Jeez… after the trolling that journalist Bhupendra Chubey got for his interview with Sunny Leone, you’d think journalists, especially the male variety, would learn how not to be ‘uncle type’ about women.
On July 13, India Today’s Consulting Editor Rajdeep Sardesai interviewed tennis champion Sania Mirza following the release of her autobiography "Ace Against Odds".
Watch Sania Mirza invert sexist questions and turn the focus where it should be. The only saving grace was that Sardesai was prompt enough to apologise on national TV, something that Sania herself acknowledged.
Instance #1
Sardesai says that she seems very much in love with her husband in the book
Sania fires a very logical answer: Isn’t that good? Shouldn't we all be in love with the people we’re married to? That’s the ideal scenario she says.
Instance 2#
Sardesai then asks her the last, and worst question: When is Sania going to settle down, what about motherhood? Building a family, I don’t see that in the book, it seems you don’t want to retire just yet to settle down.
Sania: You don’t think I am settled?
He persists: You don’t talk about retirement, about settling down, raising a family, what’s life beyond tennis
(Get towards the second half of the interview to hear what a great answer she gave Sardesai, embarrassing him enough to apologise)
“You sound disappointed I’m not choosing motherhood over being number one in the world. But I’ll answer your question anyway, that’s the question I face all the time as a woman, that all women have to face – the first is marriage and then it’s motherhood. Unfortunately, that’s when we’re settled, and no matter how many Wimbledons we win or number ones in the world we become, we don’t become settled. But eventually it will happen, not right now. And when it does happen I’ll be the first one to tell everybody when I plan to do that.” (Transcript from this copy by theladiesfinger.com)
And then Rajdeep wrapped it up saying, “I must apologise, I framed that question badly. I would never ask that question to a male athlete”.
No, you didn’t frame the question wrongly. It’s just the wrong question. Period
Theladiesfinger.com has this interesting article on what Sardesai may have actually expected Sania to say. Read here.
