Time and again, heroines, except for a handful in the past and maybe Madhuri, the only example you could cite in the present, have managed to get meaty roles tailor-made for her. Nowadays, women-oriented movies either end up being patronized by women audiences alone or, when exceptional, are lapped up by critics and make it to the festival circuit. They have seldom seen success at the box office.

This has left the actresses of today with no choice but to bide by the roles offered to them, most of them being that of glam girls. Yesteryear actress Deepti Naval says that the scene during her time in the 1970s and 1980s weren’t any better just that they had a strong parallel cinema movement to fall back on. With the decline of those movies, today’s actresses have decided to take up the onus of penning their own roles. As mentioned earlier, Madhuri is the only contemporary woman star that managed to have a role tailor-made for her in her latest Aaja Naachle. In fact the role forced her to end her sabbatical. Many others haven’t been fortunate enough; actresses Lara Dutta and Gul Panag have started penning roles for themselves. Lara is in fact writing a period film, which she believes, will have a character that connects with the modern Indian woman. Women writers, we hope portray women in a better light in a rather realistic fashion that only a few male writers have done successfully in the past.