Enter Bollywood’s new age nurse

NEW DELHI: She’s the epicentre of a quadriplegic’s world. Dressed in sober Victorian skirts, lacy tops, hair rolled up in a bun, Sofia d’Souza nurses her patient. She also smokes, wears dark lipstick. Indeed, Hindi films haven’t ever seen a nurse like Sofia as played by Aishwarya Rai Bachchan in Guzaarish.
In Bollywood, nurses have generally been staid figures of modesty.In their starched all-white uniforms, they have always been the epitome of sobriety in Hindi films as they sacrifice love and happiness at the altar of duty. But Sofia is different from her predecessors. She wears trendy jewellery, laughs at her patient’s overtly sexual jokes. Unlike her predecessors, she radiates a resolute warmth.
Welcome Bollywood’s new age nurse. Film critic Amod Mehra says that her changed appearance and style is a reflection of the changing society. “Earlier heroines were portrayed as teachers or nurses reflecting the social norms of those days. Today’s society is more open and liberated. Which is why a nurse —- be it in her dress code or behaviour — can be unconventional,” says Mehra. However, for trade analyst Vinod Mirani, the character of Sofia is representative of a limited region, class and genre. “She doesn’t come across as the real, well-defined nurse like earlier times. The whole act of smoking, dress code to her personality caters to a certain class,” says Mirani.
Heroines have played Bollywood’s versions of Florence Nightingale down the decades. According to film historian Firoz Rangoonwalla, in the silent era heroines like Ruby Myers played the part in the film Nurse. “She typified a daya ki devi,” he recalls. Rangoonwalla maintains that the more memorable and well-etched nurses came in neatly scripted films like Dil Apna Aur Preet Parai (played by Meena Kumari) and Khamoshi (performed by Waheeda Rehman).
Sadhna in Prem Patra (1962), Nutan in Bandini (1963), Lalita Pawar in Anand (1971) and Madhavi in Agneepath (1990) have also acted as nurses. In fact, Priyanka Chopra was playing the part in a proposed remake of Agneepath. But now the role of a nurse is being re-written because she was reportedly considered too sexy to play the part.