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Shashi Kapoor’s iconic dialogue, “Mere pass Ma hai,” from the 1975 film Deewar has found takers across generations and continues to influence filmmakers even today. During the third session of Expresso, Deewar’s writer Javed Akhtar reflected on this famous line and discussed the portrayal of the mother figure in Hindi films. He acknowledged that while the mother figure is still relevant, its melodramatic use has been done to death. Javed emphasized the need for contemporary representations to keep such characters engaging.
He said, “This generation is tired of cliches. Ma is valid, it’s still a currency but the dialogue around it matters. If you write, ‘Ma mein tere pooja karta hu (Ma, I worship you), now that won’t work. So, you have to show Ma in a contemporary fashion. Don’t go overboard with it. ‘Meri pass Ma hai’ can still work as it isn’t a complicated dialogue but the way people have stereotyped Ma and used it so much that people have become averse to it.”
Javed Akhtar also expressed concerns about how societies that exalt the mother figure might indicate poor treatment of women in general. “In any society where there is a lot of premium on mother, it means women are in a bad shape. They are in trouble. ‘Ma ki pooja hone chahiye (We should worship Ma).’ But what about the women you don’t worship, who also coincidentally include your wife. Okay, people should respect my mom but what about the mother of my kids? This is all rubbish. They put so much premium on mothers so that they can misbehave with other women,” he said.
Both Javed Akhtar and his former writing partner Salim Khan lost their mothers at a young age, which influenced their writing. As a result, many of their films, including Deewar, Trishul, and Shakti, featured strong mother figures.
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