Age matters only to one half in Bollywood?

By M H Ahssan

It is the last day of the year and there are two big Bollwood blockbusters ruling cinema halls across the country. Yes they are both Khan starrers ( Aamir Khan’s Ghajini and Shah Rukh Khan’s Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi), yes they are both vehicles for these men to reclaim their position as Bollywood reigning deities, but if you look closer they also are major pointers to a trend that takes our cinema back to neolithic times.

Some three decades back a 50 plus Rajesh Khanna in a hideous wig would romance teenaged heroines like Padmini Kolhapure, Poonam Dhillon and Sridevi in films like Souten, Dard and Masterji, and we would snigger. Today a 40 plus Shah Rukh Khan discards the Ranis and the Prietys to find an arm candy in a 19-year-old Anushka Sharma, and we don’t even bat an eyelid. Aamir Khan’s love interest in Ghajini is good 20 years younger than him, but that doesn’t make the perfectionist Khan question the credibility of the venture. Considering the fact that both these men stand for progression in the Hindi film industry, their blatant endorsement of ageism is disturbing indeed.

And to think that the year started with a lot of promise. With Nishabd and Eklavya, Amitabh Bachchan was finally playing his age. Aamir Khan made a sensitive film on child psychology called Taare Zameen Par and middle class India found a voice in Dibakar Banerjee’s Khosla Ka Ghosla.

But 2008 hardly took the story forward. Actually, it took a step backward and stumbled into a pigshit of ageism and sexism. This isn’t a criticism but an observation, the truth is that Bollywood has done precious little to portray progressive female lead roles. Instead it has reinforced those very stereotypes that we have tried to shrug off for all these years. Be it the simpering mother of a kidnapped daughter (Vidya Malvade in Kidnap) or a vivacious girl who finds love in a man twice her age simply because she is married to him (Anushka Sharma in Rab Ne …) leading ladies in Bollywood proved to be just sexed up versions of their much-neglected predecessors.

Glance over the year and see that apart from the odd Fashion, Sorry Bhai! and Rock On hardly any other film gives a lady a chance to show some brain power on the screen. Bollywood producers might be paying the Priyanka Chopras and Kareena Kapoors millions, but it’s pretty evident that they are destined to play second fiddles to the Khans and the Kumars for most of their acting career.

Closer home in Tollywood, things aren’t much better. A 40 plus Prosenjit continues to romance women half his age in films like Juddha and Rajkumar, while Jeet dominates action flicks where lead actresses are little more than arm candies. Even in romantic films like Chro dini tumi je amar (the biggest hit in Tollywood for the past decade), the heroine is a mute victim who has no other choice than to marry the guy of her parent’s choice.

But if you thought Hollywood stands for progression then think again. It’s quite a patriarchal set -up there too. The blog “Women and Hollywood” features telling statistics: last year only five of the top 50 films of the year had major roles for women. Only 15 per cent of directors, producers, writers and high-ranking staff are women. Thelma Adams, film critic for US Weekly, tells the site, “The point here is can women open movies there? Meryl Streep can’t. Jodie Foster can’t. Julianne Moore can’t. Julia Roberts can’t”. So there.