, neither improving nor declining significantly.

“I think the depiction has been rocky, patchy, up and down,” he added.

Bose has directed only two films “Everybody Says I’m Fine!” and “Poorna: Courage has no Limit”, but he would pick it over anything else he has done in filmmaking because “it’s the most challenging and amazing thing to do in the world”.

“You have to be part architect, part interior designer, part psychologist, part painter, part musician, part lyricist, part actor. It’s asking you to do everything at that moment in five minutes,” he noted.

Bose, like many, considers Satyajit Ray to be an inspiration.

“Ray was so great because he was a polymath, he could do 19 things. He did the camera work, he composed the music, he was working with Ravi Shankar, he is doing calligraphy. Ray Roman is a font, I mean, the guy was a dude, it’s just amazing,” he added.