Bhawana Somaaya

It is an interesting observation because while most female directors in Hindi cinema focus on female protagonists, there are innumerable examples of legendary filmmakers supporting women protagonists. From the Black & White to present times filmmakers have time and again attempted to explore the woman psyche on celluloid.

Poet and lyricist Javed Akhtar has a fascinating theory about directors who make women oriented films. He says he could never pen heroine dominated scripts because his growing up years was bereft of women influences. In contrast, Gulzar also grown up deprived of women influences went on to write and direct some of the most sensitive women subjects of Hindi films.

This week’s column is dedicated to those filmmakers who gave us some unforgettable women icons on the big screen.

On top of the list is of course Bimal Roy. Whether it was the rickshaw puller’s wife in Do Bigha Zameen or the orphan girl in Parineeta, the oppressed wife in Biraj Bahu the director looked at all his characters with compassion. In Madhumati the heroine seeks her own revenge rather than be the hero’s appendage. But Roy’s most heroic portrayals came in Sujata, the touching story of a Harijan girl reared by an upper caste family and her quiet battle for acceptance and finally Bandini, based on a central jail superintendent’s experiences about convicts imprisoned for murder!

Melancholy was a recurring motif in all of Guru Dutt films and women the root cause of the hero’s despair! Often a spectator, his films were pathos-ridden and seldom had a happy ending. Pyaasa told the story of a heart-broken poet loved by two women while Kaagaz Ke Phool was about a married director in love with a young actress. They part ways. The actress becomes a major star while the director disappears into anonymity, eventually dying in a film studio. And finally Sahib Biwi Aur Ghulam (produced by Dutt and directed by Abrar Alvi) about a village boy, Bhoothnath’s fascination for the feudal family’s young and beautiful daughter-in- law, chhoti bahu. In all these films Guru Dutt is non judgemental of his characters particularly Sahib Biwi…that captured the decadence of a crumbling feudal family. It was a disturbing glimpse into the life of a bored housewife doomed to monotony, a subject later exploited by Satyajit Ray in Charulata. The lonely housewife obviously wanted more than just making and breaking ornaments. She wanted self-expression!

Self-denial and guilt were recurring emotions in all Hrishikesh Mukherjee films. In Anuradha a renowned singer gives up her career to marry a doctor. After a few years she sinks into depression and begins to review her life. Anupama focussed on a father who despises his daughter because his wife died in childbirth. He holds the daughter responsible for the tragedy and the only time he can express affection to her is when he is drunk. Mukherjee films were about participating in the dreams of his characters so it was cinema for the star-struck teenager in Guddi poetry for the conservative Rama in Jurmana and abandon for Rekha in Khoobsurat. The director disagrees that his women are oppressed. It would be oppression if the doctor was neglecting Anuradha and enjoying her and having a good time himself, but the husband is neglecting himself too. Uma of Abhimaan isn’t asked to leave home, she initiates the separation. She’s more talented than her husband also more mature and therefore makes that extra effort for reconciliation later. He hurts her because he cannot help himself. In Bemisaal Amitabh refused to address Rakhee, his adopted brother’s wife as bhabhi and settles for sakhi, establishing an independent equation with the heroine.

Gulzar describes his films more as a study of human relationships than a gender issue. His protagonists invariably proved the decision-makers. In Parichay it’s the elder sister who initiates a truce with the grandfather. In Khushboo though Hema is wedded to Jeetendra in childhood she has to wait a lifetime for her husband to take her home because every time he arrives to fetch her, he unwittingly happens to hurt her pride. Khushboo is a journey of heartbreaks. In Mausam again it’s the daughter who confronts truth while the father is still waiting for the right moment to reveal his identity to his daughter. Aandhi about a wife seeking her political ambitions was actually about choices and negotiating space in a relationship. Twelve years later, Ijaazat explored the anguish of both the wife and the other woman haunted by the shadows of the past. Instead of taking sides with either of the women the director sympathised with the man. The hero like most men in similar circumstances, does nothing, just watches on, until one woman destroys herself and the other escapes!

Shyam Benegal’s early protagonists, all rural women battled society, system and spouse. The director is non- judgemental of Lakshmi sleeping with the zamindar’s son in Ankur. He empathises with the school master’s wife Sushila in Nishant, motivates Bindu to oppose the system in Manthan, is indulgent of the insecure Urvashi in Bhumika and full of admiration for the courageous Rukminibai in Mandi when the prostitutes manage to build a township in the outskirts of the city.

In the mainstream cinema, filmmaker Vijay Anand appears fascinated with Rosy in Guide for daring to defy her impotent husband with ‘Marco main jeena chahti hoon…’ he encourages to shed her inhibition captured in the evergreen number, ‘Aaj phir jeene ki tamanna hain…’ penned by Shailendra. Waheeda Rehman’s character Rosy has no moral hang-ups and makes no concessions for her beloved arrested for forgery. Similarly director Govind Saraiya is far from patronising towards Kumudsundari jilted first by the proficient beloved and later by the illiterate husband in Saraswatichandra. On the contrary, he transfers his anger to his protagonist when she is repeatedly deceived by destiny.

Asit Sen agonises with his skilled nurse, Radha, when she is expected to cure one more mentally unstable patient in Khamoshi and Basu Bhattacharya, an ace at marital relationships, understands his wife’s need for sexual fulfilment in Aastha. In Swami, Basu Chatterjee is amused by Soudamini’s reluctance to adjust in the joint family and BR Chopra empathises with the rape victim in Insaaf Ka Tarazu. Mahesh Bhatt is attracted to the other-woman in Arth but fully aware that sanity and security is with the wife. It is out of respect for her that he lets Pooja opt for a life without an anchor in the climax. She is strong and dignified and can live her life on her terms without a man or religion. Mrinal Sen’s Khandhar, about duty trapped in pain, is an ode to Jamini’s quiet dignity while director Ketan Mehta’s Mirch Masala initiates Sonabai’s fight for chastity.

Over the years, many meaningful woman portrayals have been captured on the small and the big screen. Govind Nihalani’s adaptation of Mahashweta Devi’s novel Hazaar Chaurasi Ki Maa and earlier Rajkumar Santoshi’s quest for truth in Damini were tributes to women.

Every time we celebrate women power we need to acknowledge the men who made this possible…

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Overworked, insecure and constantly in the public eye, film stars have to deal with more stress than most people, especially the heroines. Some escape, whereas others just crack up.

Insecurity is an overwhelming emotion in any creative profession. There are more emotional wrecks in the film industry than anywhere in the world. There’s hardly an entertainer alive who hasn’t suffered the highs and lows of a showbiz career. There’s the superstar who becomes the jinxed star, the oomph heroine who becomes a C-grade glamour queen and the box-office director who ends up a has-been.

Drug addicts…secret hospitalization…All kinds of therapies, all kinds of doctors… Some play games, the clever ones. They are better fighters, they survive. Some hit the bottle, the weaker ones, they escape. Some turn to involvements, the lazy ones, who need live crutches to overcome crisis.

One reason for this being that they live their most intimate moments in the glare of publicity…Shabana Azmi once said that just when everything is going all right, the media has a way of destroying it. With a vengeance, journalists dig out skeletons and the tension starts all over again. Rekha adds that a happy moment has unfailingly followed with something ominous. “Not one, but several things go wrong in a row.”

So accustomed are the stars to a regular dose of pressure that in its absence, they become suspicious and restless. Dimple Kapadia confesses that she feels at a loss when she has nothing to worry about. “When I made a comeback in films, journalists were forever dragging my growing daughters into gossip columns. This was unnecessary and it hurt.”

Moushumi Chatterjee opines that it’s very difficult for a married actress to succeed without family cooperation. “The strain is too much. The profession demands that you look beautiful, perform on the sets and also remain disciplined. It is not easy to play the perfect professional and also run an efficient home. Stardom is a full-time job. If you are not shooting, you are dubbing, traveling, holding story-sessions or partying.”

Poonam Dhillon agrees. “How can we lead a normal life when we are encountering abnormal experiences all the time? A minute before the shot we are laughing and joking with the hero and the next minute, the scene demands that we burst into tears. We do emotional scenes when we are cheerful and comedy scenes when we feel low.”

All these pressures take its toll. Sometimes, they result in serious health hazards. After ten years of successive rain sequences, Moushumi suffers from Eosinophilia. Legendary actress Meena Kumari was advised by her psychiatrist to take a break from tragedy roles for it was leading her to chronic depression. A cross-section of interviews with star physicians reveal that almost all of them suffer fear psychosis and psychosomatic ailments like asthma, acidity, diabetes and insomnia are common among celebrities.

In the ’70s when Sharmila Tagore was working round the clock, she was well-known for her fiery temper. Today, Sharmila regrets the image. “I was overworked and expected everyone to understand forgetting that they have their own problems too.”

A lot of heroines particularly from the olden times faced immense pressure from within the family itself. A lot of them were the sole earning member of a large family and after a lifetime before the camera, managed little savings to call their own. Says Aruna Irani, “When I was working in C-grade films, my brothers and sisters were mere toddlers…The family had to pay off large debts and by the time I started making money, their expenditures had multiplied too.”

Madhubala, Nanda, Waheeda Rehman, Bindu, Rekha are examples of sibling sacrifice. Meena Kumari was pushed into acting at tender age of eleven. Lonely and high-strung, she sought refuge in alcohol. Nadira called her a masochist but there were many who empathized with the extra-ordinary artiste. Sarika made her debut when she was only five. She recalls how her mother used the travel money paid to her by producers to buy groceries. She reveals that she would be fast asleep on the sets and would be jolted awake because the shot was ready. Today, an older and wiser Sarika says that she’d hate her daughters to go through what she did.

Stardom offers no explanations for pushing artistes into oblivion. Vyjayanthimala, Hema Malini, Rekha, Sridevi, Madhuri Dixit have all had to vacate thrones. The first time Waheeda Rehman played a mother role, she felt disoriented and the first time Raakhee played mother on screen she was unprepared for the paradigm shift in her career. Show business is a cruel world where physical appearance is emphasized to a point of obsession.

Padmini Kolhapure and Madhuri Dixit going through adolescence at that time were forever made to feel guilty about a common problem like acne. Every time Padmini’s mirror showed a pimple in the morning, her first thought was not what her boyfriend said, but what the director would say. The last time it happened, the cameraman had scowled and said, “It disturbs my close-ups.” In a world where per day costs raked in crores, common courtesy was the last priority.

The name of the game is business and when it was time for curtain call, everybody had to take a bow. Tabu felt threatened by Manisha Koirala, Manisha by Karisma Kapoor, Karisma by Urmila Matondkar and so on and so forth. Treated like products, their price fluctuates faster than the stock market. When their film is a hit, their market goes up, whenthy flop, their price comes down. Happiness for most is an alien zone.

Some like Shabana Azmi are able to analyze the vicious cycle and rise above it. “If everyone is insecure all the time why even bother to rationalize what goes wrong and why?” And showbiz respects the likes of her. Not all are as intelligent and therefore suffer.

Hopping from studio to studio and make-up room to make-up room, changing costumes and characters in film after film and year after year cannot be all that simple. It is after all a profession of heightened consciousness; the stars in their violent outpourings before the camera, cease being realistic and bottled up emotions give way at the most unexpected moments… A dinner party, a shooting, a family gathering…

Predictably, all of them shy away from any mention of psychotics. Only the late Divya Bharti admitted to seeking counseling and Farha admitted to being suicide-prone.
Veteran actress Achala Sachdev, who played the charming mother to many heroes in the `60s, quit films after a nervous breakdown.

Surprisingly, learning lines is a common cause for tension for most actors. Says Mahesh Bhatt, “An actor remains a student until his dying day…Everyday, he has to go through the ordeal of learning scenes or dance steps and he does this in the presence of an entire unit. We don’t realize this but this in a way demoralizes him.”

Hollywood is full of stories of stars cracking up. Our stars are learning to emerge out of their success stories unscathed but not all are able to do it. In the past, Rekha would break into a rash every time she was depressed. Not anymore. Years ago, Shashikala sought solace in spirituality, Parveen Babi in anonymity, Preeti Ganguly in drugs, Suraiya in isolation.

Aishwarya Rai after marriage continues working, Madhuri Dixit finds peace in domesticity and Rani Mukherjee in exercising. Hema Malini finds self expression in dancing, Sridevi in rearing her girls. Pooja Bhatt spends her free time writing scripts. Sarika punches stories on the computer and Meenakshi Sheshadri goes for long walks.

By their own admission, they’ve come to terms. They are happy… Well, almost!

It is said that three kinds of people come into our lives. The first who come for reasons…The second who come for seasons… And the third, to be with you for a lifetime…And all these people have something to impart to you and you to them, for that is the law of the universe.

As children we learn life’s biggest lessons from our parents, then teachers and finally colleagues and friends we encounter in our journey of life. Some out of these transform into precious relationships and some become impressions to nurture and nourish. I have always been superstitious about writing about my loved ones, so will refrain from commenting on the former except that I’m privileged to have their enlightened presence in my life.

The latter comprises encounters with innumerable strangers and acquaintances and even though these interactions were not always permanent, they were meaningful as long as they lasted. It was as if they were destined to lend a fragrance in my life and when they did, they mysteriously disappeared, some lingered on and some reappeared to deliver a different message in a different way.

Today, when I look back images come gushing to me and I remember. Almost 30 years ago when I became a film journalist an elderly relative in the family asked, ‘How can a profession delving on the lives of other people enrich anyone?’ Too young to understand the enormity of the question, I had no answer but so many years later, I do.

My profession demands me to comment on the dangerous living of dream merchants. For most of them show business is a world of scandal but there is another side to stardom, the better side— of creativity and compassion, of warmth and wisdom— that an outsider will never know. Inaccessibility prevents identification. Insecurity is an overwhelming emotion in any creative profession. In the film industry it is more so. Film stars are peddlers of emotion and, therefore there are more emotional wrecks in the film world than in any other place. There is shame and scandal, exhibitionism and eccentricity, but there is also energy, a fatal attraction about the world of cinema that is obsessive and enriching.

I know I have spent all my growing up years here. The dream merchants are vibrant, wholesome, sensitive, artistic people and I have learnt some valuable lessons of life from them.

I was introduced to late Nargis Dutt at a trial show in their preview theatre Ajanta Arts in Bandra in the early 80s. It was an extremely boring film and young as I was, I was contemplating leaving the show in the interval. Nargis must have overheard my conversation with a colleague and even though we were meeting for the first time she took me aside to explain that I must never walk out of any film— no matter how boring because it is extremely rude and insulting to the filmmaker. I have remembered that.

Shashi Kapoor taught me professionalism and regard for veterans. He taught me that it was my duty as a junior reporter to introduce myself to the elders on the set rather than wait to be introduced to them. He taught me to address everyone with-‘ ji’-to do namaste and constantly supervised my Hindi pronunciations, said it was ‘phaansi’ not ‘faansi’ and finally disciplined me and all of Bombay on theatre manners where late comers are not permitted.

Rishi Kapoor taught me that one who barks does not bite, that it is easier to deal with short tempered people than those who don’t reveal their anger. Naseerudin Shah taught me that a healthy actor devotes as much time to his craft as to recreation. He taught me how a good actor is always prepared with his lines on the sets.

Late Nutan made me aware that it is the journalist’s duty to prepare on her subject before arriving for an interview. So many of them come unprepared and ask veteran actors like her how she came into films. She said visitors to dubbings and shootings ought to be tutored so as not to disturb the artistes because it’s not easy building up for an emotional scene.

Anil Kapoor taught me how hard work always pays and how important passion is for ambition. He said the bigger you dream the higher you fly and his career is an example of many such rags to riches stories. Anil taught me that whenever at turning points, one must leap without fear because testing times are another name for opportunities and I have done that and never regretted.

Some like Lalita Pawar revealed to me that being selective is being special. She said she was extremely choosy not just about her roles but also people she interacted. She said she kept away from gossip mongers and considered it a waste of time talking to unqualified professionals, particularly the media. ‘They come to us for nostalgic features but listen to us distractedly. It is evident while we are talking to them that they are not interested, in which case is it worth making an effort?’

Aamir Khan taught me that conviction is paramount. If you are convinced about what you do then everything falls into place and if you are not, the biggest and the best projects will be shadowed by self doubt and never shine. He said it is better to take long over your decisions rather than make them in a hurry and curse yourself.

Asha Parekh taught me that one should always be ready for challenges, to experiment with new roles like she did as a producer, director, censor chief and it doesn’t matter that you may win some and lose some. Ranbir Kapoor taught me that passion is all and if you follow your heart, do the kind of work you love there is no way you can go wrong. He did that and broke all the hearts and rules.

My grooming lessons predictably came from the diva herself–Rekha. She led me to say goodbye to oil and sugar to remain slim forever, to say goodbye to pillows to retain a neck without wrinkles. She advised me to walk five miles a day, drink gallons of water, exercise, sleep and wake up early. Eat five almonds and two fruits a day good for healthy skin and hair. I have not followed that and it is showing.

Waheeda Rehman taught me how to be poised and graceful, how to dress and look your age, how to accept life and smile through troubles. Ajay Devgan taught me the importance of professionalism. It takes a lot to provoke Ajay and this reflects confidence. Devgan is perhaps the least controversial actors.

Salman Khan is just the opposite but has extraordinary qualities as an actor and as a person. He taught me generosity; Salman will do anything for his friends. He taught me endurance; he has been through a lot in life but never complained. Today he is the most misunderstood guy in filmdom but he never cares to explain himself.

Hema Malini taught me that there is a time and place for every thing and sometimes it is best to surrender to destiny. Her mother forced her to learn dance as a little girl and even though there were times she hated it she continued trusting that her mother knew what was better for her and today she is reaping harvest of those efforts. At a time when her acting assignments have reduced considerably Hema Malini keeps herself busy with her dance tours and performances.

Shahid Kapoor taught me how to evolve despite a bad beginning, how never to say die and keep trying till the tide turns for you. Kareena Kapoor taught me how to reinvent yourself, how to rewrite your destiny and how to live without fear or baggage. Saif Ali Khan taught me to value one’s worth. He had the courage to refuse second leads. It was difficult initially to convince his filmmakers but slowly and gradually he paved a path for himself and today he negotiates what he deserves and perhaps a little more.

Jaya Bhaduri was already Bachchan by the time I became a journalist and those were the days Amitabh was not talking to the media. During his peak war with the press I bumped into Jaya on a staircase and said ‘Hi’ spontaneously to which she responded just as naturally. In the coming years, I bumped into Jaya at the oddest places- a musical concert, airport, Prithvi Theatre, hospital when Smita Patil died and always, Jaya remained her own person. I learnt from her that loyalty to partner does not mean curbing natural responses.

In the 90s Amitabh Bachchan in a surprise move lifted the ban on the media and made truce. Ever since I have done several interviews and books with the actor and observing him have imbibed many virtues like patience, perseverance and discipline. He is the finest example of the proverb- Silence is Golden – Despite innumerable provocation and attacks from the media for 15 long years Bachchan did not retaliate and continued to remain silent. His life has been a roller coaster ride and he taught me how to rise after every fall, how to fly higher and higher and remain grounded.

And finally Shabana Azmi, she remains a strong source of influence in my life. I have imbibed the most precious lessons of life just being around her and observing her. Her reactions to films, theatre, acting, poetry or just philosophy of life have been inspiring. I have sought her wisdom in conflict and she has never let me down. Her contribution in my growth as a journalist is significant; in fact it would not be an exaggeration to say that in the jungle world called films, Shabana is my only anchor.