What a lovely post! It is well written with all points flowing coherently, argued rightly and is a delight for readers.
Enough has been said about Shaurya and Mehak in other threads..I shall not debate that anymore but I shall respond to the structure of your post and its second level.
I loved the two analogies - One of the electrons orbiting around protons in their orbitals and the other one of ' Life of Pi'. Very profound..
Leaving atomic physics, If I go back to classical physics.. and refer to the godlike newton's first law, rightfully called as Law of Inertia.
"An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force."
To break the inertia of society and to balance the female equation, we need more of such unbalanced external forces that act collectively to shatter the existing myths. Its definitely not easy.
And here i would take the point of how most recent shows that start with good intentions, meaningful portrayal of female lead and then descend into the usual mess with the introduction of men in their lives - in a commercial world, unfortunately where business is measured in topline and profit margins, playing to the gallery becomes a requisite for survival unless production houses are NGOs or NPOs, which is a highly unrealistic expectation to have.
The only solve I see is, if at all, we have that one unicorn who dares to make that change - that imbalance in the system, we, the rational girls and women have the collective responsibility to endorse that effort and ensure that that black swan is sustainable.
And its not as if the society is not ready for it..
If a Kick or someother mainstream khan led movie makes 300 Cr, we still have pathbreaking movie like 'Queen' jolting the status quo.
Where there is a Mehak in every street corner, there is still a Sonakshi- like figure (Kuch rang ke) who is independent, educated, moved away from the shadow of male lead, who gets love from viewers across..
To answer your question, I will say that we definitely are progressing, maybe not at the pace we would like it to be.. 😊
