Did You Know - Why ‘Ma’ Matters in Bollywood?
Did you know that most of the women artists who play mothers are actually much younger than their 'sons' in Bollywood?
Did you know that most of the women artists who play mothers are actually much younger than their 'sons' in Bollywood? And forget the heroines who get only a part of the payment the heroes get, the mothers actually get a pittance. They are reduced to being ‘supporting’ or ‘character’ artists. This can be said without going into the actual age, age difference, and the difference in the emoluments. For, Bollywood, like Hollywood and much of the cinema across the world, is male-dominated, and women, in general, get a short end of the bargain – age-wise, importance-wise, and money-wise.
Imagine an A-lister like Kareena Kapoor Khan, complaining last week about pay disparity, although she has yet to graduate to playing a mother. When that happens, we will not know how much less she will be paid compared to what she is earning now.
That is the way Bollywood works. Or Hollywood, where a veteran like Meryl Streep has to speak up for women artists.
In Bollywood, a hero generally fades out, unwanted and perhaps, too egoistic, to play the supporting lead. Among the few exceptions is Shashi Kapoor, who could shine in ‘Deewar’, telling off Amitabh Bachchan: “Merey paas Ma hai.”
Compared to the hero, a heroine's place is 'reserved', if she so wishes, to play the mother, if she has an Indian persona. She was integral to cinema and even though the cinema has evolved, the mother remains the mother in any plot or story that has family relationships. Treating the hero to his favourite ‘kheer’ or some other savoury has ebbed, but little.
Exceptions are there. Remember ‘Darlings’ where Shefali Shah and Alia Bhatt, the mother-daughter duo plot even the murder of a wife-beating husband?
But then, in Bollywood, the mother figure is revered – some compensation for measly payment! Remember Nargis who played ‘Mother India’, when only 28?
All this comes to mind after the recent death of Sulochana. She played the mother 60 years ago, in 1963 in the Marathi film ‘Molkareen’ (The house-help).
Did you know many favourites of the last century graduated from being heroines? Leela Chitnis was Ashok Kumar’s leading lady in the 1940s, to become Raj Kapoor’s mother in ‘Awaara’ a decade later. Lalita Pawar, Nirupa Roy, and many others went through that transition. Pawar became the quintessential ‘saas’ torturing the heroine. Did you know she hated it? And Nirupa Roy who became the self-sacrificing Ma to the heroes, and loved it.
How the hero treated his mother also mattered. Dev Anand was never the feet-touching son. He would hug the mother.
Age differences may not show on the screen. But cannot be wished away among the males. To work with Amitabh Bachchan is like a magnet in Bollywood.
A much-younger Rajinikanth, South’s superstar, played a supporting role to AB back in the 1980s. It did not diminish his stardom in the South. But poor Aman Verma who played AB’s eldest son in ‘Baghbaan’ later complained that he was not accepted as the hero after that.
As for AB’s ‘wives’, some would be decades younger, like Smita Jaikar, Shefali Shah, and Kirron Kher. The most celebrated, perhaps, and most happy playing his mother, is Vidya Balan. She played the single mother to him in ‘Pa’, without losing her heroine status.
She famously said that she would tell her grandchildren someday that she had played Amitabh Bachchan’s mother. So Ma matters!
