Did screen mothers ever come alive, get real, have a life, in the tiresome days of the Kheer Age?

The climax of Johny Mera Naam (1970) is near. Sulochana—white sari, dishevelled bun, Bombay cinema’s widowed mother par excellence—has been kidnapped and forcibly brought to villain Prem Nath’s den by junior villain Jeevan.

Her son Dev Anand, a police inspector, has infiltrated the gang, pretending to be one of them. The gang does not know of the mother and son’s real identity, but Jeevan does, and would like to score points with Prem Nath by demonstrating that the trusted ‘Johny’ is not who he says he is. What more conclusive proof than to bring Johny’s mother over and let her rush for succour to her son?

And so Jeevan goes to Sulochana while Prem Nath watches with interest and Dev Anand with anxiety. Henchmen are holding her up as she droops exhausted and barely conscious. “There there, behen,” says Jeevan at his oily best. “No need to fear. Your inspector son has arrested all the villains. Now you can go to him. Go on.”

Ma looks up with effort. She sees a ring of men looking at her, Dev Anand among them. She turns to Jeevan with as much dramatic subtlety as she can muster and whispers: “Which one do I have to recognise?”

For my money, this is the finest hour of Hindi cinema motherhood. Much has been attributed to our mothers on screen—love, sacrifice, morality, strength of character, greatness—but rarely have our films accused them of sheer intelligence. Writer-director Vijay Anand gives Sulochana heaps of it. Having summed up the situation and turned the tables on Jeevan, she proceeds to cook his goose by affecting a rustic accent and convincing Prem Nath that she has been paid to come and falsely recognise some young man as her son.

Mothers of yesteryear Hindi films evoke as much exasperation, indulgent affection, love, and that “here we go again” feeling as mothers do in real life. (Ours may not sit coughing pitifully over sewing machines in a white sari—and mine has never made me kheer either—but they do have their memoents.)

Ma on the sly

When raised to a pedestal of heroism (Nargis in Mother India, Nirupa Roy in Deewar), cine-mas become iconic. But did they ever have any other possibilities in what we may now call the Kheer Age? Did Ma ever come alive, get real, have a life, in those days before Reema Lagoo and Kirron Kher charted newer paths?

It wasn’t just Johny Mera Naam; Vijay Anand fared pretty well with mothers in his other films too. A scene between actress Mumtaz Begum and Om Prakash, both playing Dev Anand’s parents, in Tere Ghar Ke Saamne (1963) is quite delightful. The traditional Om Prakash is unhappy that his son has returned from the U.S. with undesirable habits like smoking and drinking. The mother can’t see what the fuss is about:

“Tharra to nahin peeta na, Angrezi hee peeta hai. Wo bhi, kya kehta hain, peg aadha peg. Uss se nasha thode hi hota hai.” (He doesn’t drink moonshine; he drinks English, and that too just a peg or two. That doesn’t get you drunk.)

“How do you know,” asks Om Prakash in panic. “Have you tried it?”

“No, I haven’t,” says the hero’s Ma. “But I watch women drink in the club every day. Even I have felt like it, but then I stopped myself.”

Pratima Devi in Jewel Thief (1967) plays Dev Anand’s mother in a small appearance, but does something that’s practically revolutionary even before she says a word. The camera finds her sitting in bed actually reading a book. This was not a first—as we shall see below—but the sheer relief of it is tremendous. Dev Anand, who has been turned out of the house by his stern father, comes visiting mum on the sly, gifts her a necklace, and takes off when he hears his father approaching. Ma brooks no nonsense from Police Commissioner husband Nazir Hussain. “I heard Vinay’s voice,” Hussain complains. “Throw a young son out of the house and this is what happens,” says his wife, going back to her book in which she is oh so utterly engrossed. He insists that their good-for-nothing son must have stolen the necklace. “He’s given it to me, why are you getting jealous,” she says, practically sticking her tongue out at the lord and master. And goes back to her book.

The reading mother

The only other memory I have of a mother reading is in Yash Chopra’s second directorial venture Dharmputra (1961). It’s a pleasure to see Nirupa Roy, for once not in widow’s weeds, reading glasses on her nose, fully involved in her book. When her much-loved adopted son Shashi Kapoor enters, she proceeds to have an intellectual argument with him. The young boy has been seduced by the charms of being a ‘pure’ Hindu and wants everyone to follow what he thinks is the Hindu way of life. But tradition is not an unalloyed blessing, his mother points out, reminding him of how women were burnt with their husband’s dead bodies, or how young eight-year-old widows suffered for the rest of their lives.

“But you have to value your religious ties,” says the son.

“Khaak hote hain dharm bandhan!” (Religious ties, what rubbish!), exclaims the exasperated mother, who today might be roasted for sacrilege. “A person should be a good human being. Life is not a stagnant pool of dirty water that a human being lies in it and rots. He should evolve!”

You want to stand up and cheer.

My mother, the pirate

In dramatic contrast to the morality of repudiating or shooting down your child if he turns rogue, Durga Khote, when forcibly separated from her young son in V. Shantaram’s Amar Jyoti (1936), becomes a pirate herself. It is the son who grows up to be a moralistic creature, loathing pirate queen Saudamini’s outlaw ways.

This is a feisty, knife-throwing mother who hardens her heart, kills her enemies, and does it all in her fight against the oppression of a patriarchal state. She refuses to be a ‘woman’ and is quite clear that women mustn’t cry any more: “Auraton ko rona dhona chorr dena chahiye.”

Eventually, when she meets her grown-up son, she is overcome with love as well as overwhelmed by his critique of a mother he does not know. Hurt that her son did not understand her motivations, she does not reveal her identity and withdraws from his life. Even here, it is the failure of her philosophy that tortures Saudamini: “I used to think that I had banished the woman from within me, but that was just my false pride. That pillar, which supported my life, has fallen.” Remarkably, there is no emotional reunion between mother and son at all. What Saudamini finally takes solace from is the flame of rebellion that she has lit in other women who will now carry the flag.

Other mothers

Back in 1967, an unmarried expectant mother in a small town went to the chemist’s. The whole town knew of her ‘condition’. A couple of young layabouts whistled when she entered and the shop assistant rushed forward in his greasiest manner. “Shall I show you some feeding bottles?” he leered. “Not today,” she said, with a straight spine. “I will need it in a few months and will come to your shop to buy it, but right now I just need some coffee.”

This scene’s transcendental dignity was in Hare Kaanch Ki Choodiyan, a film that nobody had ever recommended to me, and understandably so.

I’ll be forever grateful to writer-director Kishore Sahu for adding such a shining moment in his debut vehicle for daughter Naina. It deserved a better film. But it has always been my standard bearer for staying open to possibilities of gems in run-of-the-mill fare—cinematic or human.

This catalogue of mothers would be incomplete without a mother figure that I am very fond of. Meena Kumari in Mere Apne (1971) played a universal “Nani Ma” to her neighbourhood’s young thugs, and like many Nanis, became a friend.

When Vinod Khanna sings “Koi hota jisko apna…” (“I wish there was someone I could call my own”), a lovelorn song for the girlfriend he has lost, Nani Ma shuffles over to provide naive succour: “Am I not your own?”

The gang of unemployed college drop-outs whiles away time playing cards, and she sits with them, telling stories of dacoits from her youth. They confide that their parents can barely tolerate the sight of them, but she genuinely finds them beautiful and innocent. When one of them wishes she would cook meat for them, another hushes him up piously—widows don’t touch meat. But Nani Ma is more easygoing: “It’s all right, if you do something taboo for the sake of your children, god will understand.”

But, here’s the rub, they are not her children, they are no relation of hers at all. She had not even met the young wastrels till quite recently. She is, quite literally, a friend: equal parts spending time together, sharing stories and laughter, helping each other, and at times, worrying for them. Like all friends and mothers do.

The author, a Delhi-based freelance writer and photographer, likes to end her bio-note a bit hopefully with the information that her blog is called The Laughter Memoirs.