It is a tricky, intricately structured dance that the Indian woman does on the screen—one fluid step forward and two lurching steps backward—and one that has remained the same even if the demure dance of yore has convulsed into the brazen pelvic thrusts of an MTV-ised choreography. From courtly kathak chakkars to the seductive Salsa gyrations, it may look like a long journey. But the fact is the Kajol/Karishma Kapoor generation has not really gone far from the traditions enshrined by the Nargis/Meena Kumari era. The more things apparently change, the more they remain rooted in the same patriarchal matrix of internalised submission and futile gestures of rebellion.
The Hindi film heroine reflects the confusions and contradictions, compromises and complexities, anxieties and fantasies of a schizophrenic society which wants to live simultaneously in its 5000-year-old past and the satellite TV present. Can one guess at the embryonic tomorrow, which will only exacerbate this chaos? That is why Hindi cinema can continue to mean all things to all people and satisfy the atavistic need to entertain and moralise, titillate and elevate, threaten and reassure our collective psyche.
That is also why at the threshold of the new millennium, the Kajol of Hum Apke Dil Mein Rahte Hai is not really different from the Nargis of Andaaz 50 years ago. In fact, Nargis was a far more complex character reeking of internalised guilt who punished herself because the other man loved her, a married woman, and she was unable to do anything about it except shoot him—and kill off her own unacknowledged feelings for him. Mehboob Khan suggested intriguing layers in Andaaz—modernity in a woman is dangerous because the signals she gives off threaten not only her hearth and home but society itself; her freely expressed, strictly platonic friendship is misinterpreted by the wrong man; and she is to blame for inspiring unsuitable passion because her own innocent seductiveness is so alluring.
Compare this to the plastic revolt of an inherently conformist Kajol in Hum Apke Dil Mein Rahte Hain, a regressive remake of a successful Telugu film where the mangalsutra's sanctity is reiterated for the thousandth time. Kajol is supposed to be a self-respecting, middle-class working girl who enters a contract marriage with eyes wide open for strictly pragmatic reasons and yet, gets bloodied knees from climbing temple steps abjectly on her knees so that her ungrateful husband can get well. The only novelty is that she plays hard to get when the repentant husband realises that nobody else can make a cuppa as wifey did and further, isn't she pregnant with his baby? Unlike the recent crop of belly-button revealing houris, in this film Kajol wears sindur, salwars and saris, with matching glass bangles and the all-important mangalsutra.