Bollywood For Beginners: Part 6

Note: This series was originally posted to my Bollywood blogspot blog and represents the cumulation of the wisdom of a decade or so spent in the Bollywood trenches. It would have last been edited in about 2014.

Bollywood for Beginners 6

Bollywood Character Archetypes: MOM and POP (or MAA-BAAP)

The presence of the family is one of the biggest differences between a classic Bollywood masala film and a Hollywood film. That isn’t to say that Hollywood film never features family but nobody knows or cares who John McClane’s parents are. Family just isn’t as important in public life as it is in India, although this is changing. Evil stepmothers, power-mad uncles, greedy brothers-in-law, frivolous sisters-in-law, and good-for-nothing siblings have faded from mass film, though they still have their place in the Bollywood pantheon, but two characters holding on to their important filmi status all are the parents. There is a reason two of the first Hindi words any foreign film fan learns are maa (mother) and baap (father). 

Mothers, dressed in demure white saris, haunt the lives of Bollywood heroes. A hero will do anything for his mother because he knows that his mother will do anything for him. Anything. Mothers will work their fingers to the bone to support their sons and then use those same fingers to feed their sons dinner. Mothers will always take their son’s side, even if that son is a lying, cheating scumbag, and although mothers may ultimately defer to the patriarch in public, you know that a Bollywood mother can be counted out to sneak food or money to her good-for-nothing son. Even when the saintly mother is not present, her absence will be used to explain why the hero is a rough-edged and seemingly unlovable. If a man doesn’t have his mother, he doesn’t have anybody.

The saintly filmi mother herself can do no wrong, although sometimes she is forced to into bad situations--such as the mother of the hero in Trishul (1978) who has a baby out of wedlock because the father was weak-willed and refused to go through on his promise to marry her. Those filmi mothers are usually redeemed with epic death scenes because while Bollywood, like Hollywood, can be hung up on feminine youth and beauty, many filmi mothers are former heroines and freed of the requirement to be pretty, these women can and will sink their teeth into the melodrama of the mother with aplomb. Women who grew up seeing actresses like Rakhee steal scenes from the big heroes of their day, can now see her stealing scenes from those heroes’ sons.

But saintly maa does have an evil counterpart in the evil stepmother. Sometimes, this is softened to just an evil female guardian, such as an evil aunt. Like their fairytale counterparts, these selfish women will stop at nothing to ruin their charges’ lives, forcing them into terrible arranged marriages, stealing their inheritances, or even murdering them. One thing to watch out for with evil family members is that they will often to be brought back into the fold at the end of the film. The love of a son (or less often, daughter) can and will melt the coldest of hearts. While this may seem a bit odd to people raised on the Disney versions of fairy tales like Cinderella, where the evil stepmother is punished, Bollywood has traditionally put forward the idea that no family member-–not even the shrillest of evil stepmothers-– should be thrown away as worthless if she sees the error of her ways and repents.

Unlike Maa, Baap can be good or bad depending on the needs of the film. Bumbling fathers who make bad business deals or who get caught up in gambling debt are major plot points for a whole spate of films. In the old days, these incompetent fathers would force daughters into performing cabaret to earn cash or make sons join a gang to provide for the family. In more recent years, the theme of generational clash has entered the Bollywood father-child relationship. Sons and daughters who had been willing to sacrifice true love for an arranged marriage to please their parents are now deciding things based on their own individual tastes. And the parents just don’t understand the new-fangled, self-interested ways of their children. This generation clash is usually played out in the greater NRI (non-resident Indian) community and usually ends with either the parents coming around to respect the choice of the children or with the children finding that their parents were right and falling in love with their arranged match. Sometimes both happen in the same film, such as the trend-setting multi-starrer Dil Chahta Hai (2001).

The inclusion of parents (and extended family) in Bollywood is so expected that not having parents in the film was considered noteworthy as recently as 2005. The marketing campaign for Salaam-Namaste (2005) featured the two lead actors Preity Zinta and Saif Ali Khan having a discussion about what the film was about (translation by me):

Saif: [To Preity] Do you want to say a few things about this one that make it different?

Preity: Well, it’s a love story.

Saif: [sarcastically] Oh. That’s different.

Preity: It’s the story about a boy and a girl.

Saif: [sarcastically] That’s even more different.

[They bicker for a few seconds about who will be talking.]

Saif: What kind of promotion is this? You’re saying girl and boy meet. They fall in love. Pehle milte hai [first they meet] and then they hate each other initially. And then they sing a song. Then they start liking each other. And then they want to get married and the families get involved and the mother and fa- 

Preity: No, wait! There is no family. There is no mummy, no papa…

Saif: No Sass-Bahu [mother-in-law-daughter-in-law], Maa-Baap [mother-father] tension?

Preity: No.

Saif: Then where is the drama?

Even though the Hollywood-inspired romantic-comedy genre has taken off in recent years, that maa-bap tension is still very much a part the popular filmi narrative and you should expect that parents’ wishes will be respected in the end. Because mother is always right.