This is a story about the very first relationship that ever happened in this world, the relationship between a man and a woman or now, as sanctified by us, a relationship between a husband and a wife.

Amrita, a quintessential housewife is happily married to Vikram, an ambitious man. She loves him dearly. His success is her success and his failure is her failure. She believes that this is a choice that she has made for herself and is happily willing to put herself second to him. She also believes that Vikram loves her as dearly and her happiness means as much to him. So what happens when, one day, the man she loves so much betrays her in a single moment with a single action? What happens when one day, Vikram, who as previously mentioned to be ambitious, a positive quality for a man, hits his loving wife in front of their whole world, one hard slap across her face, when his ambition is threatened and his position questioned? Amrita feels betrayed and shocked but what shocks her even more is that almost no-one else, including Vikram, believes that what he did is serious act of betrayal towards her. Not many stop to think let alone say that if Vikram’s ambition was being threatened, if his hard work was being betrayed then he should have hit out at the people who were responsible for it and not at his wife who supported him with her unconditional time and selfless love.

Thappad is a film that questions the very basis of man and woman relationship. Is it really a relationship between equals? When a woman thinks she made a choice to marry and love a man is it really a choice or is it actually a duty that she’s getting tied to? The slap is just the catalyst that gets Amrita to question her own choices and see Vikram for who he really is. Under the garb of a city-bred liberal man, which he is to a fault when things are going his way like a lot of men we meet, he did make the very chauvinist, entitled choice of striking the weakest person because she would have no choice but to be OK with it, the minute his world was threatened.

The slap itself while a reality for Amrita becomes a metaphor for other problems being faced by a host of women connected to Amrita’s life like her mother, her brother’s fiancé, her neighbour who is a single mother and a successful corporate woman, her maid and finally her lawyer who is also a women’s rights activist. For some this slap is a fight against their own regressive mental conditioning for other’s it’s a fight against the society’s dos and don’ts. For some it’s a moral conflict between standing their ground vs supporting their man for others its a grave issue like domestic abuse and marital rape.

While Amrita goes onto fight her husband and his family, her own family, but most importantly herself to exercise her right to choice, it forces these other women towards change too. They all, in their own way, take a step forward for themselves and see the difference between having a choice and having the strength to make the choice.

Thappad is really a slap for all women who continue to labour under injustices by hiding under some justification either self made or dictated by society. It is probably their wakeup call as the fight is rarely between a man and a woman, the fight is mostly between you and your self, and that’s the fight that the film Thappad celebrates.