This story is from May 11, 2008

Mommy mृlange

Mohini Mehrotra / May 11, 2008, 00:53 IST

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A tongue-in-cheek look at the Bollywood mothers.

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Nirupa Roy. (TOI Photo)Mere paas maa hai��. Short of his Gabbar Singh and his all-time fave dialogues, this one sentence takes the cake as the most loved, the most remembered and the most spoofed dialogue of Indian cinema.
But then, maa and her varied roles have been the stuff successful films are made of. From the three-hankie weepie maas to the Teflon-coated yummy mummies to the wicked stepmother with the famous squint...Bollywood has made moms of all sizes, styles and sensibilities. On Mother��s Day today, we bring you the five kinds of moms you cannot, just cannot, ignore on the bada parda!
The dukhiyari maa
Dressed in a crisp white saree, at times dirty and grubby when the family falls on bad times, she was the fount which the scripts of blockbusters emerged. Sometimes she was called a thief, at others the bad guys tried to molest her, many a times she had no food to feed herself and her bechare kids... you get the hang of it, right? Then, depending on who the hero was, her offspring became a policeman or a chor and at times, both! Two hours later, she was found tied in the villain��s den, the hero rescued her and some platitudes later, we had a hit! Stand-up comedian Vir Das��s vote goes to Nirupa Roy. ��The roti hui maa is the typical one that I remember. She is my favourite because her son turns out to be a comedian and she has more to cry about.��

The scheming maa
Long before Ekta Kapoor perfected her over-dressed, over-acting saas, Bollywood had come up with the up-to-no-good mother. Think Lalita Pawar, Bindu etc. and you get the picture. She would make the life of her beta-bahu hell and her schemes could put Machiavelli to shame. For emcee Shivani Wazir Pasrich, nobody could beat Lalita Pawar when it came to playing dirty. ��She was the best at that and there are so many movies to prove that. The time when she used to act, the movies were only about the good and the bad and she was the ��bad�� one in all of them. She really excelled at being the mean, cruel one,�� she says.

The caught-in-the-middle maa
What does a mother do when her husband is going right and the son insists on driving left? Cry copious tears and hope everything will come right. From time to time, she also tries to make them see sense and is obviously not successful. Durga Khote as Jodhaa in Mughal-e-Azam was the perfect example of this kind of maa. Recently, Tisca Chopra in Taare Zameen Par again essayed the character. But the award goes to Rakhi in this category. Says actor Parveen Dabas, ��Rakhi played Amitabh��s wife in Barsaat Ki Ek Raat and she was wonderful in it. In the very next film Shakti, she played Amitabh��s mother. What a performance that was! Playing the role of a woman caught between her son and her husband, she played the role of a mom really well.�� Mukul Dev too, feels that there has been no one as striking as Rakhee in the movie Shakti. ��Oh, that was some performance. Struggling to make her husband, Dilip Kumar and her son Amitabh Bachchan, come together and the dilemma of how to do it.��
The I-am-there-for-you maa
This one is strong, sister. She can smother the child will love or she will smother him. Either ways, she will make sure the kid stands for everything that is right and just. If Reema Lagoo in Maine Pyar Kiya is the kind, understanding mom, Nargis in Mother India stands for all that��s right. Says VJ Cyrus Sahukar, ��Although she kills her own son in the end, she does sacrifice her love of her son and stands strong to take the action. Nargis brought out the character really well. She loved her son, did everything for him, but when the time was for justice, she sacrificed her own blood,�� he says.
The yummy mummy
She��s the coolest one. For her, age is just a number. She is young at heart and likes it just so. No serious mummy talk for her, she is quite a fun person to be around. And Kirron Kher personifies this maa, with some generous help from Juhi Chawla. As artist Sakshi Nayar says, ��Kirron is the coolest, hottest and the most amazing mom in most of her movies, like Hum Tum, Om Shanti Om and Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna. She is so chilled out! She is exactly the way a mom should be today.�� Adds documentary filmmaker Sunil Mehra, ��Kirron is so versatile and has played the role of a mom with so much ��lan. She is fun loving, cool and dramatic... what a combination.��

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