(GIST OF YOJANA) No Pushovers: Dev 6 Goldie’s Glorious Women Characters

GIST OF YOJANA : No Pushovers: Dev 6 Goldie’s Glorious Women Characters

NOVEMBER-2025

No Pushovers: Dev 6 Goldie’s Glorious Women Characters

Context:

Three things are striking. One, much like Dev and Goldie’s film company Nuvketan (meaning Newness), their heroines will be no pushovers. Second, this cinematic moment truly presages an extremely nuanced and complex woman character who will emerge from Dev & Goldie’s progressive cinema - Rosie in Guide. The third point is has an Indian film heroine ever asserted her ethical and moral high- around so emphatically in Indian cinema? Especially in that era where women would suffer, sacrifice, weep, and have no agency or choice in their lives.

The Evolving Woman

Even in Goldie’s path-breaking thrillers, heroines are never passive. They are active agents. In Teesri Martzil (1966), Asha Parekh comes to a hill station to avenge her murdered sister’s death. Hema Malini in Johny Mera Naam becomes a smuggler searching for her criminal father. In Jewel 77i/e/(1967), Shalu is manipulated by a ruthless villain who holds her little brother’s life at stake. Forced to dance to his tunes, when she falls in love with Vinay (Dev), she does all she can to rescue him from the evil clutches of the villain.
Most Hindi films then, would end with the hero and heroine marrying. But in Tere Mere Sapne (1971), Goldie takes us into what happens after the ‘happily-ever-after’. Goldie makes us experience the struggle and hurdles of a man and woman trying to make a home, their small adjustments, the ephemeral moments of intimacy, quarrels, and making up. Soon, the wife loses her unborn baby in an accident.She can never be a mother again.

Dev Anand’s Modern Icons

He as a filmmaker had a vision about Indian women which was so ahead of its time. ‘Hum Dono—The Dev and Goldie Story’, reminded her that in Dev Sahab’s Prem Pujari, his debut as a director, a village girl goes on to become Miss India. Then she goes to London for the Miss World contest. Who but Dev Sahab could have envisaged way back in 1970 that Indian beauty would one day enchant and win over the world. Waheeda ji glowed, nodding happily.
Even Zeenat Aman, introduced by Dev Sahab, redefines the ‘image’ of the Indian heroine with her first film Hare Rama Hare Krishna (1971), playing Dev’s sister who rebels against an unhappy childhood torn apart by divorce, becoming a radical, free- spirited Hippie. Or Tina Munim in Des Pardes (1978), a young, innocent, poor village girl sold in marriage to an unknown, overaged suitor. But when help comes in the form of Dev, she sheds not just her shyness but actively plots against this bridegroom.

Conclusion:

The true litmus test of the culture of a society is in how they treat their women, on the streets, in workplaces, at home. In that we seem to have failed. But in cinema we have Dev and Goldie’s women characters—radical, no pushovers, defiant, vulnerable. At once so human. They have nourished and inspired generations of women to stand up and be counted.