Durga Maa in Bollywood!

The festival of Navrati is celebrated for nine days which symbolizes the triumph of good over evil. It is believed that Maa Durga, known for her divine shakti, was created to protect her devotees people from the demon Mahishasur. So on this auspicious week of Durga Puja, BollyCurry presents to you a list of author backed characters who symbolize Maa Durga.

Radha from Mother India is one of the first women centric characters and has set a benchmark in Indian Cinema. Her character was briefed out as a woman as powerful and fearless as Maa Durga. Set in the aftermath of Independence, Radha (Nargis) is a poverty struck village woman considered to be the mother of an entire village. Nothing crushes this woman, be it the death of her youngest son, her husband leaving or the floods which ruin the village harvest. Instead, she persuades the villagers to stay back and rebuild rather than evacuating. She even shoots her son Birju who becomes a bandit and finally dies in her arms. The movie ended with Radha opening the gates of an irrigation canal.

Yet another character is Ketki in Mrityudand played by Madhuri Dixit Nene. Ketki is an educated woman who marries Vinay, an upper-class landlord, in a remote village in Bihar. The villain, Tripat, manipulates her husband and he starts physically and emotionally abusing her. Their marriage is on the rocks when Vinay finally comes to his senses but it is too late and he is killed. Ketki, now a widow, is disturbed by the oppression and victimization of women in her family and village and decides to teach the women to fight back. She encourages women to revolt against their oppressors and in the end it is Tripat's wife who attacks her husband, thus giving the other women strength to fight. The movie ends with the evil Tripat finally being slain at the Ganga Ghat.

Durga (Raveen Tandon) in Daman hails from a poor family and is married to an extremely wealthy and short tempered man, Sanjay Saikia. He physically and mentally torture his bride from the beginning of their marriage and ends up spending his wedding night with a prostitute. Durga is tortured and ends up pregnant after being raped by Sanjay. He shuns his daughter as he believes she is not his and when she turns twelve, he aims to have her married to a much older man. When Sanjay kills his own brother as he suspects him of having an affair with Durga, she decides to run away with her daughter. Durga finally picks up the pieces of her shattered life and starts afresh but Sanjay manages to find her. After much struggle, she ends up killing her evil husband.

Meera Gaity (Rani Mukherjee) and Sabrina Lall (Vidya Balan) in No one Killed Jessica are trying to bring justice for Sabrina's sister, Jessica, who is killed in a nightclub in front of three hundred witnesses by a politician's son. Meera, a feisty and potty-mouthed reporter, dismisses the case and the murderer is acquitted by the lower courts as the politician's son has connections. However, shocked by the verdict, Meera decides to reopen the case. She wants to show Sabrina on her channel but the latter refuses to answer her calls. It turns out that Sabrina is dejected as her mother passed away due to the shock that the accused went scot-free and her father is hospitalized. Finally a candle march is held in Jessica's memory and Meera and Sabrina successfully put the killer behind bars. 

Susanna Anna-Marie Johannes (Priyanka Chopra) is an Anglo-Indian in 7 Khoon Maaf, who marries seven times and kills six of her spouses. Susanna lives in a huge bungalow in Pondicherry with her loyal servants and craves for love as her mother passed away at a tender age. She tries to adjust in every possible way by changing her dressing style, speech, even trying to adjust to her spouse's religion but when she discovers her husband's fatal sins, she and her loyal servants end the men. Each husband represents a deadly sin ranging from pride, gluttony, wrath, envy, lust and greed. She becomes a nun in the end, getting married to Jesus Christ and the seventh murder is that of the old Susanna.

Vidya Balan played the role of Vidya Bagchi in Kahaani, a pregnant software engineer who comes to Kolkata from London during Durga Pooja  to search for her missing husband. She meets with dead ends and her investigations reveal that her husband resembled a man called Milan Damji who is a rouge IB agent responsible for a poison gas attack in a Kolkata metro rail compartment killing many. Vidya continues her search overcoming many hurdles and when she finally is face to face with a gun wielding Milan in order to exchange a sensitive file, she disarms him using her prosthetic belly and shoots him indicating everything about her was a tale, a kahaani. In reality, she is an undercover police agent who is the widow of an IB officer killed in the gas attack.