Heroines shine

An era of Bollywood can be said to have ended with the demise of Sadhana, the girl with the fringe and dimpled cheeks who captivated a generation of cinemagoers in the 1960s and ’70s. Like Audrey Hepburn, after whom she modelled her fringe hairstyle, Sadhana preserved a mystique that came with the characters she played, particularly as the mysterious white-sari-clad woman in Woh Kaun Thi, after a not very spectacular debut as a chorus girl. In the three decades and more since she signed off from films, Indian cinema has grown into a behemoth with about 1,600 films made every year.

The kind of roles women play nowadays is a cinematic tribute to how far they have advanced in general. Women-centric films, which have given heroines like Kangana Ranaut and Deepika Padukone momentum to make this genre count at the box office, is an achievement in itself. Also, this is the year in which Priyanka Chopra blossomed into a star on the small screen in the US. The Indian woman in cinema has come a long way.

Indian cinema itself leapt to another level in 2015 when its highest grossing film ever was spotted in the multilingual Baahubali. The use of enhanced technology is lending our films a different dimension. The visual effects in the blockbuster are a reminder of what can be achieved when our filmmakers invest in quality production values. In true Hollywood style, the film too will get into sequels, prequels and so on, suggesting universal success in cinema can boast an Indian flavour too.