Has Raksha Bandhan lost significance in our films?

It all started with the beautiful Nanda playing the blind sister to Rehman in ‘Choti Behen’, moving the audience to tears with the song, “Bhaiya mere rakhi ke bandhan ko nibhana…” which became the anthem of a patriarchal society endorsing male protection to woman.

Ever since, our filmmakers made sure to induce emotional drama in brother sister relationship on screen, so much so that for a long time it was impossible to conceive a Hindi film without the quintessential bhaiya behna song sequences and more important, it was not just the mainstream cinema but also the arthouse cinema that chose to tell stories about this special relationship.

Raj Kapoor reflected the grim life of the street children through baby Naaz and her adolescent brother in ‘Boot Polish’ and Satyajit Ray in ‘Pather Panchali’ shed light on perils of rural India through a unique bonding between the errant elder sister Durga and her obedient kid brother Appu.

Our screenplay writers have time and again strived to give a new twist to this relationship and most of the time they have been successful. From the Black & White family drama ‘Aaj aur Kal’ to the colourful Mansoor Khan’s ‘Josh’ starring sensational stars Aishwarya Rai and Shah Rukh Khan as siblings, filmmakers have looked for fresh stories to make both tragedies and comedies. If in the olden days the audience was treated to the plight of hero Sunil Dutt having to please four brothers to win over the hand of Waheeda Rehman in ‘Ek Phool Aur Chaar Kaante’ in ‘Josh’ Chandrachur Singh had to face the wrath of an over possessive brother Shah Rukh Khan before he could romance his twin sister Aishwarya Rai.

The sacrificing elder sister remains a recurrent motif in not just Hindi but all Indian films and there are several examples of them in all languages, Ritwik Ghatak’s ‘Meghe Dhake Tara’ the most popular of them. In Hindi cinema, Meena Kumari in the 60s’ was the infallible older sister holding the family together. Remember her singing “Mere bhaiya mere chanda…” to Dharmendra sitting on a swing in ‘Kaajal…’? Dharmendra’s wife Padmini resents his attachment to his sister and is suspicious of their relationship which is why ‘Kaajal’ was a complex subject, quite unusual for its time.

In 1971 Dev Anand marked a new turn in the sibling relationship with his highly acclaimed ‘Hare Ram Hare Krishna’. It was the first time we saw a hero putting his life/girlfriend on hold to rehabilitate his drug addict sister. After all these years “Phoolon ka taro ka….” where master Satyajit carries his thumb sucking sister on his shoulders to distract her attention from the parents getting ready to go for a party, tugs at your heart after all these years.

For a long time no wedding celebration could be complete without “Meri pyari beheniya banegi dulhaniya…” popularised by the then superstar Rajesh Khanna in ‘Sacha Jhootha’. Naaz played Khanna’s crippled sister unable to reach out to her brother in the swelling crowd. In the olden films there were some actresses like Nazima and Naaz who made a career out of playing sister to the heroes. Till as long as Rajesh Khanna ruled, Naaz played his ‘behna’.

Once in a while came a film where the sister played more important role than the heroine in a film. Tanvi Kher as Mithun Chakraborty’s sister in ‘Pyaari Behna’ is one such example. ‘Pyaari Behna’ was the remake of a south film about a village bully whose life turns upside down when he suffers a fatal accident and loses one arm and he suddenly turns helpless. It is the story of how the two (beloved and sister) women he loves help him to regain his stature and spirit.

Popular cinema to a great extent is determined by the image of the hero. Amitabh Bachchan in all his films was perceived as a family man, subsequently the mother and the sister in Hindi films gained momentum in the wake of his success. In most of the films made during Bachchan’s superstardom that is between the 70s’- 80s’ the actor was fighting a moral or a social battle on account of the injustice inflicted to his family by the villain or the system. He played the virtuous son and the duty bound brother who did not rest till he had sought his revenge.

It was a new goal and a message in every film. In ‘Majboor’ Bachchan strived to secure his handicapped sister, in ‘Adaalat’ he sought revenge for her rape; in ‘Trishul’ he assumed responsibility for her marriage. Amitabh’s conscience crisis for his screen sister continued from ‘Shahenshah’ and ‘Agneepath’ to ‘Aaj Ka Arjun’ in the late 90s’.

It is unfortunate but true that the mother/sister lost significance in mainstream films when Amitabh Bachchan stopped playing the conventional hero. Unlike Bachchan the family was never a priority with the emerging superstar Shah Rukh Khan who represented the immigrant in a metropolis. Strangely, his obsession with mother bordered on either destruction (‘Baazigar’, ‘Darr’) or death as in ‘Kal Ho Na Ho’ where his focus is clearly on friendship be it Preity Zinta and Saif Ali Khan or even Sonali Bendre and not Reema Lagoo who is missing in the last scene when the hero dies in the hospital.

Perhaps the new-age writers wanted him to focus on romance and did not deem him fit to shoulder bigger responsibilities. Perhaps today’s filmmakers themselves don’t want to be bogged down by domestic responsibilities or find them unattractive. Director Ram Gopal Varma has repeatedly said that he is bored of the parents/siblings and extended relatives and his films have done away with these synthetic emotions as he describes them long ago. Yash Chopra for the first time did not bother to explain the where about of hero Shah Rukh Khan and heroine Karisma Kapoor in ‘Dil to Pagal Hai’ to concentrate on just the love story of Madhuri Dixit with Shah Rukh Khan. Not all of them are ready for the transformation though.

Most old-time filmmakers still perceive a heroine oriented film in the sacrificial mould of a ‘Mother India’, ‘Meghe Dhake Tara’, ‘Tapasya’ and ‘Aaina’…In between we have seen a more pragmatic image of the sister in ‘Jeevan Dhara’, ‘Tehzeeb’ and ‘Pinjar’ where she can fend for herself and support her family without self pity which is coming a long way from ‘Badi Behen’ and ‘Bandini’ where the sister and daughter is a victim and awaits the approval of her brother. Remember Asha Bhosle’s rendition of “Ab ke baras bhejo bhaiya ko babul…”in ‘Bandini’ picturised on the jail inmates waiting for their brothers to come and visit them? Asha Bhosle said to me in an interview that when she recorded this song for Bimal Roy she had not visited her mother’s home for fifteen years and could not stop crying during the rehearsals and it was after great difficulty that SD Burmanda was able to complete the recording.

After ‘Dil Chahta Hai’ in 2001 which brought the new age cinema, the mother on the big screen transformed drastically, became more realistic and the hero’s sister on the other hand, became almost invisible in our stories. Part of it had to do with our changing stories and part with our changing society. Today, the Indian woman is empowered and no more a victim at least in the upper strata of society to which our majority films cater to. She has transformed beyond recognition and is no more dependent on her father, brother or husband for protection.

The new woman is capable of fending for herself and this is evident in the fun advertisements where the brother ties a rakhi to his sister thanking him for protecting him over the years. It is a cool image as of now but all of us know it will change depending on how time and circumstances change our society and films… Bhawana Somaaya/ Tweets @bhawanasomaaya.com