A Rant about Viewable Ribcage and Size Zero!

I've been following all of Filmi Girl's posts on the emerging trend of being really skinny in Bollywood these days. It really annoys me that there's no normal size heroines anymore as they've all decided to slim down Deepika style and let their ribs poke out! Perhaps I maybe harking back to the days of oldie cinema when the heroines had some flesh and a round tummy but we didn't poke at them before unless we were Baburao Patel! So here's a list and a rant of some of my favorite heroines of the yore and now that just scream:Healthy and Gorgeous, while the Deepika's and Kareena's who promote an unhealthy weight for Indian women to aspire to.

1. Hema Malini - I just love her dancing skills, she looked great in any outfit but to me she exuded a sexy heroine because nobody looked at her tummy when she was performing a dance and she still drew in the male fans that swooned over her curvaceous hips. She was South Indian and loved her food and her Dharam. Its quite sad nowadays that whenever a Southie heroine comes to Bollywood they have to slim down because they look toooo chunky for audiences! UGHHH
2. Vyjanthimala - Another lovely South Indian heroine who looked beautiful and lovely when doing some fabulous dancing, and there were no bones picked against her for having a lovely round face and tummy. Her body was probably the average size of a woman today as it was back then and even in her biography which i read she had a voracious appetite which didnt hinder her dancing or how the audience viewed her. In fact, my sleazy yet lovably Blobby Raj Kapoor did ample justice to her beauty in Sangam, she looked hot in a swimsuit and did the striptease to "Mujhe Budda Milgaya." 3. Meena Kumari - This might be a questionable addition to rant list as Meena apparently got overweight from all that drinking and marital problems. But Pakeezah and her slew of rubbish films that she made Pradeep Kumar and Ashok Kumar, I really didn't care that she looked drunk or tired throughout, she just could act and I didn't poke or try and spot how big she was. Her image and acting was cemented in my mind, and whether she looked big or not was not what the audience or I looked for, we are prepared to cry and weep during her films like Dil Ek Mandir or Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam.

4. Neetu Singh - perhaps my favorite masala heroine, and being a girl with big boobs myself I looked to Neetu and Rekha and cheesily said "Well even in Bollywood you can't choose your assets!" Admittedly cheesy when I watched old Bollywood films I identified with the heroines that were my size and Neetu just did that for me. Maybe that's why I love old school heroines more these days as they weren't toooo criticized for having a huge rack or having roly tummy because back then audiences went to see a film and their stars for some escapism, and to be titillated by the hero and heroine wearing tight and stylish clothes
5. Mumtaz - One of my favorite heroines, and she just radiated curvaceousness and she just looked wonderful in sarees especially in her films with Rajesh Khanna and she wore the shortest sari tops with her, showing off her cute tummy! In her Dara films, she had her puppy fat that just didn't look puppy fat it made her the sexy B-movie heroine in distress! And obviously the directors loved showing off her bod to the audiences in rain songs in Do Raaste and Prem Kahani! 6. Nargis - the original curvy lady of the RK banner, she looked just lovely in any of the films she did with RK, and he definitely knew how to make the camera just soak up all that wonderful acting and her curves especially in the Rk penchant of the white sari! Obviously the best example of her dancing prowess and showing off her bod was in the "Ghar Aaya Pardesi"song in Aawara, lol even I wanted to have sparkles on my face and dance about like she did. And the key moment of cinema history was her wearing that fashionable swimsuit (lol that i bought after watching that!) and her changing scene after, of course Raju wanted to take a peek and act like a junglee and so did the audience!

7. Finally these two people that I've really lost respect for

YA I'll show off my ribs, while standing behind some sexy curvy ladies! DUHHHH

YA, A side profile of my tinny tummy looks really sexy! NOT!

I'm not gonna hate on all naturally skinny gals like Anushka Sharma, or others but its just that Kareena Kapoor is going all out to promote an unreal expectation and the fact that people look up to her as a role model. Its very harmful to hear quotes from magzines with "Kareena Kapoor the trailblazer of size-zero fad in India, admits that occasionally she does feel like putting on some extra kilos but resists the temptation because being a fashion icon she has to remain lean and sexy. " or even worse "My size zero is what got the attention of an international clothes manufacturer. I will be launching a clothes line soon.” This is gonna be awful if she starts a clothing line as it will probably bee 0-8, which will encourage young girls to be an unrealistic size just because their idol Kareena says its cool and men will flock to you!

Why does being lean need to be the new thing, its far more sexy and attractive to have some meat on you and not just show off your bod by shrinking in size to fit into a bikini ala Rani Mukherjee in DBHadippa which was just sooo unnecessary I don't mind an item number like the next fan but it just made me sad to see her sell out by trading her voluptuous figure to gyrate in a bikini for a few seconds in a silly shower. Sonam Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra, and now Lara Dutta and other heroines really need to set a better example to young girls out there that are bombarded with their idols looking like Ally Macbeal's all of a sudden. Its just a sorry state of affairs in Bollywood that we now value skinny and unhealthy looking heroines to average sized Vidya Balan or Madhuri Dixit.

I really feel bad for the South Indian heroines that want to cross over to Bollywood, Asin has already said she had to slim down for London Dream and Trisha is toning her curves down for her film with Akshay Kumar! Honestly, beauty is skin deep for god's sake, it just makes me feel angry with the Deepika's that promote their size and just make girls feel bad for being the size that they are and wanting to be beautiful. Countless eating disorders will probably rise if this trend continues and who knows Kareena is probably starving herself to look the kind of "good" she sees. And I haven't noticed any slim heroine saying "Girls listen up, you've got to love what you see in the mirror, learn to love yourself, beauty comes from the inside!?" LOL maybe i've watched too much Tyra this week

What are your thoughts, and who are your fave voluptuous heroines?

Feel The Love! Waheeda Rehman

As a young Bollywood connoisseur, I started my serious film watching at 16 because I discovered old movies rocked, I had watched tons of them when I was younger laughing and enjoying and gawking at the masala, and masti. And shamelessly copying the ideo of Memsaab's Asha P post i had to do the same! But the one actress thats my absolute favorite is the gorgeous Waheeda RehmanLooking gorgeous in Chaudvin Ka Chand

There are so many gorgeous and wonderful things about Waheeda that make me such a fan! And here's some films and quirks I just love about her, we go:

• She is a wonderful dancer, especially in my one of my favorites Guide, and the naagin dance that was just so energetic, I felt I had a workout with her too! And the gorgeous picturisations in that movie just enhance her great dancing. What a great showcase-though more in the first half!
Some Fabulous dancing in Guide

• Waheeda was discovered by her love and mentor Guru Dutt, they were my first introduction to the great part of Bollywood in the 50's, when i first watched Pyaasa. That role was so well-done by Waheeda, and the small nuances and cute scornful looks especially in the scene where her street-walker character is thrown from a car, apparently that was the first shot she ever took in the movie. She was so Paro-like in that movie, devoted to her Vijay the poet and being the one person that is uncorrupted by selling his poems.
The enchanting stare!


• But i think my personal favorite would be Waheeda in Kaagaz Ke Phool, though some may see it as her playing herself in Guru Dutt's heavily autobiographical classic, its just an amazing performance, she goes through everything with her man and still doesn't get him in the end, because of his daughter's meddling and his irrational demands. This is the only movie where i shouted "LET THEM BE TOGETHERR!!" this may be the only extra marital affair I condone because the man is estranged from his wife then falls for the simple and natural Waheeda, and they definitely neeeeeed eachother! Dammit Naaz why did you break them up, you brat! But Waheeda was just so good in this performance that as usual i ran to the aunty dvdwallah and got all the Guru-Waheeda films!
The cutest lady behind the purdah!


• And then the glory project that Guru did for Waheeda was Chaudvin Ka Chand, and by God she is the most bewitching and prettiest thing in that movie. Its no surprise Rehman did all that gazing at her and the film suggested voyeurism can be risky but heck if its Waheeda then the camera can bathe in beautiful lighting and lovely clothes and put her in colour for the title song to see those red lips and those tresses! A man's delight! In this movie despite the focus on the lovelorn Rehman and Guru, she was a strong woman who didn't like all this fighting over her and did everything she could to make her husband not feel bad for taking her from his friend.!
The noir Vamp Waheeda in CID

• There are soo many movies I've loved Waheeda in and its all because of her versatility. You can completely see her as the femme fatale vamp in CID and as a village girl in Reshma aur Shera, which I really need to see again because it makes sure that both Sunil Dutt and Waheeda get strong roles as two star crossed lovers, in other movies like this the girls always weep and cry and die first. But Reshma is strong about her love and I totally believed in that love story!
• Another favorite is her role in Kabhi Kabhie, she was unfortunately persecuted by Amitabh for having another daughter but it was that she had a past that she did forget and while he had a past that he kept holding onto. Waheeda did a great job as the conflicted maa and put upon wife!
• Even in later roles like Mashaal as Dilip Kumar's wife, she charms and mothers ANil till he comes around and behaves himself, or as ANil's nanny who teaches him to love India and a certain individual! And she had a small role in Dehli 6, which was a bad movie but she and the cast elevated it yet again

Here's to Waheeda being the most elegant star in my mind, while I must do a post on my style icon Saira Banu!

Masala Pradesh Mini Masala Reviews!

These days since being back at school, I've had less time to see movies, but one day a movie comes along that you just need to see, and DBH is one of them! I've ventured a couple of times to the Indian cinema right on the outskirts of Vancouver. Valiantly I trek to see these movies, and most of the time I am dissapointed with Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, or Welcome or too affected by the really swingy chairs that were newly installed!

But this summer I was very impressed by the movies that came out and the ones I bought from my Auntydvd-wallah whose shop is conveniently is two streets away from my college!

Anyway onto the reviews!

Dil Bole Hadippa - there's something that all these new actresses are missing, which is the general all roundedness in comedy/dance/dressup/drama, all the things that Rani Mukherjee is! And the critics that i usually listen to and scoff at, won't like this film because its full on masala. From the dressup which seems to be very common in the new Yash Raj films, this was not frustrating and pie -inducing like Rab Ne... it was played for comedy and it worked, because of Rani of course! She's back with a bang, she reminds me of a bubbly Neetu Singh, and she makes a quite cute couple with Shahid Kapoor who on the request of Filmi Girl i have ruled that Shahid must always where American Apparel looking V-necks or on my suggestion just wearing a towel around his neck! He looks hot, though the movie is not his and when he gets intense he gets really intense! Even Rakhi Sawant made an impact, she finally landed the YRaj movie, but as a supporting character. Though the work she's had done, makes her look like a tranny sometimes, but enough about that! Sure the movie is cheesy, and colourful and mindless but i let all that go and went for my Rani! DBH is a fun movie worth a watch simply because Rani is BACCCKKK!

Love Aaj Kal - Though I really liked Jab We Met, I didn't go in to the cinema seeking another one in Love Aaj Kal, because they are too different. First things first, Saif the botox did work but your dancing skills in the Twist song were hilariously bad, and you tried WAAAAY too hard to catch up with your younger friends in the video. I liked this movie apart from that it seemed real though a Bollywoodized version of young love these days, though I must say I love the Love Kal part because it was cute, and the poor unbilled Giselle as Harleen was great for a first time role, and Saif in his Punjabi role was good, and his bhangra dancing was like an old uncle but fun! Now onto the Love Aaj, it was okay though I really doubt they would be on such great terms after they break up with each other, like talking on and on! But onto to Deepika, she was pretty stale in the beginning of the movie, but as it progressed there were sparks of good acting by her, though that came right at the end! Love Aaj Kal is a good timepass worth watching for Saif's wrinkle free face and funny dancing!



Chalti Ka Naam Ghadi - I loved this movie, the three Kumar brothers Ashok, Anoop, and Kishore are hilarious as 3 mechanic brothers that are taught to hate women by older bhai Ashok. It reminded me of the Marx brothers movies, and these 3 Indian Marx's also had a great flair for slapstick and witty banter. But you can't talk of this laugh riot without Madhubala, who looks just gorgeous here and her comic timing is right up there with hubby Kishore and quick cute laugh is just infectious. The movie only suffers when KN Singh, as glorious and dapper villain as he is, is forced to wear an awful wig with a 1930's style curl to it!

Do Bigha Zameen - I'm taking a film class at college and one essay topic is to cover the importance of a foreign filmaker on North America, I might do it on Bimal Roy, but this movie impacted the most because of Balraj Sahni's riveting performance as the poor rikshaw man forced to fend himself in the big city of Kolkatta. Apparently Balraj went all method on the role and drove round a rikshaw as preparation for the role, which seems to show because he looks the character and you can totally see him as a broken down. AND Filmi Baccha Rattan Kumar from Boot Polish is his cute little kid that learns boot polish off kid actor Jagdeep(not even restrained as a kid!)

Here you go, a small round up of the movies I saw this summer! Hope you like it!

Heer Ranjha - Don't Let Pran/Jeevan/Ajit Near A Love Story!

Pran, always eager to meddle in some affairs of the heart!

Yes, please chide me for being a terrible lazy blogger, I have been catching up on sooo many Hollywood movies that I almost forgot about the Masala Pradesh. But the seriousness and lack of the Shashitabh in Hollywood made me come running back.

And the genre I love quite a bit is the star crossed lovers that have had countless remakes from the 40's to the 70's, Heer Ranjha/Laila Majnu/Shiri Farhad/Sohni Mahiwal/and of course Rum Anil! I have managed to catch most of the remakes and redoes, all with a lot of masala such as unnecessary sadness that is actually quite necessary and lots of comic relief via Tuntun, and Mukri!

But this Heer Ranjha i think surpasses all the others because of this man:

Ranjha - the eloquent Raaj Kumar
Raaj Kumar just makes this movie with THAT voice, it just so nuanced and enunciated and by god I could listen to his dialogues all day long!

Getting back to the movie, the dialogues are just a beautiful mix of Punjabi and Hindi, and most wonderful about the whole movie is that it's in verse! Soo poetic and great and its written by Shabana's father Kaifi Azmi. So we start off in Punjab where Ranjha is spoilt by his aunts played with masala cuteness by Indrani Mukherjee, Achla Sachdev, Sonia Sahni, Mumtaz Begum who have a huge haveli where aunt Kamini Kaushal gets to run around upstairs and downstairs! It kinda reminded me of the Sanjay Leela Bhansali movies where Aishwariya and his heroines run about like crazy!

Rebellious Ranjha is from Hazara and defies his aunts and goes to a wedding in Jhang where he sees Heer(Priya Rajvansh)A gorgeously shot meeting!
They meet and Ranjha immediately waxes lyrical about Heer to her friend, Ranjha then becomes a "cowboy" according to the hilarious subtitles, he becomes a farm hand at Heer's estate and they stealthily meet in the night and sing the best song of the bunch "Khoya Khoya" the lighting in the movie is lovely, the blue lights sort of make me think of a Douglas Sirk film, with key colours of blue, peach, and pink, and in this movie its yellow!

On one occasion Heer runs to Ranjha's house, but this is no ordinary run it is the "Waddle RUN" its really quite funny the way Priya swishes her arms around while running through the Punjab fields! Her elbows are stuck to her side, while she flails around her arms, and in one shot as the bhangra band are approaching she almost falls because of her silly running!

THe Waddle RUN - tripping over actresses all day long!
On this same the day the village baddie Pran is stirring up trouble in the town, and in a funny scene during a poetry shoutout in the market, the villagers make fun of Pran, and hell hath no fury a Pran scorned. So he wanders the fields in search of something to mess up, but Pran-style!
So when he spots Heer and Ranjha in a horny hug, he's found something to meddle in!
And meddle he does, he tells Heer's nasty mum who then tells her husband the kindly Thakur(Jayant) who is shocked his daughter could partake in a horny hug where Ranjha sniffs Heer's neck and squeezes her waist! But according to Pran, thats horny and gonna give badnaam to the Thakur! Quickly Pran ties Ranjha to a tree, and leaves him to the crows and beasts in a studio made forest! The Thakur sympathizes with his daughter and unties Ranjha so that he can go back to his village and send for her. Pran doesn't like this and meddles some more and then Heer must get married to this bad man! But during this ordeal she has to endure Jeevan as a bad priest that makes her say Qabool to Ajit when SHOCK she doesn't want to! What will Ranjha do? How will Heer live with that dastardly Ajit? You all know the tragic ending but this movie paces the sadness and love well and I even cried at the end!
But this movie has a warning that soo many of the great character actors show up and each of them have enough scope to make an impact, and my favorite overacting Kapoor, Prithviraj shows up as the the king of the land!
Heer Ranjha is a lovely evocative piece of film, definitely watch it for Raaj Kumar!

Muqaddar Ka Sikandar - Unnecessary Sadness, and Bad Handwriting!

If only there was more of this!

I'm back from my wedding in Calgary, and back to the famous blog of mine!! So I decided to write about one of the most frustratingly good/timepass movie that I've watched over and over, but each time I find myself screeching "NOOOO WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT!!" and pointing my fists at the tv screeen! Muqaddar Ka Sikandar was made in 1978 during the height of Amitabh's angry young man/lover pinnacle of success and directed by one of my favorite directors Prakash Mehra. So he takes a spin at the Devdas story full of childhood sweethearts and the self-destructive tendencies of its hero Sikandar.

Sikandar sings O Saathi Re to the creepy doll

We meet Sikandar(Master Mayur-in another puddle-inducing role) a poor scruffy urchin that really wants to work for Masterji(Sheeram Lagoo) who hates these scruffy orphan types as one such kid took advantage of his wife's kindness and stabbed her and took off with jewelry. With this kind of backstory I'm surprised that the Masterji didn't have a Zanjeer film to himself! Moving on Sikandar is smitten with the little Memsaab of the house, who so kindly gives him a blanket in the cold and lets him eat with her at the dinner table. Then another hilarious sub-plot involves Sikandar rescuing his new-found Maa's purse, there is a chase scene where Mayur gets to pummel and kick the bad kids. He then gains a new sister and mother, and all is happy in the world till he smashes his memsaab's doll and vows to buy her a new one. Very sweet so far, till the only silly way to reach his Memsaab is to climb the drain up to her room and then ogle at a diamond necklace, this is where my head fell into my hands at the silliness! Naturally a nasty baddie called JD (Ranjeet-in a non-lecherous role!) catches him in the act, and quite naturally his maa works at the same house. And when the masterji launches into a tirade about his hatred for scruffy urchins like Sikandar, his maa comes up with this:Take that all employers of scruffy urchins!

Then the problems all pile on at a rapid speed, the coughing and spluttering that Sikandar didn't notice before about his maa(Nirupa Roy) all attack her after she's finished her speech and even more sad is she dies outside the Memsaab's house! Sikandar has some hardships on the way which includes the local goon Paul (Yusuf Khan) and then in a brilliant introduction Sikandar is all grown up to be the brooding and sharaabi Devdas riding on his motorbike singing the preachy lyrics of "Rote Hue Aate Hai Sab." Sikandar is a pretty weird guy, he keeps his doll that was for his Memsaab and talks to it, though I must say i love the creepy childhood toy parts of the staple masala plot, but he is still hung up on his Memsaab who he coincidentally lives opposite too! But along the way he has to get even with Paul and his hoods, there's so much revenge that Sikandar has festering in him. But as a good yet angry young man Sikandar turns Paul into the police for smuggling goods into his district, what a good example! What a good citizen this well dressed angry young citizen is!

The memsaab has also grown into a spirited young lady in Raakhee, who still holds Sikandar responsible for being a stealing scruffy urchin, this is where Sikandar has sad dreams that he could climb over to her house and that she'd forgive him in an instant, alas that doesn't happen. Because we must introduce the sexy second hero Vishal(Vinod Khanna) a crime fighter by night at a seedy club and a tightly trousered lawyer in the day! I had to say the latter they're very tight and the camera seems to love a butt shot of Vinod! They quickly become friends after all this is a masala Devdas and Sikandar just has to find Vishal's mother who walks around the street with a conveniently placed photo of Vishal!!! But to add to the Devdas element Sikandar and his hilarious friend played by Ram P Sethi go to see the Pepto Bismol dressed courtesan Zohrabai, who instantly falls in love with him after he sings a typically sad refrain of her song Salaam E Ishq!Don't ask them about wearing the same colour outfit!

But as the story goes, Sikandar pines after his memsaab while his best mate is already in the door as he must study with Masterji who is ill and was a lawyer too! But Sikandar tries to woo her in a underhanded way by paying for the guy's medicine, and along the way he still has some grievances for the shopkeeper who denied him meds for his own dying mother, got to get all the revenge along the way! Personally i wouldn't help the silly guy if he insulted my mother and me and launching into a tirade of anger about my urchin-ness!

I don't know, the scripts says i HAVE to!!

On the sadness front, Sikandar has made a new enemy of Dilawar(Amjad Khan) and JD, who have joined forces to destroy the poor sharaabi, and poor Zohrabai gets told off by Vishal who says she brings badnaam to Sikandar's sister's marriage prospects! And even more sadness occurs when the most frustrating part of the movie happens. Sikandar, the stupid duffer tells Vishal to write a letter to the memsaab as Sikandar is illiterate and can't write! This sparks off a chain of convolusions that end badly and also make me cry too despite producing my ire as well! NOOOOOO!!!

This movie twist and turns every second is full of the nourishing masala elements of lost mother, misplaced love letters, scruffy urchins, and more! It is a great yet frustrating especially the second half which could be called as we all put the "curse of the second half"

Filmfare Beckons as well as a Shaadi!

THE SCANSSSS!!!

courtesy of Bollywooddeewana

I dedicate my Filmfare to Rum, the bromance and moustache spotter!

Great news, everyone this homely and crazy and assorted blog is being published in the next edition of Filmfare, with Deepika and Saif-uncle-ji! I am ecstatic and will probably take all the issues from the dvdwallah! I've been very neglectful to the site, but i shall return again. But next week is a wedding in Calgary, and its sure to be a very filmi affair and i thought i might do a quick post on a favorite wedding movie of mine in the week!

But as a keen lover of bromance and moustaches here's a treat!

All together now: AWWWWWWWWW

Rum's Famous Making Article, or Bollywood and Mythology!

Manoj says READ IT

I'm back again, and here's my article that will be published in a independant Vancouver magazine, its just how Bollywood seems to be influence by the Mahabharat and the Ramayana! Its pretty long but I think it's pretty grrrreat!

Bollywood and the Mahabharat/Ramayana

Bollywood conjures up many images of spectacular dance numbers, opulent sets, hyperbolic acting and general mindless fun. Since the beginning of Indian cinema, religion and faith have influenced the storylines that created the largest film industry today.
The Mahabharat is one of the two major Sanskrit texts of ancient India, the other being the Ramayana. The Mahabharat is an epic poem that discusses dharma/duty, artha/purpose, kama/pleasure, and moksha/liberation with the story of a power struggle and war between two families the Pandavas and Kauravas. The Mahabharat contains 18 stories, and has 100,000 verses. The Ramayana focuses on Rama and Sita, a married couple that deals with infidelity, kidnapping, and war on a cosmic level.

Bollywood since the age of the silent era has used aspects of the Mahabharat and Ramayana to highlight the struggle of good against evil. The two epics were performed at the theatre and as Ram-Lila plays, which are performed on the street, but with the advent of cinema the epics were translated to screen. The growing number of religious or mythological movies in the 1920’s made these epics available to the working class. The Talkies era of Bollywood established the star system, and religious movies were swept aside by the tidal wave of song and dance movies. Religious movies relegated into the B movie territory with low budgets, tacky special effects, and bad acting.

Faith in mainstream Bollywood was not lost, because as long as the Mahabharat and Ramayana are, the characters of these two stories are found in the hero and heroine of Bollywood movie.
The hero in a Bollywood movie is fashioned as all rounder that adopts traits of the many Hindu gods and characters in mythology. A hero is also expected to rescue his heroine when a big bad badly dressed villain tries to rape, this scene is so common in masala movies which combine action, thrills, and romance into one melange of a movie. But if you look closely, when Draupadi, the shared wife of the Pandavas clan is captured by an evil god and about to be dishonoured all five brothers show up to rescue her virtue.

A hero in Bollywood is a symbol of the gods and mortals featured in a Hindu mythology. A hero embodies the mischievous nature of Krishna, righteousness of Bhima, the nobility of Shiva, the morality of Arjuna. The golden age of Bollywood of the 1950’s challenged these idealized versions of heroes by having a vagabond in Raj Kapoor’s “Aawara” (The Tramp) or a seedy blackmailer of Dev Anand in “Jaal”(Trap) the heroes were now grey and full of ennui, which was why the Golden Age lasted for a decade.

With the Indo-China wars in the 60’s, Bollywood once again became a route for escapism, with heroes and heroines sharing a tame kiss on the cheek, or a sexy rain song. The hero became a complete do-gooder, reflective of the gods. More and more Bollywood films churned out in the 60’s were storylines from different parts of the Mahabharat but more so on the Ramayana. Which brought a spate of female oriented weepy dramas that had an upright hero marry a pregnant heroine to save her honour or a put upon heroine that will do anything for her man.

Then came the Emergency rule by the Gandhi government in the 70’s, people were upset and angry, and the hero that represented the chaos was a tall, dark and Byronic Amitabh Bachan the first hero to be all the gods and kick some ass too! Bachan’s breakout movie “Zanjeer”(Symbol) had him playing a vengeful police officer who obsessed over finding his parents killer. The movie gave Bachan his Angry Young Man Persona and birthed the term “dishoom dishoom” the sound of Bachan’s punching and beating up villains! The vigilante hero image that Amitabh Bachan created was a voice to the people upset with the regime, but the vigilante was at the heart of the Mahabharat too, with the illegitimate son Karna Pandavas seeking to ruin the Pandavas clan for keeping his parentage in the dark. Karna was the new symbol for all revenge dramas that Amitabh and other actors starred in. Yash Chopra’s “Trishul” was a direct version where Bachan played the wronged son of a wealthy industrialist and plots to ruin all his business.

The heroine on the hand has endured some shape shifting in her time. Bollywood has idealized the heroine as a sacrificing Sita of the Ramayana, and the powerful Draupadi of the Mahabharat. Since the beginning of Indian cinema, a heroine has had the voice of a nightingale, has sacrificed her love for her family, been a wonderful mother and wife, and encouraging the hero to embrace his religious side.

During the Roaring Twenties a heroine was allowed to kiss her hero and in a shocking movie called “Typist Girl” (1926) the heroine defied her parents and hero to work as a typist. The twenties and thirties in Bollywood was an experimental time for the heroine, she could go to work, wear trousers, and kiss her hero torridly. A milestone for the growth of the heroine was “Hunterwali” (Hunter Woman) where the Anglo-Indian heroine Fearless Nadia performed daring stunts on top a train and wore trousers and cracked a whip! Nadia went onto doing many other stunt movies and earned the title India’s Original Stunt Queen.

The 1950’s were the Golden Age of Indian cinema, where directors toyed with the darker realm of the hero and heroine. The heroine could be a cabaret dance with a heart of gold like Geeta Bali in “Baazi” (Game) or a strong fearless woman of the untouchable caste like Nutan in “Sujata.” But the return to the Sita figure of the Ramayana was in “Aawara” (Vagabond) by Raj Kapoor. The protagonist played Kapoor is fatherless, and he learns that his mother was married to a judge, played by Kapoor’s father Prithviraj Kapoor, but was kidnapped by a bandit, upon her return to the husband, he questions whether the child is his, and throws her out into the street. The literal use of the Ramayana story in Aawara highlights the sacrificing duty of the mother in the movie, which makes Kapoor use the argument of nature vs. nurture during the movie.

The 1960’s became the Gilded Age for the heroine, as she was forced to sacrifice her love of the hero to marry her parent’s choice, and the only intimacy was a cutaway shot of the bees and the flowers! The return to religious allusions brought many female-orientated movies based on the stories of Ramayana, and other wronged female gods like Shakuntala. Faith in the 60’s was a point of reforming, a bad cabaret vamp that loves the hero is shown the light of religion and soon dresses in saris and sings devotional songs and then only does the hero fall for them. One such movie is “Jab Jab Phool Khile” (When a Flower Blossoms) where the glamorous heroine wears funky dresses goes on holiday to Kashmir; she unexpectedly falls for a simpleton boatman. She soon tries to reform him to her cosmopolitan ways by teaching him to do the twist and wear suits, but when this does not suit him he leaves. She then sings a devotional and lovesick song and transforms from haughty cosmopolitan to dutiful wife and runs to the station to stop him. Movies like these only lasted for a while till the turbulent 1970’s, where the vigilante hero took the focus.

As the Emergency rule disenchanted moviegoers, the hero who fights the law and evil villains came to forefront, and the heroine was now relegated to singing songs for the hero who was too angry to sing and dance. The rise of the multistarrers made the girls into trophy heroines, in the Amitabh Bachan dominated industry of the 70’s; the heroines were there to pacify Bachan’s anger and obsession with justice. Violence and sex were the fervour of the day, and heroines were wearing skimpier outfits to titillate audiences and feverish villains, only too ready to kidnap them Ramayana style and keep them in a funky den. Heroines also turned into vamps, who swigged alcohol with the hero’s and were sexualized by the camera and the rain songs that were rampant during the 70’s. Zeenat Aman, the path breaking revisionist heroine was relaxed about her sexuality and advocated free love her roles varied from junkies, to gold diggers, and a career woman, to an adulterous wife. Other heroines too, squeezed into to tighter clothes and adopted Aman’s vivacity. Here were heroines that would not cave too easily to religion and be reformed by a hero, as now the hero was a vigilante who blamed the gods for his suffering like Bachan’s famous character Vijay in “Deewaar”(Wall), though some heroines still repeated the patterns of the sixties. One of the most scandalous movies was Raj Kapoor’s highly sexed version of the mythological Shakuntala story, starring Aman as the burn victim version of Shakuntala who falls for a hero, played by Kapoor’s younger brother Shashi Kapoor, who hates ugliness and refuses to recognize her on their wedding day or her child, she then causes a catastrophic flood to wake up the ungrateful hero to her suffering. As noble as the story sounds, the audience did not see the allusion as they were struck by Aman’s braless heroine with see-through saris and the rest of the gorgeous village. Though the violent blockbusters raged on at the cinemas, the underground religious movies still had a place. And surprisingly a religious epic “Jai Santoshi Maa” (Hail the Goddess of Satisfaction) was one of the biggest money-spinners of 1975 along with Bachan classics “Sholay” (Embers) and “Deewaar”(Wall). The movie was a tacky but devotional film about a woman, who prays to Santoshi Maa, to get her husband to love and respect her.

The idealization of the mother figure on screen is inspired by the long-suffering Kunti the matriarch of the noble Pandavas clan. The epitome of the mother is from the movie Mother India (1957). The epic movie combines the elements of the Mahabharat with a good son against a bad son, and the mother who is torn between her love for her bad son and the law. Over time, mothers have become shrewd mother in laws that terrorize the heroine or trophy mothers that guide their sons and daughters to be good and virtuous. Another great mother movie is Deewaar, where the violent character Vijay’s rise to power is done purely to show his mother a good life, though she shuns it because of Vijay’s illegal smuggling and gambling. The mother of the seventies, now instructed her son to avenge her death or be an upright citizen, which was quite hard for Amitabh Bachans “Angry Young Man” persona.

Heroes and Heroines have changed, and rarely bear the allusions of the gods and mortals featured in the Mahabharat and Ramayana. But faith and religion still remain prominent in Bollywood, as devotionals songs usually start at the beginning of the movie, and the family unit is very close and pious like the Pandavas clan of the Mahabharat, they will do anything for each other.

The Family almost was a second character in the love stories of the 80’s and 90’s where family opposition to a lover, was soon sorted out when the hero or heroine sacrificed their love for their family’s honour. One such movie was Hum Aapke Hai Kaun (What is our relation?) where the two leads fell in love, but tragedy strikes when the soon to be bride passes away, and the heroine jilts her lover to get married and save the family honour. The 90’s in Bollywood was a return to traditionalism, although characters danced and lived in Switzerland or England, their hearts were still “Hindustani.” The family of the Ramayana were soon seen in any love story, with a stern patriarch like Dasharatha from the, a shrewish stepmother like Kaikeyi, a noble brother like Lakhshman, and a villain like Ravana.

The family in the Mahabharat have been adapted to screen with Kalyug (Obsession) and Hum Paanch (Us Five). While the latter has typical masala elements of songs, shrieking villains, it adapts the Mahabharat to a feudal village, where the five Pandavas brothers are friends from different castes who unite to take on the evil landlord family. Kalyug is the subtler art house version, with the Pandavas clan as wealthy industrialists at war with Kauravas over the next building contract. The movie painted a sympathetic portrait of both the families, which is not presented, in the epic poem, and especially Karna Pandavas with an understated performance by Shashi Kapoor.

At the heart of a Bollywood story is the allusion to the great poems of the Ramayana and Mahabharat, which is coated with a bit of singing and dancing, a bit of religious preaching and whole lot of dishoom dishoom.