The Women of Trishul (1978)

 

The iconic Hindi blockbuster movie, Trishul, was a Yash Chopra film, in the late maestro’s flamboyant style. The characters slip into English with the ease born of privilege in those days. The sentiments and sensibilities are Indian, yet the presentation is Western. In the cutthroat world of business, tenders are jealously guarded and equally zealously overturned. Traitors are bought, yet loyalty is respected.

When the competitive work day ends, the evening sees rivals and opponents attending the same parties and conversing over drinks with a suavity that would impress even a James Bond. Even when Shashi Kapoor realizes that Amitabh Bachchan has tried to sabotage his relationship with Hema Malini, he passes over it lightly---no confrontation and no blaming Hema either. It is all very refined--- no threats of thirsting for the other’s blood!

Hema Malini’s character, Sheetal, is a working woman, who wears sarees and trousers (bell bottoms!). She plays tennis and golf. Sheetal also does yoga and watches what she eats.

Rakhee’s character, Geeta, is also a working woman, but there is a subtle difference--- she has to work for a living. She wears sarees, trendy ones. She is comfortable riding up to the top of buildings-under-construction, on a crane, in those same sarees. Geeta earns the title of ‘human computer’ when the term was not too familiar. She is an employee, but does not feel inferior to her boss in any way, be it Sanjeev Kumar (R. K. Gupta), or later, Amitabh Bachchan (Vijay). On the contrary, she yells back at Sanjeev Kumar when he unjustly accuses her of treachery. And has the grace to apologise afterwards.

Waheeda Rehman’s character, Shanti, does not cling to Sanjeev Kumar when she discovers his duplicity (however helpless he may have been). She is proud. However, she neither forgives nor forgets. She does not let her son, Vijay forget either. She nurtures him with a burning desire for revenge, demanding the price of the mother’s milk----a recurring theme in many Indian films.

Poonam Dhillon is the cute ‘Gapuchi gapuchi gam gam girl’, Babli, starry eyed and in love with her classmate who is now her father’s employee. She knows what she wants, and is determined to fight for it, especially when she gets encouragement from an unexpected quarter.

 These four main women characters drive the story in their own ways, foreshadowing the empowered women of today.

 This post is a part of Blogchatter Half Marathon 2025.