Women power on celluloid: Hindi movie mothers evolve into fuller beings

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 now represent the concerns of everyday women, of those who have lives beyond children. They have agency, often a job and points of view that go beyond the typical “motherly concerns” of yore.

And that, many 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 (2004), both the mothers are single — one 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. In the 2000s, the mother figure started transforming slowly and Kher got to play many of these roles. 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.

The evolution of mothers is now visible in the smallest of roles in narratives where they are sometimes the protagonist and other times a useful foil.

Actor Seema Pahwa has played many middle-class mother roles in films like Bareilly Ki Barfi and Shubh Mangal Saavdhan. 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 teen daughter why she does not want to get married again.

Ratna Pathak Shah too 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. Also, last year Katrina Kaif played a mother with a mysterious past in Sriram Raghavan’s thriller Merry Christmas.

With filmmakers exploring the funny and at times complicated facets of women within the framework of relationships with their children, many such stories have started to emerge. Quite a far cry from the stereotypical ‘Ma’ figure from Bollywood potboilers of the past.