India at 70: Seven Bollywood women from seven decades
One of the most remarkable revolutions in Indian society has been women empowerment. Changes in law, the rise in levels of literacy, better access to healthcare has meant that women are living better, learning more, being more aware. Tragic heroines like Meena Kumari's Choti Bahu in the 1962 Sahib Biwi Aur Ghulam are now virtually extinct.
She wants to be with her husband, he wants to be with his mistresses. Her solution to her loneliness is to drink herself to death. His solution: "Gehne tudwao, gehne banvao. Aur koriyaan khelo. So aaram se." (Break old jewellery sets, make new ones. Play with shells. And sleep.)
Two years later, Satyajit Ray would make the wonderful and tender Charulata where the young wife of an editor (there's nothing like the sound of a printing press) falls in love with her cousin-in-law over a shared love of poetry. She is a caged bird in the mansion and Amal's companionship nurtures her emotions and her intellect – and then life will never be the same again.
Here celebrating seven decades of independence, we give seven women who embody freedom, one for each decade. They are neither wholly, nor in full measure representative of all the wonderful women of Hindi cinema, but at least substantially they depict the ever-continuing struggle for liberation.
Radha, Mother India, 1957
Nargis' Radha is frozen in time for generations of moviegoers as the young woman with the plough in the Soviet-style poster that seems to be an advertisement for agrarian reform, or as the older woman aiming a gun at her son's heart ("Tu mujhe maar nahin sakti, tu meri maa hai,'' says Birju to her. ''Main ek aurat hoon, main beta de sakti hoon, laaj nahin de sakti").
But Radha was not just a dutiful mother who would do just about anything to feed her starving children. She was also perhaps one of the first angry young women in Indian cinema, telling the Devi just what she thought of her: "Sansaar ka bhaar utha loge devi/mamata ka bhaar na uthaya jayega/ma banke dheko/tumhare paaon bhi dagmaga jeyenge." All the while Sukhilal is gazing at her lustfully, she, focused, pure, driven by her rage, is in communion with her own soul.
Radha was independent India's mother, a woman bound by traditional expectations. When she is made to inaugurate the canal that will bring water to the village, she is standing in not just for the mothers, but also for the independent Indian, the free Indian, the aspiring Indian. She is India, Mother India.
Rosie, Guide, 1967
Aaj phir jeena ki tamanna hai/Aaj phir marne ka irada hai. As Waheeda Rehman's Rosie flits about the ramparts of the majestic Chittorgarh Fort, dancing energetically, gracefully, you can almost smell the freedom in the air. Rosie is the daughter of a prostitute, forced to forego her dance to be a respectable wife to Marco. When freedom is offered to her, she grabs it, moving out from the shadows of yesterday. Rosie is quixotic, self-absorbed, she is also the emerging Indian woman who is not afraid to say that narrow domesticity is not for her. She wants the world to be her stage, she loves the attention, she adores the bouquets, she lives for the applause. And why not?
Aarti Devi, Aandhi, 1975
The film that shook Indira Gandhi, based as it was supposedly on her life and marriage. Aarti Devi is a young woman being groomed for politics by her ambitious father. He feels she is slipping away when she marries a hotelier with modest aspirations and prevails upon her to enter the hurly burly of politics where one's life can never be one's own.
Gulzar's direction and Suchitra Sen's subtle performance create a memorable screen woman, who can occasionally lament all that she has lost (a caring husband, a growing daughter, a loyal servant who knows her every need even before she does) but not enough to abandon her calling: "Tere bina zindagi se koi shikva to nahin/jee main aata hain/tere daaman main sar jhuka ke ham/rote rahen, rote rahen''.
Never has ambition looked so lonely and yet so clear-eyed – yes, politics may be a once-in-five-years con, but it's her job and her world.
Sonbai, Mirch Masala, 1987
Has rejection ever looked more alluring? Smita Patil tells the subedar in every way possible that she doesn't want his attention. Naseeruddin Shah's little despot refuses to take no for an answer. But Sonbai is firm, even when everyone in the village turns against her. But the final scene in Ketan Mehta's film, when all the women in village throw chillies in his face, blinding him and forcing him to flee, is the 1980s version of "f*ck off" written in giant letters, lit up in neon.
Nisha, Hum Aapke Hain Koun!, 1994
In the wasteland of the 1990s, Nisha is at least given some agency. She studies computers so she is modern. She loves ice cream, so she is cool. She is as outdoorsy as she is good in the kitchen, and as devoted to her sister, as she is coquettish with a potential suitor. Madhuri Dixit lights up the screen with her presence, imbuing this family drama with a lightness of spirit and litheness of foot. Nisha is the life of the family, as much perfect wife material, as she is post liberalisation India's poster girl for consumerism.
This is Nisha's version of growing up: "Chocolate, lime juice, ice cream, toffeeyan/Pehle jaise ab mere shauk hain kahan Gudiya, khilone, meri saheliyan/Ab mujhe lagti hain saari paheliyan Yeh kaun sa mod hai umar ka''. She is the model citizen, perfect consumer, loving partner, self-sacrificing sister.
Geet, Jab We Met, 2007
The model for all subsequent screen women looking for their identities. Geet is a talkative, vivacious young woman who helps a young man escape his burdens for a while, all the while chasing love herself. Main apni favourite hoon, she says, in one of the most quoted film lines of recent times. Indeed she is. She is also independent minded, willing to take the rap for her mistakes, and not afraid to be alone.
Of course, she needs the love of a good man to complete her, but that is less an attack on her sense of self and more a way to "complete" her (yes, yes, in the Jerry Maguire way). An early Imtiaz Ali movie where the outward journey mirrors the journey within, and where a return home is not an admission of defeat but a moment's rest for the weary traveller till he/she begins again.
Rani, Queen, 2010
Rani is the direct descendant of Geet. Left at the altar, she refuses to go gently into the good night. In Vikas Bahl's movie, she decides to travel to the cities that she would have with her sneaky fiance who now believes she is not cool enough to be his wife.
She makes friends, from the gorgeous Vijayalakshmi, to the two boys she shares her youth hostel room with; learns that cooking her escape (much like the laddoo-making housewife of Gauri Shinde's English Vinglish), gets drunk, goes dancing, finds admirers, all without losing her integrity and her innate desi-ness (mistaking a vibrator for a muscle massager). She is a desi girl and proud to be so, carrying it like a badge of honour like her untamed curls, her
She is a desi girl and proud to be so, carrying it like a badge of honour like her untamed curls, her hand-knitted sweaters, and her way with words. "Indians sab chiz main best hain. Kissing main bhi Indian hi best hain. Emraan Hashmi ha naam nahin suna hai?"