Think of powerful female characters in films and the usual films like Mother India and Mirch Masala come to mind. Some women, and the characters they have essayed on screen, have left their imprint on Bollywood cinema with their powerful roles. These are such women whose shadows will live beyond their times. Deepa Gahlot takes a look at them.

Fearless Nadia

Mary Evans earned her name Fearless Nadia for playing swashbuckling roles in films, the kind men usually did in her time, while the women dressed up and looked on. Her stunt movies line Hunterwali, Miss Frontier Mail, Punjab Mail, Hurricane Hansa, Luteru Lalna, Jungle Princess and many others with equally colourful names, earned her a huge fan following in the pre-Independence era.

Nadia did daring action scenes herself, atop moving trains, on horses, and in one famous scene, carrying a man on her shoulder and fighting. A circus artiste and ballet dancer before she became an actress with the pioneering Wadia Brothers, Nadia remains one of a kind. She’s the only symbol of female emancipation ever in Hindi movies -- there has never been another like her. She fully deserves her cult status.

Nargis

Nargis played Radha in Mehboob's Mother India, which is to this day the best-known film with a female protagonist, who overcame all odds and never gave up her Indian values. After her disabled husband's disappearance, Radha raises her kids on her own, thwarting the evil moneylender's advances. The scene of her killing her rebellious son in the end is an all-time classic.

Nargis was curtailed by the kind of films being made in her time, but even then she played some pretty tough characters in her career – like the lawyer who defends her lover in court in Awaara, the floundering hero's voice of conscience in Shree 420, the wife who walks out on her husband when he suspects her fidelity in Lajwanti, the woman who kills her evil husband in Adalat… But her name remains synonymous with Mother India.

Waheeda Rehman

Waheeda Rehman played one of the most revolutionary characters (for Hindi cinema) of all time in Vijay Anand's Guide. She played a courtesan's daughter, who leaves her husband who wants her to sacrifice her passion for dance, and pursues her career. She lives with the man who helps her escape and supports her pursuit of stardom. Waheeda Rehman, like other actresses of her time, did not get to do too many unusual parts. Despite the restrictions, she played some fabulous roles: like the hooker who stands by the despondent poet in Pyaasa, the independent nautanki dancer in Teesri Kasam, the mother who exhorts her son to punish the man who abandoned her in Trishul, the elderly woman who lives life on her own terms in Swayam and, most recently, the woman who protests her son's senseless death in Rang De Basanti.

Shabana Azmi

Right from her first film -- Shyam Benegal's Ankur in 1973 -- Shabana Azmi became the torch-bearer for woman power in films. In Mahesh Bhatt's Arth, she plays the dumped wife who refuses to forgive her husband, the powerful madam of a brothel in Mandi, a woman who defends the right of a married woman to support her own parents in Yeh Kaisa Insaf, and a singer devoted to her career in Saaz and Tehzeeb. Except for a few early films, Shabana Azmi made it a point never to do a film in which the heroine is subservient to the hero. At some point, the tough characters she played in films merged with her real life role as an activist. Today, it’s difficult to separate the actress from the person — both equally strong and outspoken.

Smita Patil

Smita Patil may not have made it a point to reject weak woman roles like her contemporary Shabana Azmi, but her best films have been the ones in which she played strong woman. Her work stands out in movies like Subah in which she discovers herself when she steps out of the house, Mirch Masala, in which she starts a women's rebellion against an evil government official, Manthan, in which she participates in the milk revolution in her village, a sturdy slum dweller in Chakra and many more. In spite of her limited success in commercial cinema, where she obviously did not get the pick of roles, she was one of the front-runners of the parallel cinema movement till her premature death in 1986.