Sagarika Choudhary

Bollywood filmmaker Imtiaz Ali attended the Jaipur Literature Festival on Monday on its final day and his interactive session clearly drew the biggest crowd at the Maha Kumbh of arts and literature in the Pink City. During the conversation, the filmmaker revealed his inspiration behind his strong female protagonists and he also spoke about the portrayal of women in cinema at large.

According to Imtiaz, Indian cinema has always had headstrong female characters. “The portrayal of women in Indian cinema has definitely changed. But it wouldn’t be right to say that films in the past did not have strong female characters. There was Mother India, of course, but even the ones that were not Mother India, like the female protagonist in Andaz (1949), which was also Mehboob Khan’s film, were equally strong. If you notice the portrayal of the heroine in the film, you’ll realise that she was shown to be quite progressive and at par with the men of that time,” he explained.

“Cinema has always had independent and self-sustaining women. I have not done anything new. I am doing what has been happening in the industry since forever. People might keep saying that a woman must be submissive or should not be too progressive, but we should not believe them,” he added.

Be it Geet in Jab We Met, who runs away from her conservative Sikh household to live life on her own terms or be it Tara from Tamasha, who refuses to compromise for the sake of love and calls out Ved’s pretence despite knowing that it would leave her heartbroken, the women in Imtiaz’s films have always had complete character arcs of their own. The filmmaker shared that he drew the inspiration for writing these characters from the women in his own life.

“The filmmakers in the past must have drawn inspiration for their female characters from the women in their lives, and I have done the same. I have many interesting, independent and powerful women around me, and I see that they are taking things easy as well. They are not being serious like men and showing off that they are working so hard. Women have less ego than men in that sense,” he quipped.

“And I have also noticed that when something needs to be done, their brain works faster than that of men. I’ve always found women very strong and interesting. I have seen my mother and the other women in my life. So I collate all of this and portray through my female characters,” he concluded.