Has Google Newsfeed lost its head? I wondered. One day, it told me Rashmika Mandanna was shooting for the horror-comedy Thama. The next day, the feed said her Kuberaa was to be released soon. She’s also to star in Pushpa 3, I was informed. Wait, isn’t she already in theatres with Sikandar? And wasn’t she just there in another blockbuster Chhaava that raked in over a thousand crores barely a few months ago with Pushpa 2. And didn’t Animal seem like it was released the day before yesterday? Google Feed hadn’t lost its AI mojo; it seems there’s no film made today that doesn’t have Ms Mandanna starring in it.That begs us to ask the question (tongue-firmly-in cheek): has Rashmika Mandanna lost her head? Or is she simply trying to be the female equivalent of Akshay Kumar in terms of film frequency? But here’s the kicker: while Akshay headlines his films as the protagonist kicking, pushing, and emoting the story forward, Rashmika is relegated to being arm candy, the pretty face who exists primarily to be wooed, stalked, danced around, or occasionally worshipped like a mother figure. She’s there, but she’s not really there there — if you catch my drift.So, is this Rashmika’s fault? The effect whose cause is poor career choices? Or is she simply playing the cards she’s been dealt with?I think, in the testosterone-driven world of Indian cinema — Bollywood, Tollywood, Mollywood, etc. — Rashmika is just making hay while the sun shines upon her fate. She doesn’t yet mind pouting her way as the female lead in androcentric films, i.e. cinema where the male lead is the sun around which everyone else orbits. I’m sure she’s well aware that even if you replace her with any other actress, the film will suffer no haemorrhage. Bet she also realises that it’s not her fault because most female characters in Indian cinema are crafted to complement the male hero’s journey. What choice does she have: she can either crib her way to an empty bank balance or see things as they are and grin to an overflowing one.Remember the time when fair-skinned North Indian actresses with the “right proportions”, “perfect features”, and the “correct skin tones” found themselves typecast in Southern cinema? Think Tamannah Bhatia or Kajal Agarwal. Were they terrible actresses? Absolutely not! Every time they were given roles with actual character development and emotional range, they knocked it out of the park. So has Rashmika, in the films she has been allowed to show her acting fangs. But how often do such opportunities come their way, as compared to, say, their male leads?This brings us to the million-dollar question: How many films are actually written with female protagonists in mind? How many stories centre on women’s journeys, struggles, and triumphs? For a business series, I wrote a late 40s female lead struggling with menopause, only for male producers to snigger and roll their eyes at me.And this isn’t because female-led films don’t work! Some of Indian cinema’s biggest blockbusters have been powered by phenomenal performances from women. From the pioneering Hunterwali to classics like Mother India and Mughal-E-Azam, to more recent hits like Queen, Kahaani, Neerja and Tanu Weds Manu, women have proven time and again that they can carry a film on their shoulders and make it rain money at the box office at the same time.Yet, most producers seem to suffer from selective amnesia when it comes to these successes. To them, female-led blockbusters aren’t the norm —they’re anomalies, flukes, happy accidents that can’t be replicated, so they sweep it under the rug. Hence, while they’ll happily bankroll the fifteenth cookie-cutter film of a male star whose last five movies have sunk at the box office faster than the Titanic, they’ll break into a cold sweat at the mere suggestion of financing a female-led project.When a film like Alia Bhatt’s Jigra underperforms, it is immediately held up as evidence that “female-led films don’t work” (I’ve been handed that reason so many times in the last few months that I’ve coined a new term ‘The Jigra Effect’). But nobody asks the more pertinent question: “Compared to what?” Nobody conducts a fair analysis of how many male-led films flop versus how many female-led films flop relative to their numbers.Let’s do a little thought experiment (because, except for an old TISS study, no search engine or AI model could find me any data for this). If we were to analyse all the films released across Indian cinema in a given year, we’d find that women-led films won’t be more than 10% of the total universe. Now, if we were to compare the budget-to-box office ratio of these two categories, I’m willing to bet my bottom rupee that women-led films would show a better return on investment on average (will someone reading this, please take up this study or find me a khazana so I can do it myself?)This is the twisted paradox of Indian cinema: the industry continues to invest heavily in male-led projects despite diminishing returns while simultaneously underinvesting in female-led stories despite evidence of their profitability. And this is when half the nation’s audience is surprise-surprise, women who want to see people similar to them on screen. It’s not just sexism, gender stereotypes or patriarchy — it’s terrible business!So where does this leave actresses like Rashmika Mandanna? In the absence of great roles written specifically for women, they’re doing the next best thing: working hard, staying visible, and kicking the number high in their bank and investment portfolio. Can we really blame them for that?Rashmika’s ubiquity in big-budget films isn’t solely due to her talent (though she certainly has plenty) but also about being at the right place at the right time, and let’s not forget: luck. In an industry where a majority of films range from mediocre to terrible, sometimes what sets an actor apart isn’t just their skill but their ‘good fortune’ in landing consecutive hits. More than their social media follows that new-age discriminators like Netflix employ, this old-world trick of courting ‘luck’ is what Indian cinema relies on heavily in casting, especially for consequential-looking inconsequential roles anyone can play.Is Rashmika a bad actress? Quite the contrary! In those brief moments in films like Animal and Pushpa, where she has been given something substantial to work with, she has shown her acting chops. You can almost see glimpses of what she could do if someone would just give her a chance to headline a full commercial blockbuster (Pushpa 3: Rise Of The Wife, anyone?) to be the driving force of a narrative rather than its decorative element.Look at what happens even with Alia Bhatt. To me, she’s the most talented commercial female lead of her generation. Yet, in Brahmastra, she was reduced to a character whose primary dialogue consisted of breathlessly repeating the male protagonist’s name: “Shiva!”, rightfully triggering a meme fest. Is this really the best use of her considerable acting prowess the film’s creators could think of?The root issue here is agency — or rather, the lack thereof. Female characters in mainstream Indian cinema are rarely allowed to possess agency. They are not permitted to make choices that drive the plot forward and are instead relegated to being reactionaries to the choices made by male characters. They don’t have goals independent of the hero’s journey; they merely exist to facilitate or decorate his way. They aren’t fully realised human beings with complex inner lives; they’re mere plot devices with pretty faces. But hey, these ‘abla naris’ at least don’t get raped as much anymore as they used to in horrible films written by terrible screenwriters till just a decade ago. Umm… cheers to that?Where are the women in commercial Indian cinema? They’re there, but are they really there? They are present physically but absent narratively. They’re on the poster but not during discussions in the writer’s room. They’re in the dance numbers wearing revealing outfits but not in the action sequences. They’re objects to be desired and won by heroes, not subjects who win.As a screenwriter pitching a high-octane action thriller featuring a female protagonist being chased across Mumbai by a monster who she eventually rises to fight against and win, I’ve hit this wall countless times. “It’s a nice story, but why couldn’t you make the hero a man?” No, man, I don’t want to write another film for another male star or a rising starlet with an impossible ego. I want to see a woman with shades of grey navigate her way across a brutal city, losing devastatingly till she finds that the only person she can truly rely on is herself, fight and win, both metaphorically and literally. I don’t think anyone will greenlight that film. But I’m writing it anyway. Didn’t someone say it’s better to light a candle than curse the darkness?What Indian cinema needs isn’t more women on screen — it needs more women driving the stories. It needs producers brave enough to invest in female narratives, directors visionary enough to tell them compellingly, and audiences open-minded enough to embrace them. Scratch the last bit because I believe if you make films well and find distributors to give them enough screens, people will come in hordes to relish them.But until that happens, actresses like Rashmika will continue to be everywhere and nowhere simultaneously — ubiquitous in presence but scarce in substance. They’ll continue to be mothers or juvenile girls, goddesses or girlfriends, but rarely fully-formed protagonists with agency, purpose, and drive.So, I tell you, as I tell myself, that the next time you see Rashmika headline a blockbuster, remember: she’s not just making career choices — she’s navigating an industry that still struggles to see women as more than supporting characters in men’s stories. And perhaps, just perhaps, with enough voices demanding better representation, better writing, and better opportunities for female actors, we might eventually see a shift in the narrative landscape of our mahaan Indian cinema.If some of the biggest blockbusters in Indian film history have been women-led without its industries focusing on women in cinema, imagine what could happen if the industry actually started taking women’s stories seriously.
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