New Delhi, March 7: Almost always in a white sari, long-suffering and beyond reproach, waiting for her son to come home so she can tell him to wash up while she sets out his meal. That’s the mother figure imprinted in the collective memory of generations of Hindi cinema goers. That is fast changing. Images of the ideal ‘ma’ framed in sepia, all the way from Nirupa Roy to Rakhee, are giving way to the modern-day mother in her many shades who loves her children for sure but also maintains her individuality.
As another women’s day comes around, time perhaps to look at the long distance travelled. More and more mothers in Hindi cinema, both mainstream and off it, now represent the concerns of everyday women, of those who have lives beyond their children. They have agency, often a job and points of view that go beyond typical “motherly concerns” of yore.
And that, many writers and directors have discovered can be a great backdrop against which to tell the story of the hero or the heroine. In the Saif Ali Khan-Rani Mukerji starrer “Hum Tum”, both the mothers are single. One, who is separated from her husband and the other a widow. But both, Rati Agnihotri as mother to the hero and Kirron Kher as mother to the heroine are spunky, smart and full of life.
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The 2004 film, in which the mothers are not mere stand-ins but vital to the lives of their children, was a huge hit.
In the 2000s, the mother figure started transforming slowly and Kher got too play many of these roles, some a little off-kilter, others hugely melodramatic and always empathetic of course. And so came films such as “Dostana”, “Main Hoon Naa”, “Veer Zaara” and “Devdas”.
In 2014 came “Khoobsurat” where Kher played the mother of Sonam Kapoor and Ratna Pathak Shah the strict matriarch and mother of the hero Fawad Khan.
Two years before that, Dimple Kapadia was the fierce, full of laughs single mother to a wayward son in the Saif Ali Khan-Deepika Padukone starrer “Cocktail”.
The evolution of mothers is now visible in the smallest of roles in narratives where they are sometimes the protagonist and other time a useful foil.
Actor Seema Pahwa has played many middle class mother roles in films such as “Bareilly Ki Barfi” and “Shubh Mangal Saavdhan”.
In “Bareilly Ki Barfi”, she is Sushila, a harrowed mother vetting grooms for her daughter. In “Shubh Mangal Saavdhan”, she is a well read woman who uses a children’s classic to deliver a sex talk to her soon-to-be-married daughter.
Among the more memorable in recent years has been Dolly Ahluwalia’s turn as a widowed mother to Ayushman Khurrana in Shoojit Sircar’s “Vicky Donor”. The mother, a salon owner, has a great relationship with her mother-in-law, the two enjoying a tipple and more every evening after work.
In “Thappad”, Dia Mirza plays a single mother who explains to her teenage daughter why she does not want to get married again.
In the same film, Ratna Pathak Shah delivers an engaging performance as a mother who makes her gentle husband realise that he overlooked her ambitions in their marriage.
Shah, in fact, has played many varieties of interesting and memorable mother roles in “Jaane tu Yaa Jaane Naa”, “Khoobsurat” and “Kapoor & Sons”.
Over the years, the portrayal of mothers has become more diverse and also more nuanced, seen most particularly in parallel cinema.
In 2024’s “Girls Will Be Girls”, director Shuchi Talati explores the conflict between a young mother and her teenage daughter to mine a beautiful story. The film, which opened to rave reviews, features Kani Kusruti as the mother whose yearning and loneliness runs parallel to her daughter’s coming-of-age dilemmas.
Also last year was Katrina Kaif playing a mother with a mysterious past in Sriram Raghavan’s thriller “Merry Christmas”. In fact, she is in a restaurant with her daughter when she attracts the attention of a stranger who she invites home.
With filmmakers exploring the funny and at times complicated facets of women within the framework of the relationship of their children, many such stories have started to emerge.
Geeta Agrawal Sharma last year had fun playing interesting mother roles in Varun Grover’s directorial “All India Rank” and Kiran Rao’s satirical rural comedy “Laapataa Ladies”. In “All India Rank”, she is Manju, who acts as the balancing act between a strict father and her son buckling under the pressure of cracking the IITs.
In “Laapataa Ladies”, she is Yashoda, a conventional mother who realises what her life really is when her daughter-in-law gets swapped with another bride. There are moments when Sharma remembers her own fears as a young bride and the fact that she never cared to notice what she herself liked while cooking for the family. (PTI)
