PHOTO: Hema Malini in LAL PATTHAR

AN ELEMENTAL TIGRESS

Hema Malini as Madhuri in Sushil Majumdar's Lal Patthar (1971)

In Lal Patthar (1971) there is a regal splendor to Hema Malini in the scene where she stands menacingly next to a mounted tiger in the mansion. She is Madhuri, the unlettered, wild adivasi woman, who the zamindar has tried playing Pygmalion to. When it’s apparent that she just wouldn’t do, he brings home a second wife. Madhuri is livid and doesn’t fall into the usual regressive mode of the proverbial sacrificial lamb. She calls him out on his double standards as a man, taunts him and berates him. She may have been accorded the armoreal position of  the mistress of the household, but she ends up as nothing more than a keep. The zamindar is patronizing—showers her with gifts, tries to get her educated in English—but she thwarts all his attempts at moulding her into a person she is not and could never have been. Yes, the script does paint her as something of a virago but Hema Malini invests this character with a screen presence that makes her almost an elemental tigress of sorts.