Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani: Jaya Bachchan as the angry old matriarch is a masterstroke in casting

Jaya Bachchan couldn’t help but crush on Dharmendra in her first Hindi film, Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Guddi (1971). Over 50 years later, however, she doesn’t even make so much of an eye contact with the actor, who plays her husband in their latest film, Karan Johar’s Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani.

(Also Read: Rocky aur Rani Kii Prem Kahani box office collection day 1: Karan Johar’s film gets grand opening, mints over ₹11 crore)

Jaya played a fangirl of Dharmendra, who played himself, in Guddi. In real life too, she was a fan of the actor and hid behind a sofa, away from the man, out of shyness. But that equation takes a 180-degree turn in Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani, where Jaya as Dhanlakshmi calls the shots of her Punjabi household as Dharmendra spends most of his time in a wheelchair, struggling with fading memory.

From a Bengali girl to a Punjabi matriarch

Jaya’s 50-year journey from an innocent young girl to an angry old matriarch, however, feels immensely organic and earned. She started her career with Satyajit Ray’s Mahanagar (1963), where she was the sweet little younger sister of a man insecure of his wife working in a sales company. Even when she entered Hindi cinema, Jaya continued to work with ace Bengali directors like Hrishikesh Mukherjee (Bawarchi) and Basu Chatterjee (Piya Ka Ghar).

In the former, Jaya makes room for Raghu (Rajesh Khanna), an outsider, who tries to change the domestic dynamics of her home for the better, under the guise of a cook. A far cry from Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani, where Jaya reminds her prospective daughter-in-law Rani Chatterji (Alia Bhatt) how she’s merely a “thode din ki mehman” (guest). In Piya Ka Ghar, Jaya is an outsider herself, moving into a chawl with her new husband’s joint family from a spacious bungalow in her hometown. But she owns her space, nudging her husband (Anil Dhawan) to scout for an independent unit where they can consummate their marriage without any interventions. It makes poetic sense then why Jaya as Dhanlakshmi would keep the home she’s married into under firm control.

Given the movies she’s done early in her career, it’s fairly easy to imagine the Jaya of those days as Rani’s giggly younger sister in the Chatterjee household. Or as a 75-year-old, she could have easily stepped in for Shabana Azmi as Rani’s affectionate grandmother. But Karan sees her more as the Punjabi matriarch because of how Jaya’s life has played out since 1973.

The Abhimaan effect

This week marked 50 years since the release of Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Abhimaan, where Jaya and her husband Amitabh Bachchan played professional singers. When Jaya begins to eclipse Amitabh’s music career owing to her singing prowess, he gets insecure and bitter. Conditioned by patriarchy, Jaya starts taking a step back, allowing her husband a window to regain his fading fame.

The mature musical romance is a watershed film in Jaya’s career. It released immediately after she married Amitabh in real life. While she was the bigger star before the marriage, their first film together as a married couple, Prakash Mehra’s Zanjeer (1973), catapulted Amitabh as the Angry Young Man, setting the ball rolling for his unrivalled superstardom.

In 1975, Jaya delivered three hits but almost all of them were hijacked by the outsized presence of Amitabh Bachchan. Mili, Chupke Chupke and Sholay had Jaya deliver some of the strongest performances of her career, but Amitabh’s juggernaut momentum aggressively tilted stakes in his favour.

In fact, Jaya’s last appearance on screen was as herself in R Balki’s Ki & Ka, where she’s seen celebrating Arjun Kapoor’s character of a homemaker, much to the chagrin of Amitabh Bachchan. When Jaya points out how she voluntarily took a backseat because of the Abhimaan effect, as Amitabh rose to unprecedented heights as an actor, he can’t help but nod in agreement.

The Angry Old Matriarch

The Abhimaan effect is null and void in Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani. Unlike Jaya in real life, Dhanlakshmi couldn’t have been bitter because of her husband’s success. On the contrary, she’s annoyed by the lack of ambition in Kamal (Dharmendra). He even meets an accident and ends up confining himself to a wheelchair and a state of amnesia, leaving Dhanlakshmi to grow their family business of laddoos and mithai all by herself.

She’s in complete control of her household, unlike Karan’s 2001 directorial Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, where she plays a submissive wife to her patriarchal husband Yash Raichand (Amitabh). She continues to be a silent support to him even when he kicks their son Rahul (Shah Rukh Khan) out of their home. She does get a moment of redemption by giving Yash a taste of his own medicine, mouthing his signature line, “Keh dia na, bas keh dia (That’s all, as I said so).”

In a fun recall, Jaya repeats the line in Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani. She’s closely guarded her son Tijori (Aamir Bashir), ensured he doesn’t become as ‘soft’ as his father, and turns him into a clone of Amitabh Bachchan from K3G or Mohabatein. She constantly evokes “parampara, pratishtha, anushasan” like her husband’s endlessly rigid character in the two films.

The Love Triangle

Dhanlakshmi’s bitterness also stems from the lack of love in her life. She flips out when she sees a new lease of life in her husband upon reuniting with his old love Jamini (Shabana). She even goes on to call them “Ghajini aur sajni.”

This love triangle may remind many of the one in Yash Chopra’s 1981 film Silsila, where Jaya marries Amitabh, only to discover he still loves Rekha. Film lore suggests the film was Amitabh’s commitment to his wife that he would never work with his then-rumoured love interest Rekha again. Ever since, while Amitabh and Rekha have never been seen together in public, there are ample videos that show Rekha greeting Jaya, one of which is from a show when Amitabh is stepping on stage to receive an award.

What one doesn’t notice is after Silsila, Jaya didn’t do a film all the way till the late ‘90s. She turned producer then, trying her best to resurrect the career of her husband, till he struck gold in 2000 with Kaun Banega Crorepati. She could’ve been a National Award-winning actor long into her career if she didn’t have to be the mother of two and the wife of a perennially busy actor.

Jaya’s bravest role till date

It’s a different ballgame to play a character with inbuilt strength than to play a character with a strength of your own. Jaya played the former in Kal Ho Naa Ho (2003) as Jennifer Kapoor, a single mother who also adopts her late husband’s illegitimate child and gives her as much love as their kids. But in Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani, Jaya played a character quite close to her real life. She cuts a lonely, resentful figure but stares at herself boldly in the mirror.

She exerts just the right amount of pressure while making laddoos, equating the process to the handling of relations. It’s exactly what the likes of her and Dharmendra have done in real life. When he utters his last words in the film, “Ghar nahi toda karte (you don’t break a home)”, he says it with a deep ache that resonates beyond his character: While Dharmendra also married Hema Malini, he never actually divorced his first wife.

Similarly, when Jaya Bachchan breaks down within when her grandson Rocky (Ranveer Singh) tells her she’ll die a lonely woman or when she writes to Rani that she’s too old to admit her mistakes, it only shows the unadulterated conviction of a peerless actor.

Jaya Bachchan has always been fearless. Whether it’s vehemently demanding justice from the Chair in the Rajya Sabha or recklessly reminding the paparazzi of ethics, she’s always owned and demanded her space. But to be able to come to terms with her insecurities and exhibit that for public scrutiny is the hallmark of a deeply secure actor.

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