Retake: Lily, Mona and the constructive self-awareness of the moll

In a scene from Shakti Samanta’s Jaali Note (1960), CID Inspector Dinesh played by Dev Anand tells Lily, a woman close to a cartel boss he is trying to bust “Khoobsurat ladkiyan isliye nahi hoti ke apne dimaag ko business ki uljhano mein phasaye. Hum toh chahte hain tumhare sath ghumne chalenge, cinema dekhenge, party karenge.” Not many things have aged as poorly as the leading man’s view of women who exist on the other side of the moral line of control. In Jaali Note, Lily is a flowery, urban coinage that must be compared with the other, more austere anchor of the story, Madhubala playing the archaically gullible yet dignified Renu. For years, Hindi cinema has built its stories around the hero and the heroine, the two compartments of an accordion that really just echoes expectations rather than reality. More has however been achieved by the women whose moral turpitude, has taken its time to transcend the binaries of good and bad.

Helen has been belatedly recognised for her barnstorming dance performances, her neo- classical renditions of iconic ‘item songs’ but more than her enviable dance repertoire, it’s the miniscule but ultimately seminal roles she has played alongside select men that cinema has grown to leverage. Roles where women were entrusted with enabling lesser-looking, corrupt men, a side of love immortalised by resoluteness. In Zanjeer (1973), for example, a rapt Bindu listens to Teja played by the famous Ajit, tell her how he spots people who cannot be bought. It’s a rather convenient inference to which Mona responds “Itna bada karobar tum akele sambhal lete ho. Kitni akkal aur experience ki baat hai”.

Other than their mono-syllabic names, Lily and Mona have plenty in common. They dress provocatively, have terrific poise, can use sensuality as a ruse and are unequivocally devout towards the men they either love or serve. But for some reason it’s the hammy, chaotic adolescent on the other side windswept by the emotional tide of the narrative, who is supposed to be the object of our focus. Morality aside, only one of these two women seem self-aware, mature and dexterous in the way they accomplish life’s little tasks. Only one of them has really grown into her body, especially in a country that allows them to do no such thing.

Helen and Bindu’s roles were often characterised as the ‘vamp’, a terrible and frankly offensive qualifier for characters that exhibit the closest thing to a self-consciousness amidst and entire palette of leading women. These are also women, who are rarely apologetic for the choices they have made or the men they find some sort of succour in. The Hindi film template has never really allowed our villains to express a sentiment other than debauchery, which has naturally translated to cutting short the lived-in reality of the woman standing next to them. Naturally, rarely has the plus-one woman imposed herself on the story of a film without also divorcing herself from the space our heroines float into by default – chaste, virgin and pious.

The plus-one of the Hindi villain has evolved over the last two decades with films like Company, Don, Maqbool and the eponymously titled Gangster. Even in Priyadarshan ’s Hera Pheri, Jagira is sidled by a female foot-soldier, there as a numerical equivalent rather than a resplendent, salacious presence. These bit-part roles aren’t exactly anti heroine in the traditional mould but they de-sexualise, to an extent, the role of a one-dimensional trope that has for the longest time existed as an entry point for one of the industry’s most regressive ideas – the item song. It’s a shame really that the likes of Helen and Bindu are recognised for playing the left arm of iconic dons or cabaret numbers used to distract virgin heroes, visibly spooked by the advances of a conscious woman.

Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Gangubai Kathiawadi isn’t exactly the rise of a female don, but it does in essence borrow from the likes of Lily and Mona who have been infantilised for the sake of irascible trophy appearances inside worlds where they could have contributed more than their gender. There are traces of them in Andhadhun’s Tabu as well. In effect, they perhaps did, by simply choosing to be there as firm, opaque holding their own beside the men we were told to despise. Art never really exists in isolation and is translatable on a subconscious level without the existence of a tangible surface. Lily and Mona are both blue- eyed, spoiled, seemingly greedy women happy to be manipulated, but we weren’t told until a decade ago that it could have been them, who had been twisting men around their manicured fingers all this time. It’s a role most actresses would jump at today.

The author writes on art and culture, cinema, books, and everything in between. Views expressed are personal.

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