Jaya Bhaduri was a bona fide star long before the Bachchan name became an indelible part of her identity. She was all of 13 years when she made her cinematic debut in Satyajit Ray’s 1963 feminist drama Mahanagar. Her stardom was that of an organic kind, not the manufactured social media fame celebrities chase nowadays.
As my mother would say, there was not a single person with a brain cell who did not love Bhaduri as an actor and public personality during her heydays.
But, a woman in our society becomes “difficult” the moment she refuses to perform likeability. And as women we all know, we become the most intolerant of participating in our own dehumanisation when we start ageing and crone wisdom finally hits us like the thousand bricks of ancestral inheritance. The maiden may be lusted after, the mother may be revered, but the crone is promptly discarded or feared by society, a fate that became inevitable for Bachchan.