Heroines who are currently at the top of their game in Bollywood

You don’t have to google the fact that Hindi films have always been male centric. Heroines, till very recently, were considered interchangeable. The leading man was the king of all he surveyed. He was the ‘sun’, who made sure everything revolved around him. Especially, the film’s story. Mothers made his favourite gajar ka halwa even when carrots weren’t in season, sisters wept with joy when they tied a rakhi on him, the wife was a charnon ki dasi of sorts, ready for any kind of sacrifice. Bullets missed him by miles, he survived every kind of disaster. And if, God forbid, he died, it was for a heroic cause. And he always cared more for his best friend than for his beloved.

That kind of onscreen power sometimes went to a male star’s head. From turning up at evening for a morning shoot, to cutting a co-star’s lines, recommending his favourite heroine… we have heard of many such horror stories. Pay parity too was a sore point, what with the heroines getting around a tenth of what the leading man was paid. It’s not that women didn’t get the roles they deserved. Madhubala in Mughal-e-Azam (1960) was the fulcrum of the film, so was Rekha in Khoobsurat (1980) or Sridevi in Chandni (1989). But such roles were few and far between. At the time when Amitabh Bachchan was ruling the roost and Smita Patil was known as the queen bee of art cinema, getting author-backed roles in films like Bhumika and Umbartha, she was given a lesser role in Namak Halal. And she wasn’t indispensable to the film the way Bachchan was. Strangely, women on screen were never shown pursuing a vocation. Their choice of career was mostly being a homemaker. This cut-across both class and religious divide. Satyajit Ray showed the challenges a homemaker faces when she goes out to work in his Bengali film Mahanagar (1963). A forgotten Humkadam (1980), starring Raakhee and Parikshat Sahni, was made as a Hindi remake. These were rare outings. However, things seem to be turning for the better of late. Maybe, it’s because more and more women are breaking the glass ceiling in real life too. Perhaps it’s because filmmakers have realised that today’s generation would certainly like to see films about empowered women. Call it art imitating life or whatever... we’re surely seeing a spurt in heroine-oriented films of late.

Kangana Ranaut

Thanks to Baahubali, the mood in Bollywood has veered towards costume dramas. Our macho stars are hell-bent on out-muscling each other in historical dramas. In such a scenario, Kangana Ranaut took up the gauntlet of doing a film on Rani Laxmibai. Manikarnika: The Queen Of Jhansi (co-directed by Radha Krishna Jagarlamudi and Kangana Ranaut) was a grand celebration of the brave warrior queen. The action scenes were a gorefest. The fiery intensity of its protagonist made you root for her. Kangana faced an uphill struggle making the film. Her director left the film and so did the initial team. She took up the reins, brought in another set of technicians and pulled off her labour of love. It speaks volumes of the rising level of commercial clout women have today in our industry. Kangana has always managed to grab women-centric roles, be it in Aanand L Rai’s Tanu Weds Manu part 1 and 2, Vikas Bahl’s Queen or Prakash Kovelamudi’s quirky Judgementall Hai Kya. But her role in Panga was different. She played a mother, who wants to get back to the sport she once excelled in – kabaddi. She played a middle-class working woman, juggling the twin responsibilities of her job and looking after her family. Initially, she takes up the practice to satisfy her son’s whim. But somewhere along the way, she starts doing it for her own self. The film raised a pertinent question - don’t women have a right to excel at something just for themselves? It’s difficult to imagine such a self-assertive role been written a decade ago. Perhaps the fact that the film is made by a sensitive woman director, Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari, has got something to do with it.

Vidya Balan

This story has to mention Vidya Balan. She’s the pioneer of this trend on screen. R. Balki’s Paa (2009) had her playing single mother to a son suffering from progeria – Amitabh Bachchan. Milan Luthria’s The Dirty Picture (2011) had her play a character modelled on the late South star, Silk Smitha. Vidya shed inhibitions and carried the film on her shoulders. Sujoy Ghosh’s Kahaani (2012) saw her as a pregnant avenging angel. Suresh Triveni’s Tumhari Sulu (2017) had her as an enthusiastic housewife -turned- radio jockey for a late-night show. In Mission Mangal (2019), she plays a scientist at ISRO, who uses hacks she’s learnt as a homemaker to send a probe to Mars. It was a far-fetched approach. But we still believed in it because of her flawless performance. Shattering the stereotype of the conventional Hindi heroine, Vidya Balan is a genre by herself.

Bhumi Pednekar

Bhumi Pednekar started her career playing a ‘heavyweight’ character in Sharat Katariya’s
Dum Laga Ke Haisha (2015). Our heroines are supposed to have hour-glass figures and hence seeing a woman with girth was a revelation. In her most recent film, Tushar Hiranandani’s Saand Ki Aankh (2019), Bhumi plays a 70-plus woman, who along with her sister-in-law, (Taapsee Pannu) becomes a champion pistol shooter. The story was based on the life of two real-life ‘Revolver Dadis’. In a country where fairness is considered synonymous with beauty, Bhumi played a dusky character in Bala (2019). Heroines in the past would have been wary of accepting such a role. Yes, the future seems to be truly female.

Alia Bhatt

Meghna Gulzar gave Alia Bhatt one of the best roles of her career in Raazi (2018). It’s an adaptation of Harinder Sikka’s novel, Calling Sehmat, a true account of an Indian Research
and Analysis Wing (RAW) agent. Alia plays an Indian spy infiltrating the household of a Pakistani army general and relaying information to Indian authorities in the ’70s. We’ve grown up on spy films, starring glamorous men pulling off improbable stunts. But here we have a petite girl, leading a double life, trying her utmost to fit in. The audience’s acceptance of a female spy in a patriotic film, was another indicator that women aren’t just mere arm candy in our films anymore. They can fill in cinema halls as much as their male counterparts. Also, Alia’s role, as the jealous girlfriend Safeena, in Zoya Akhtar’s Gully Boy, was so powerful that it threatened to take over the film revolving around backstreet rappers.

Taapsee Pannu

Anubhav Sinha’s recently released Thappad addressed domestic violence. A husband
(Pavail Gulati) strikes his wife (Taapsee Pannu) in a fit of misdirected rage – in a one-off incident. The film underlines that he cannot do it even once. The wife stands tall, both defiant and vulnerable, ready to leave her husband’s house because she can’t tolerate the disrespect. She’s the everywoman in the film. The metaphor of thousands, nay millions of women, who suffer abuse – in some form or the other – daily. While most have lauded the film, some found the cause and the conclusion absurd. That it was just one slap after all. But that’s the point. Even once is not legitimate. Violence is just not okay – no matter what the intensity or intention – contrary to the justifications that Kabir Singh may have provided. Taapsee Pannu is the unlikely hero of the film. She cannot carry on with a man whom she no longer loves and respects. Taapsee coincidentally was the protagonist in another film championing the rights of women. Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury’s Pink (2016) talked about sexual violence against women and underlined the resounding mandate that when a woman says no, it means no. In Pink, the violence was more graphic, more in your face. It also pointed out that law, often, isn’t kind to victims of rape or abuse. Amitabh Bachchan’s character took over the film in the climax. But the focus of the film was very much on the three victims played by Taapsee Pannu, Kirti Kulhari and Andrea Tariang. However, the point is not that actresses are only portraying roles that champion women rights. Taapsee herself played a scheming vixen in last year’s Badla. She played an anti-heroine in the Sujoy Ghosh film. That was a rare breed indeed.

Deepika Padukone

With Shoojit Sircar’s Piku (2015), Deepika Padukone got her first heroine-oriented role,
which pitted her against a cantankerous father played by Amitabh Bachchan. Given the formidable presence of Amitabh and Irrfan Khan, we can’t truly say it was her film alone. Yet she excelled as a woman, who’s modern in her choices yet old-world in her commitment to family. Meghna Gulzar’s Chhapaak (2019) took Deepika leagues further. Here was a top-rated commercial heroine, arguably one of the most beautiful faces on screen, playing an acid-attack survivor. It was the bravest decision she has taken in her career. A stunning superstar was willing to sport a scarred face. As said earlier, she played a survivor. That means coming to terms with what you have. The best line from the film is when someone tells her that she’s looking so happy. “Ab khush hoon toh kya karun,” she retorts telling us that life isn’t just made of tears. It’s these little nuggets that made her role so powerful.

Rani Mukerji

A rare animal is a woman playing a hardcore cop on screen. While Vijayashanti played tough cop roles down South, a Hindi film equivalent was hard to find, till Rani Mukerji came along in Mardaani (2014). While she traded punches with a drug dealer, who also ran a child prostitute racket in the first film, in Mardaani 2 (2019) she played a cat-and-mouse game with a serial rapist and killer. Her very Bachchan-like beating-up of the culprit in the end was goosebump- inducing. That’s what the viewers wanted every rapist to go through, police brutality or not. The women audience particularly felt vindicated.