Mother Maiden Mistress: Women in Hindi Cinema 1950-2010

by Bhawana Somaaya, Jigna Kothari, Supriya Madangarli

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It’s been a long hundred years since Dadasaheb Phalke had to settle for a man to play the heroine in India’s first feature film, Raja Harishchandra (1913) and women in Hindi cinema have come a long way since then. Mother Maiden Mistress documents that journey: from a time in which cinema was considered a profession beneath the dignity of respectable women to an era when women actors are icons and idols.

Bhawana Somaaya, Jigna Kothari and Supriya Madangarli sift through six decades of history, bringing to life the women that peopled cinema and the popular imagination, and shaped fashion and culture. Contemporary readers will also find here a nuanced historical perspective of the social milieu of the time, of the nation and of Hindi cinema itself. Also riveting are the first-person narratives of a leading actress from each decade Waheeda Rehman, Asha Parekh, Hema Malini, Shabana Azmi, Madhuri Dixit and Rani Mukerji all close-up examinations of how some of the iconic characters of Hindi cinema came to be.

At once a guide, an archive and a cracking good read, the book records and reviews the woman in Hindi cinema the mythical, the Sati-Savitri, the rebel, the avant-garde and the contemporary. In a journey through six decades of cinema, seemingly, the more things have changed, the more they have remained the same.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Bhawana Somaaya

Bhawana Somaaya, a renowned film journalist, commenced her career as a scribe in the late 1970s, while graduating in psychology. Scaling the professional ladder, she became a regular correspondent of a weekly, Cinema Journal, in Mumbai. Thereafter, she moved to a film magazine, Super, as Chief Reporter and simultaneously pursued a degree in law at the Government Law College, Mumbai. She made her mark at the Movie magazine as an Assistant Editor and subsequently as Joint Editor. She was the editor of a magazine before her current assignment as the editor of a film weekly, Screen. A recipient of the Mahila Shiromani Award, and a member of the Advisory Panel of the Central Board of Film Certification, she has also penned columns for The Sunday Observer, Afternoon, Janmabhoomi Pravasi, The Hindustan Times, The Hindu, The Pioneer and Newstime. She has also penned two other book, Take-25 and The Story So Far.