Cine Blitz a new magazine wanted to do something different for its launched in 1974. They got the idea to get a picture of an actress streaking. Protima Bedi was the perfect choice. Rita Mehta said, "I asked her if she would streak across the streets of Mumbai and she agreed. We decided upon doing it early in the morning when the roads are deserted."
The first photosession was at the Flora Fountain. "But Protima was unhappy with the pictures. She said that her breasts were sagging and she asked for a reshoot.
So, the other shoot was done at the Juhu Beach. But it is unfortunate that for a woman who has otherwise always been so forthright and frank should want to hide this."
Mahesh Bhatt who also belonged to their group and was a close friend of Kabir Bedi said: "The streaking was meant to be a liberated, progressive statement endorsing the view that one is free to express oneself how one wants. But when Protima saw that her freedom of expression was looking like a publicity stunt for a magazine, she probably backtracked and gave the version that the picture was taken when she was part of a nudist camp in Goa and later the image was superimposed on a backdrop of a beach in Bombay."
"Why I streaked! Society has a special way of turning a joyous expression into something ugly. Here I am in all my totality. Those who have leered at women, lusted for them and gone through discovering just that little bit more, I say to them: come, see me I was born this way.
"Our thoughts, our mind are narrow, arid and hollow. Emotionally we are starved. Religiously and intellectually, we are repetitive and dull. Politically and economically, we are regimented and controlled. We are not a happy people. We are not free and joyous. At home, in our temples and in our schools, we never achieve a creative being. There is no deep release in our daily thoughts and actions.
"One of our hindrances in free living is fear and respectively manifestation of that fear. They know not the meaning of the axion that truth is beauty and beauty truth. They are enclosed by the walls of their own righteousness and cannot see beyond. Their stained glass morality based on orthodoxy, conventions and taboos has nothing to do with morality.
"In spite of their self imposed and gratifying morality, the respectable dwell in confusion, misery and conflict. Fear which is the desire to be secure makes us conform, imitate and submit to domination. Therefore it prevents beautiful or creative living. To live in freedom is to be without fear. When I see men and women spontaneously pick up a kitten or a child to caress it and love it, I wonder if they would do the same to a grown up person at a party or another gathering.
"Streak with me and learn the language of sex and liberation for sex means love and love is liberation. I shed my clothes, my inhibitions, my conditionings by outdated social norms so that you too can discover yourselves. I direct this not to the younger generation but to the adults, the parents who have not understood their own sexuality. When they take shelter behind these conventions, they are living in a world of their own delusions." |
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