Despite making over 2000 movies every year, Hindi cinema still seems to have a disgraceful dearth of well rounded female characters in its films. The little thought women are given in Hindi cinema is evident when one sees them persistently break into seductive song sequences to satisfy the male gaze — whether or not the music score has any relevance to the larger plot of the film. The roles our actresses play also generally come with an overload of conventional feminine virtues; chastity, affability and sacrifice. While movies that attempt to give their female characters an independent voice more often than not snatch it away when the woman in the film must be steered to her destination by a force (a man or fate) other than her own self. Why is that women’s experiences in cinema are treated with such disinterest and at times disregard? It’s because of a sense of gender conformity that comes into play when creating a fictional woman for the silver screen; she must have a definite role-lover, wife, mother which inevitably makes her boringly one-dimensional.
Many may argue that nuance and sensitivity is the realm of experimental cinema but my vast watching of commercial Hindi cinema proves otherwise. So I decided to compile a list of female characters from Hindi cinema whose possibilities, largely dismissed by the industry, presents the multitude truths of female experiences. From Madhubala in Mughal-e-Azam to Alia Bhatt in Highway here are eight of my personal favourite female characters whose cinematic stories are written with the complexity and thought that women deserve.
I. Madhubala as Anarkali in Mughal-e-Azam (1960)
The movie that immortalised Madhubala in the minds of the Indian audience as a legacy was K.Asif’s Mughal-e-Azam, in which she played Anarkali; a Mughal courtesan. Few realise that the film that became a watermark in Indian cinema for its scale and style also revolutionised the character of the femme fatale through Anarkali. Through the film Anarkali transforms from just a beautiful, charming dance girl to a shy lover, and finally to the firebrand destroying power dynamics, marked by her iconic song in the film ‘Pyaar Kiya Toh Darna Kya’, where she publicly confesses her love for the Prince against the wishes of the most powerful man of her world, the Emperor of India. The sheer range of Anarkali’s character arc is a rarity in Hindi cinema. At the end of the film, like the femme fatale, she does leave her lover mysteriously but unlike the stock character Anarkali is inspired from, her decision is consciously taken to secure a promising future for Salim; the certainty of his accession to the throne. In a plot line where Anarkali must choose between the devil and deep blue sea it would have been easy to win hearts by playing the victim but Anarkali seals her fate not driven by circumstances but her own choice as she famously sings in yet another song of the film, ‘Kisi ke ishq mein duniya lutakar hum bhi dekhenge’ (For the sake of love, I will willingly give up my whole world). Many believe that Madhubala’s sublime beauty is the essence of Anarkali but few know that Madhubala’s naturalistic performance in the film was a result of rigorous rehearsals including being chained to shackles for hours to emote trauma when Anarkali is imprisoned by the King.
Made in a time when words like feminism weren’t part of mass vocabulary the creators of Anarkali were one of the first to give the female character in Hindi cinema the depth and thought she deserved.
II. Shabana Azmi as Lakshmi in Ankur (1974)
Ankur was Hindi parallel cinema maestro Shyam Benegal’s directorial debut that cast a 19 year-old fresh graduate named Shabana Azmi; who went on to become one of the finest actresses Indian cinema will ever see, as the female lead of the movie. In Ankur, Azmi plays Lakshmi; a dalit woman married to a deaf and mute labourer Kishtayya. When her husband embarrassed of publicly caught stealing toddy suddenly leaves the village out of shame Lakshmi must now fend for herself both socially and financially. Taking advantage of Lakshmi’s vulnerability the young zamindar Surya, whose house Lakshmi works at makes a sexual advance at her and Lakshmi does little to resist him. But she is equally heartbroken at Surya leaving her when his wife returns to live with him as she is guilt ridden when her husband returns to find her pregnant with Surya’s child. While Azmi has played countless powerful female characters in the past fifty years of her ongoing career the reason why Lakshmi stays with me is because she was the first Indian woman that I had seen who took the screen in Hindi cinema without being categorised into the whore or virgin paradigm. Lakshmi’s sexual desires, emotional loneliness and need for social security drives her to infidelity and the film’s unapologetic presentation of her choices shows us that.
When Lakshmi shames Surya through gut-wrenching screams and cries for unjustly having her husband whipped by some village men, her outburst does not make her a storehouse of national morality — common practice in media which is targeted towards women characters. Instead Lakshmi becomes the voice of the acute casteism that exists in the country where women who fall into the bottom rung of the power pyramid suffer the most. It was Azmi’s strong commitment to stay true to Lakshmi’s character (she lived with village folk for months to understand their ways) and Benegal’s sensitive screenplay that gave birth to a woman who dealt with patriarchy on her own terms; never seen before in Hindi cinema.
III. Smita Patil as Usha in Bhumika (1977)
In Hindi cinema, women must have a role: the wife, the mother, the daughter, the lover or the mistress. You can’t be all nor can can you disassociate yourself with those labels completely, or can you? Smita Patil’s character Usha in Bhumika will not settle down to any role; a famous Marathi actress Usha is a wife and a mother that flits from lover to lover as each man in her life attempts to conform her to a role. Her inconsistencies have no logical explanations like the possibility of a mental illness but can only be guessed as a form of anxiety induced by society’s persistence to give her a ‘settled life’. Through her struggles Usha does once come close to the promise of happiness and stability in her gentle co-star Rajan, only to lose it that opportunity to her charred faith in men which has developed over her bitter experiences. Usha for me is one of the most complex characters ever to be written for the Hindi cinema because she nor the viewers will ever be reconciled for her wavered choices; a life Indian society will rarely allow its women to have without judgement.
IV. Tabu as Nimmi in Maqbool (2003)
In Vishal Bharadwaj’s Maqbool, based on Shakespeare’s blood soaked dramatic tragedy Macbeth, Tabu plays Nimmi based on the powerful Lady Macbeth from the play. Nimmi’s character is revolutionary not only because the role of Lady Macbeth is the most coveted one in the world but because it seems for the first time that Hindi cinema has allowed a woman ambition as well as the intelligence needed to see it through. Nimmi is the mistress of the influential Mumbai underworld don Abba Ji while she is in love with Maqbool, Abba Ji’s trusted right-hand man. With Abba Ji, Nimmi has power but with Maqbool passion, and she is unwilling to give up either. To have the best of both worlds Nimmi convinces Maqbool to murder Abba Ji which would ensure their succession to becoming the power couple. Though it is Maqbool that will finally shoot Abba Ji in his sleep it is Nimmi who manipulates the skeptical Maqbool for the deed, she is the mastermind behind the murderous plan and the one who will bring Abba Ji to the scene of his homicide. In one scene Nimmi clad in a blood red salwar kameez approaches Maqbool who is standing on a precarious cliff and takes his revolver from his back pocket. When Maqbool asks for it back she points the revolver at him and says that she won’t return it until he calls her “Meri Jaan” (a beloved as precious as one’s life). When Maqbool seems hesitant she fires a shot in the sky to insinuate that she will kill him if he does not say as she says. This scene marks for Nimmi the success of Lady Macbeth’s determined wish in the Bard’s play — to be “unsexed”; to be stripped off femininity so she can prepare herself for planning Abba Ji’s murder. Like Lady Macbeth and unlike the numerous vamps of Hindi cinema Nimmi is not all steel. In a heartbreaking scene, Nimmi wanders in her bedroom where Abba Ji’s ghost haunts her while her hallucinations make her believe her hands are soaked with his blood before engulfed with guilt, she meets her tragic end. Tabu who switches from a feisty girl, passionate lover to the murderous mistress gives a riveting performance, one that she will never be able to recreate in her commercial films of flat characters.
V. Sridevi as Shashi in English Vinglish (2012)
When Sridevi announced her return to the silver screen after a 15-year-long hiatus with this film she became the only actress in Bollywood history to make a successful comeback. In the film Sridevi plays Shashi, a devoted housewife who is taken for granted by her husband and daughter while they persistently mock her for her weak English skills making Shashi extremely under-confident and insecure. When on a solo trip to New York for her niece’s wedding, Shashi is humiliated at a cafe because of her inability to communicate her order. That becomes a catalyst that encourages her to join a local English speaking class that promises to improve one’s language skills in just four weeks. What’s refreshing about the film is that Shashi’s character stays nuanced even when her life sees major changes; her new-found fortitude is presented in the resourcefulness with which she navigates a new city while her fidelity is made apparent when she insists on just staying friends with a Frenchman who is extremely attracted towards her. In a speech made in the climax of the film Shashi while addressing her niece’s wedding gathering says, “You must help yourself when family loses respect for you. No one else can”. This single line breaks the convention around female characters in Hindi cinema because it sums up Shashi’s actions in the film as those made in wish of self-accountability as opposed to the frequently used victim card. No wonder that it was in this film that Sridevi gave probably the finest performance of her career.
VI. Kangana Ranaut as Rani in Queen (2013)
After being critically acclaimed for her performance in Gangster it was for her part in Queen that put Kangana Ranaut on the map of stardom and rightly so. In the film Ranaut plays Rani, a simple Delhi girl who gets jilted at the altar by her long-term boyfriend. While tears and bitterness seems like the only option for most women in her position Rani after a night of grief decides to go for her honeymoon even if all alone, to Paris. On this solo trip Rani discovers through sight-seeing by herself, making friends from other cultures, winning a culinary competition and even having her first kiss that she really can manage both life and happiness with it without a husband; an important message for Indian girls across the nation that are made to believe otherwise. What made this film a blockbuster was the emotional investment viewers make in Rani as they see her transform from the a heartbroken damsel to a woman who cherishes her independence.
VII. Alia Bhatt as Veera in Highway (2014)
This is the film in my opinion that saved Alia Bhatt from being typecast as the airhead she played in her debut Student Of The Year and gave her demanding roles like the ones she plays in films like Udtaa Punjab and Dear Zindagi. In Highway, Bhatt plays the daughter of a business tycoon who get abducted on a petrol pump on the eve of her wedding. As she moves from city to city with her abductor Mahabir played by Randeep Hooda, her fear dissipates to embrace a surprising sense of freedom and calm. Bhatt becomes a path-breaking female character in Hindi cinema because she is the first who is sensitively allowed to explore the Stockholm syndrome when she falls in love with Mahabir and the first to be vocal about domestic sexual abuse when she publicly confronts her uncle for exploiting her as a child. Bhatt’s character is extremely alluring as she evolves from a girl comfortable in the bubble of privilege to a woman who will stand against social injustice.
VIII. Ratna Pathak as Usha in Lipstick Under My Burkha (2017)
While this film is the most powerful feminist film of the year with an entire star cast of complex female characters it is Usha; a 55-year old widow known to those around her as Bua ji, played by the immensely talented Ratna Pathak, who wins my heart. Bua Ji is shown as the pious matriarch but only the audience knows that other than presiding over her housing society’s disputes and being the self-appointed babysitter she has a inner world of her own — one where she is Rosy the heroine of an erotic pulp fiction novel titled Lipstick Dreams. When the handsome local swimming coach Jagpal convinces Bua Ji to take swimming lessons her dormant sexuality is suddenly aroused. Bua Ji poses as Rosy and enters a cell phone affair with Jagpal; the only way she can even remotely close to fulfilling her emotional and physical desires.
When Bua Ji’s secret is discovered she is publicly shamed for being a pervert; her swimsuit and erotica novels thrown out on the road for the world too see her sins. But Bua Ji has but one concern; to know how Rosy’s erotic escapade ends in Lipstick Dreams. What makes Bua Ji’s character so path-breaking is that for the first time Hindi cinema has chosen to tell the story of a woman past her prime, explore her physical and emotional needs which are independent of her domestic life and remained so unapologetic about it. Moreover Bua Ji’s character calls out on the double standards of the Hindi film industry where male actors can romance female actors half their age but older actresses must resign to the roles of mothers, aunts, widows and who are seen to be more or less asexual and having no other worthwhile experiences to share. We can only hope that Bua Ji played by Pathak with all her brilliance will inspire a culture of more inclusive casting in the Hindi film fraternity.
This compilation has been curated from the films the author has personally watched and enjoyed and it does not aim to serve as an industry standard for female characters in Hindi cinema. However, if you do have any suggestions you can send them in to editor@homegrow.co.in!
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