With ‘Laapataa Ladies’ (renamed ‘Lost Ladies’) as India’s official entry to the Oscars, 2024-25 will be a landmark year for Hindi cinema regardless of the decision of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It will mark 66 years of ‘Mother India’ as India’s first entry to the Oscars in 1958. It will also mark 30 years of ‘Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge’ (DDLJ), the longest-running Hindi film at Maratha Mandir in Mumbai, which has broken more records than can be enumerated.

Mother India and DDLJ not only made cinema history, the films captured changing realities of Bharat and India through their storylines, finely etched characters, stirring dialogues, dramatic and picturesque locations, with song-and-dance sequences becoming a part of our collective imagination. The three films together ~ Mother India, DDLJ and Laapataa Ladies ~ form an intriguing triptych, going beyond cliches of women’s empowerment and women imagining their futures. Born of the multicultural ethos of Bombay (now Mumbai), the films are centred around the unchanging, ruthless facets of patriarchy and the hammerforce of a centuries-old hierarchical social order, inflexible and exploitative.

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Mother India lost out on the Best Foreign Film award to the European film Nights of Cabiria by a single vote; Mehboob Khan, the doyen among Indian filmmakers had to step aside as Italy’s Federico Fellini bagged the award. Khan Saheb was disappointed with the jury decision; he felt Mother India deserved the honour for it was a superior film, presented to audiences with English sub-titles, and more importantly, he had agreed to drop the Mehboob Productions’ logo with the Communist hammer and sickle to appease the Academy. Made ten years after India’s Independence, Mother India brought womanhood and motherhood on to the screen, making Radha (Nargis in a stellar role) as an icon of virtues who faces personal battles and social exploitation in the village without letting go of her enormous strength to be sacrificial. Laapataa Ladies will unfold for glitzy global audiences a grimy, gritty, sweaty and crowded world of the Bharat-vaasi.

The characters are dwellers from the vast north Indian hinterland. Its main protagonist Deepak is introduced in the opening scenes in his new off-the-shelf double-breasted suit, with his newly wedded heavily-veiled wife in tow. He is the quintessential meek Bharatiya man but, one can sense, silently proud of his ‘ghar’, a home, childhood friends and the proverbial ‘do bigha zameen’ in the village. That’s his identity; his village, samaaj or community which he respects. As viewers encounter him, Deepak is adept at negotiating his way through packed railway compartments, a breezy ride with the new bride squatting atop a bus; there are no questions asked, a complete acceptance of conditions which are unfair and unjust.

It is the imagery of the all accepting Bharatiya citizen, sharp enough to make his way around situations, and problems arising out of scarcity of resources which global audiences will have to decode and decipher before they can applaud. Will the thematic novelty and cinematic creativity of ‘Lost Ladies’ give it the winning edge? There is a huge risk which ‘Lost Ladies’ faces as the genre of popular films like DDLJ have cast a hegemonic hold on viewers’ imaginations. What DDLJ captured was the uber-luxury world of the elites: Porsches, sprawling chalets, stylish clothes, lavish dinners, quaint European towns; more than material wealth on display was the air of confidence of the super-rich, their body language and cheerful laughter indicative of their social supremacy. Shah Rukh Khan as Raj Malhotra immortalised this global go-getter, keeping cash-registers ringing at Maratha Mandir after three de – cad es, and emerging as an international celebrity.

While the love-chase of Raj and Simran (played by Kajol) with lilting songs-dances-and-melodies distinguished DDLJ, the film’s dramatic highs were the lovers having to challenge the harsh power play of patriarchy within the two families across two continents. In sharp contrast, Deepak’s love for his newly-wedded wife Phool marks the beginning of a life-cycle event in which the four letter word has yet to be verbalized or made central to the relationship. Their simplicity, ordinariness is in sharp contrast to global youngsters who have everything, yet there is a grace, kindness, care and compassion demonstrated by these children of soil.

Role, status and position of the men commanding, controlling and ruling families is what brings India and Bharat together, morphing the three films ~ Mother India, DDLJ and Laapataa Ladies ~ into one cultural mass of patriarchal authority and control which had to be carefully negotiated before it could be challenged. When Ra dha in Mother India managed to escape the clutches of the village money lender Suk hilala, she also signified the millions of real-life Ra dhas falling prey to traumatic exploitation. DDLJ rested on the character of Chaudhary Baldev Singh (enacted by Amrish Puri) as Simran’s father: his stern looks, life style and permissions ruled his Lon don household which continued breathing the air of feudal Punjab.

In Laapataa Ladies while men-folk of the family are honourable bread earners, working alone in far-off cities, doing menial jobs for survival wages, the patriarchal ruthlessness is embodied in the power of the State apparatus. A paanchewing pol police inspector Shyam Manohar (played by Ravi Kishan, a popular Bhojpuri films tar and Member of Parliament) personifies the acceptance of corruption in public services, with the added dose of lawfully-endorsed violence by men in uniform. Will Kishan’s credible performance cast a shadow on aspirational India’s growth-story in the eyes of the globalized world? Despite their rapid growth and influence today, the Indian diaspora often cannot explain to foreign audiences the prevalence of sub-human levels of poverty and slums, corruption in public life, rapes, farmers’ suicides, sub version of rule of law in the midst of a rising number of dollar-billionaires, swanky gated communities, booming consumerism and crores of rupees spent on Big Fat Indian Weddings.

Several NRIs are getting to hear comments: how can India seek foreign aid or assistance when its own home-grown elite families are spending billions on ceremonial weddings and entertainment year after year? When will Indians themselves work towards solving their own problems, addressing issues of poverty and reducing the all-apparent inequalities between Bharat and India? Bringing a facet of Brechtian theatre to the fore, Laapataa Ladies has Manju Mai (the role essayed by Chhaya Kadam) and her tea-stall on the railway station platform, drawing parallels to Mother Courage and her wagon which give European theatre in the 1940s-50s its epic dimensions.

The weather-beaten Mai, making ‘chai’ and bread pakoras, cursing her male customers lunging for the chutney-pot, gives the film a sub-text of not merely challenging the patriarchal order but also rubbishing it. Once she shelters Phool (Deepak’s ‘lost’ bride), captured on screen is the care and comic banter of the under-privileged and the homeless. Like Manju Mai, the grandfather in Deepak’s household is worth raising a cheer: for decades a security guard in the city, he is now a human heap on a charpoi uttering a guttural call of ‘Jaagte Raho’ (Stay awake), harking back to an era of Raj Kapoor films in the 1950s when working-class characters shared cinematic space. Satyajit Ray, after the release of ‘Pather Panchali’ in 1955, faced criticism and ridicule for presenting India’s poverty to the world through his cinema which was steadily getting international acclaim.

‘Exporting poverty’ and ‘distorting India’s image abroad’ were charges he faced for several decades. Ray narrated a story to Derek Malcolm, his friend-filmcritic: “In 1928, I went with my mother to Tagore’s university. I had my little autograph book, newly bought, and my mother gave the book to Tagore and said: ‘My son would like a few lines of verse from you.’ And he said: ‘Leave the book with me.’

The next day he said: ‘I have written something for you, which you won’t understand now, but when you grow up you will understand it’. It read: “I have travelled all around the world to see the rivers and the mountains, and I’ve spent a lot of money. I have gone to great lengths, I have seen everything. But I forgot to see just outside my house a dewdrop on a little blade of grass, a dewdrop which reflects in its convexity the whole universe around you.” What Ray did was to reflect in his films precisely what Gurudev Tagore had taught him; whether or not ‘Lost Ladies’ bags the Oscar award, it has captured for posterity the ‘dewdrop’ panorama of Bharat for India’s urban elites and the globalized world.

The writer is a researcher author on history and heritage issues, and a former deputy curator of Pradhanmantri Sangrahalaya