They wield guns, go on dates to some of Delhi’s trendiest cafes, and organise trips to the Everest base camp. Bollywood’s boomers are breaking free from the tropes of self-sacrifice and satsangs to redefine retired life on the big screen. And they’re doing it with style. If Shah Rukh Khan as Vikram Rathore and his gang of old boys revving up bikes and fighting crooks in Jawan sent pulses racing and hearts thumping, then the determined trek of Amitabh Bachchan’s Amit Srivastava and his group of friends in their 60s and 70s in Uunchai (2022) had everyone tearing up.
From Khufiya to Rocky Aur Rani Ki Prem Kahani, an older generation of stars like Neena Gupta, Anil Kapoor, Bachchan and Shabana Azmi are refusing to go gently into Margdarshak Mandals or accepting the forest road of vanaprastha. They still have the star power to draw in the crowds and influence and so stories are being written for them.
This phenomenon, sporadic at best in the previous years, has been reinforced with a slew of new big releases over the last few months. The archetypal Bollywood mother embodied by the likes of Sulochana Latkar and Nirupa Roy is dead. Instead, like regular folk in the real world, today’s veteran actors are defying traditional cultural trends. In Rocky Aur Rani, for instance, Azmi’s Jamini (Rani’s grandmother) rekindles her romance with Rocky’s grandfather Kanwal played by Dharmendra.
“The prospect of mortality often intensifies the desire for sexual gratification, creating a unique interplay between ageing and longing. It’s heartening to witness mainstream Hindi cinema embrace diverse narratives, humanizing the experiences of older individuals and fostering a deeper understanding of desire and aging,” said Mahesh Bhatt.
But in reel life, too, this rejection of cultural tropes is not without tension. During a tense moment in Rocky Aur Rani, Jamini calls out her granddaughter Rani (Alia Bhatt) when she refers to her relationship with Kanwal as ‘illicit’. Even the seemingly ‘woke’ Rani falters, when it comes to being accommodating about what a relationship between two elderly people should look like. In a way, Jamini also calls out the audience as well for forcing older people into neat boxes.
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Khufiya’s grandmother
The ground-breaking character this year is Ammaji in Vishal Bharadwaj’s Khufiya. She is a smart inversion of the usual Bollywood trope of the sanskaar, satsang-going white-haired mother/mother-in-law. Played by theatre actor Navnindra Behl, Ammaji urges her son to spy for the country. She admonishes Raja that it is his extravagant lifestyle and the money he needs to sustain it that prompts her to suggest that becomes a spy.
The prospect of mortality often intensifies the desire for sexual
gratification, creating a unique interplay between ageing and longing. It’s heartening to witness mainstream Hindi cinema embrace diverse narratives, humanizing the experiences of older individuals and fostering a |
deeper understanding of desire and aging,
–Mahesh Bhatt
“Khufiya is among the most sophisticated of recent films on elderly. It’s the high point in Bollywood cinema,” said Meenakshi Shedde, curator who works in South Asia programming for the Berlin, Toronto and Jio Mami Mumbai Film Festivals. “What Nanvinder Behl as Lalita Mohan gets to do as a grandmother in Khufiya is stunning. She pulls the rug out from under the audience’s feet. I have rarely seen such a role in Indian cinema for a grandmother.”
Ammaji evokes the most amount of laughs with her antics, and that’s why the shock is as severe.
“We wanted to create a character that is fictional, and make her in such a way that she is not just stereotypical, but also has power, and authority,” said Vishal Bharadwaj.
The movie has three older women–two middle-aged, and one elderly. The characters Heena (Azmeri Haque Badhon), Krishna Mehra (Tabu) and Lalita, all have significant roles to play in the plot.
“When we show women in power, like Tabu which does not happen a lot, and then to explore their sexuality in an interesting manner, is rare. When women are shown in power, they are usually borderline abusing their power, and usually masculine yardstick, macho standards are applied to them,” said Shedde who was also on the Jury of the Cannes Film Festival’s Semaine de la Critique/Critics’ Week in 2023 and Golden Globes’ International Voter 2022-23.
For Shedde, what is fascinating is the fact that two men wrote the screenplay and created these layered female characters.
Even director Sooraj Barjatya who is credited with starting the ‘great Indian family’ and sanskaar trend in the 1990s, is making a U-turn. In Uunchai, he challenges his own stock characters in hits like Hum Aapke Hain Kaun (1994) and Hum Saath Saath Hain (1999) where older people would be more invested in char dham yatras or endless poojas.
Alok Nath became the embodiment of sanskaar, which he attempts to break in Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety (2018), by playing a ‘cool’ beer-guzzling grandfather of Titu (Sunny Singh). The friends Amit (Amitabh Bachchan), Javed (Boman Irani) and Om (Anupam Kher) embark on the Mount Everest base camp trek, to fulfil the last wish of their late friend Bhupen (Danny Denzongpa), only to encounter the challenges posed by age and diseases.
Barjatya wanted to drive home the point that parents do not want to sit at home once they cross a certain age.
We wanted to create a character that is fictional, and make her in such a way that she is not just stereotypical, but also has power, and authority
— Vishal Bharadwaj
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The mother figure
For decades, Bollywood revelled in the helpless hapless mother who was dependent on her sons to rescue her from whatever crisis she was facing.
From Nirupa Roy in Amar Akbar Anthony Antony (1977) to Rakhee Gulzar in Karan Arjun (1995), the old mother is as stereotypical as it gets. Even the irrepressible Zohra Sehgal did a few of these grandmother roles in Dil Se (1998), Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (1999), Veer Zara (2004).
The patriarch was not spared either, though the brushstrokes were less rigid. Nevertheless, the grandfather would blend into the background, occasionally blessing people, or dispensing wisdom to their lovelorn children or grandchildren.
Often, these roles mean they are addressed by their relationship to the hero/heroine, instead of getting any name. So Sehgal ends up just being dadi who dispenses wisdom about love and sex to Nandini (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan) in Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam. In Cheeni Kum (2007), she plays someone closer to her real life sassiness and comments on her 64-year-old son Buddhadev Gupta’s love life, urging him to go to gym. Happy when she finds out that Buddhadeb and Nina are together, she says “He has been to the gym only twice so far, and look what he found!” The film also stood out for the love story between Gupta and 34-year-old Nina Verma (Tabu), an unheard tale in Bollywood’s history. From his anxiety about his sexual prowess, to the judgment faced from Nina’s father Omprakash (Paresh Rawal), R Balki’s film carried a sense of disbelief throughout.
The very same year, another of Bachchan’s films, Nishabd, where he played a father in his sixties, who falls for Jia (Jiah Khan), the 18-year-old friend of his daughter, created much controversy. The Ram Gopal Varma film, despite being a sensitive portrayal of love beyond age, scandalised many, especially with Bachchan’s image as the ‘grand old man’ of Bollywood.
Alankrita Srivastava’s Lipstick Under My Burkha in 2016 was a pivot in Hindi cinema with Usha Buaji (Ratna Pathak Shah) furtively lusting after her swimming instructor Jaspal (Jagat Singh Solanki), and engaging with phone sex with him. The revelation of her lust and identity she assumes to engage in phone sex horrifies not just Japsal, but her entire neighbourhood, whose ‘respect’ for her is annihilated.
“I do feel that older women are just overlooked, especially a widowed woman, and expected to just serve the family. Their independent dreams, desires and ambitions are overlooked, and that somehow their lives are not for themselves,” said Srivastava, who also wrote the script of the film. Set in Bhopal, it focussed on how desires are not just about metropolitan, upper-class people. “It is not okay to look at older women as ‘have-beens’. Women across ages are living, breathing human beings,” she added.
The film became the changemaker of sorts, not just for Usha’s character, but for sisterhood, and the many lies and lives women are forced to live in a deeply patriarchal society.
Media representation often shapes societal attitudes, and by increasing the visibility of seniors in media, we are actively contributing to a more positive and inclusive perception of ageing
— Vaibhav Dubey, head of the Dehradun community of Antara Senior Living
In Badhaai Ho (2018), Neena Gupta, then in her late 50s played a woman close to her age, and was the ‘star’ of the film. In her biography, Sach Kahu Toh, she talks about second chances, and it came to her very late in life. Gupta almost became the harbinger of ‘second chances’ for female actors in roles beyond someone’s mother or aunt or grandmother.
The change in representation is not simply a watershed moment in celluloid. It most definitely also impacts the viewers too, in a multitude of ways.
“Media representation often shapes societal attitudes, and by increasing the visibility of seniors in media, we are actively contributing to a more positive and inclusive perception of ageing,” said Vaibhav Dubey, associate vice president & head of the Dehradun community of Antara Senior Living.
Also read: Vishal Bhardwaj almost didn’t make Khufiya. Irrfan Khan scolded him for it
‘Beautiful Wrinkles’
Even the OTT universe has pushed the envelope. Series like The Family Man (2019) and Mirzapur (2019) on Amazon Prime and Dr Arora (2022) on Sony Liv offered new avenues to actors like Manoj Bajpayee, Pankaj Tripathi and Kumud Mishra. They opened doors to others like Pooja Bhatt in Bombay Begums (2021), Kay Kay Menon in Special Ops on Disney Plus Hotstar and even Raveena Tandon in Netflix’s Aranyak who had not been on screen for years, even decades.
This revolution was not limited to men. Series like Lust Stories Part 2 and Saas, Bahu Aur Flamingo allowed older women to wield their power and make their own choices. Saas, Bahu Aur Flamingo on Disney plus Hotstar has Dimple Kapadia play Rani Ba, the gun-wielding, cigarette-smoking family matriarch who secretly runs a drug-cartel in the border region of Gujarat. In Lust Stories Part 2, Neena Gupta plays a grandmother who insists that sexual compatibility between Veda (Mrunal Thakur) and Arjun (Angad Bedi) is important. The families almost get a collective apoplectic attack. With such roles, there is a definite change in expectations of older actors on screen too, especially women.
“It is also the gaze that matters. With more female writers and directors bringing newer ways of being, the stories are becoming more accommodating. This has brought a change all around,” said Srivastava. “Pushing the envelope for middle-aged women is also a great starting point. Look at Shefali Shah in Darlings or even Sushmita Sen in Aarya.”
Shah in particular has been a breakout OTT star with performances in Delhi Crime and Ankahi, part of the anthology Ajeeb Dastans on Prime Video. Her role as DCP Vartika Chaturvedi in the second season of Delhi Crime got her an Emmy nomination for Best Actress.
Srivastava directed My Beautiful Wrinkles in the popular series Modern Love Mumbai, where Dilbar Sondhi’s (Sarika) journey of self-love begins with a confession of sexual attraction by a man in his 20s, Kunal (Danish Razvi). But the most powerful moment in the episode is when men in their 60s discuss intimacy and love, even encouraging Dilbar to actually explore Kunal’s interest in her.
It takes place during their weekly ‘kitty party’ — another trope associated with women in their 50s or 60s in popular media representation. “Seema talks mushy like a teenager. Somebody needs to tell her she is 63, not 16”, said Dilbar when the episode opens, about the women.
That changes as Dilbar rediscovers her own past love life, and starts looking forward to living her life again, without being shackled to what society expects of women in their 60s.
“These instances signify Bollywood’s embrace of diverse narratives and humanizing experiences of older individuals, contributing to a more inclusive and empathetic cultural landscape, fostering a deeper understanding of desire and aging,” said Mahesh Bhatt.
Shraddha (Parineeti Chopra), the mountaineering instructor in Uunchai criticises Om, Amit and Javed for putting everyone’s life at risk with their stubbornness to complete the Everest base camp trek after Amit’s accident. But the trio refuse to give up, practising even at night. “We have reached this point, we will not turn back,” said Javed in defiance, making even Shraddha smile in recognition of their determination.
That is what the elderly in Bollywood too seem to be asserting–they are here for the long haul. There’s no turning anytime soon.
(Edited by Anurag Chaubey)