The motiveless malignity of Kaikeyi, stepmother of Ram, is perhaps our earliest template of woman as villain. Without her, there would have been no story – just a happily-ever-after before the tale even began. Kaikeyi’s darkness is an essential contrast to the light, but she rarely gets either credit for story or a chance at redemption. She is remembered as the queen who cared for neither kingdom nor social good – only her son – and was manipulated by her conniving maid Manthara, who came to define everything that was evil about their gender.

Kaikeyi’s successors, witches and villains past and present, are women who care not for larger gains or losses, whose battles are fought in kitchens and harems for the attention of husbands and sons. The kingdoms are gone now, the names have changed, but Queen Kaikeyi has had a long reign in the bedrooms and kitchens of Indian film and television.

Played to the hilt by Lalita Pawar (who years later played Manthara in the teleserial Manthara), the archetypical mother-in-law, filled with venom for her daughter-in-law; the rival for her son’s affection is as one-dimensional as a character can possibly be. To be fair, the male villain in her time is far from complex either. He is the lecherous zamindar, or a smuggler of gold and narcotics or a part of the builder mafia. But he at least changes with the times and mirrors the concerns of his era. His female counterpoint is condemned to stay in the confines of the home. The only way to differentiate her over the decades is as per the fashion diktats of the day, so little does her demeanour change.

If the villainess moves out of her domain, she is promptly labeled the vamp, whose primary job is to distract the man with her beauty and wiles, leading him astray. This man, who will eventually save the world/ conquer the pinnacle of love (as per the genre of the film), apparently has no restraint when it came to this femme fatale. Her villainy then lies less in her intrinsic evil and has more to do with the leading man’s (and society’s) response to her.

On the small screen, the monotonously and almost caricaturishly evil villainess thrives, draped in designer saris that are ripe for replication and wearing oversized bindis that are defining motifs of her evil intent. In tales told from a female point of view, aimed at a largely-female audience, the good heroine is almost always faced off with the evil mother-in-law or sister-in-law. The family home – usually a chandeliered palace – is really her prison where petty politics is as deeply entrenched as the sindoor in the sanskaari bahu. Here, television’s arch villains – the malevolent Jigishas and Komolikas – wreak their particular brand of havoc, setting up petty fights and belittling female family members to gain the attention of the men in power. Even a seemingly historical show like Jodha Akbar has large doses of kitchen politics – the quasi mother-in-law Mahamanga humiliating Jodha, hurting her where it hurts most: in the cooking department.

The very worst of character traits are liberally sprinkled through these stories – women as creatures prone to jealousy and shrill, loud lamentation. Conditioned to control their rage in the presence of real power (ie the men), they resort to cruelty towards those they can target without fears of retribution. Once the shows leap past the years and power balances shift, the tormented learn to torment, and life comes a full circle, blurring the line between good and evil.

On the big screen, this tale of generational torment is best seen in the character of the “madam” or brothel keeper. The madam was one of the girls once, sold into sexual slavery by poverty, exploited by pimps and her predecessor. With time and experience, she co-opts the worst traits of her abusers and the once-helpless victim turns villainous victimiser.

The bad girl on the big screen is recent movies is not as obvious a victim and appears to have transcended this vicious circle. Her evil glance is not directed at other, lesser women. Her wicked cunning, her sexual magnetism, even her hardhearted cruelty is at the service of her own desires. She is Priyanka Chopra, the powerful boss who terrorises in Aitraaz; Urmila, the obsessed mistress who turns stalker in Pyar Tune Kya Kiya; Amrita Singh, the businesswoman villain in Kalyug and Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman; Manasvi Mamagai, the gangster in Action Jackson who thinks little of killing her object of affection’s wife.

Dressed in power suits, flaunting a drink, and in the days before the mandatory smoking disclaimer, a cigarette, she stands for everything a girl should not be.

She is placed in different settings – the dance bar, the catwalk, the corporate boardroom – but the tale is the same, that of a woman who over reaches her grasp and becomes too big for her boots. She, it turns out, is merely a female archetype whose so-called villainous traits are thinly-veiled critiques of female power and sexuality. For ultimately, what is good and what is bad comes from a code laid out by men. There is a certain code of the bharatiya nari that is comfortable to men and any challenge to their manliness violates this code. For instance, Western values, whether in dress or thought, make for an Indian villain (both among men and women, as it turns out). Redemption is to embrace the patriarchal, but that is usually an option that is exclusive to the heroine. And so the bitch, doomed by her character, remains a bitch.

The benefit afforded to ‘bad’ women with passage of time and the inching onset of modernity is one of circumstances. The Bandit Queen and her many female dacoit progeny are forced by the brutality of gang rape to take up arms, to avenge their honour, which lies not in the goodness of her heart but is a fragile, bodily thing that is usually violated by villains. In The Godmother, similarly, she is out for revenge – a good woman in a quest to slay those who killed her husband, turns into a mafia don. She is distinct from the male mafia who are in the business purely for power and profit. The evil antagonist of Goliyon ki Raasleela Ram-Leela is a widow in a clan war and in the absence of the male leader, the burden of leadership and cruelty falls on her shoulders. And she has to prove she is better than, if not equal, to a man. Dhankor Baa of Ram-Leela, played with quiet menace by Supriya Pathak, turns the betel nut cutter (a symbol of domesticity) into a weapon, mercilessly using it to chop fingers of those who dissent. Phoolan Devi deals with her humiliation by massacring an entire caste of men, her actions unprecedented in their cruelty in a bid to target a society whose rules itself are crimes against women.

Seeking justice and revenge, these women transcend the lakshman rekha drawn out for them and pay the price for their transgressions, usually with their lives. Then there are women who never get the opportunity or courage to fight, and have to wait for later, sometimes an entire lifetime for revenge. It is only in their post-death avatars as ghosts can they haunt and finally destroy those who tormented them. The Raaz series begins with a woman scorned by a lover, rising from the afterlife for revenge. In Bhool Bhullaiya, a ghost from the past possesses the character of Vidya Balan in a bid to avenge a centuries-old injustice. In Ramgopal Varma’s classic Bhoot, a molested woman – not heard in life rises from the dead – possesses another to give her molester his due. The daayan, the chudail, the witch in this genre sold as horror, is a woman seeking retribution, fighting for herself from beyond the grave, for no one fought for her in life. Her terror is merely collateral damage; she does not seek to scare, only to satisfy her need for closure.

For till the atrocities against them continue, women, by hook or crook, will find a way.

In a world used to silent women, the one who speaks up, speaks too loud, howls with rage becomes a villain. The female antagonist then, in retrospect, is not a villain at all, just a victim whose story has not been told. After all people are not born heroes or villains, but are created by the people around them. And in a society of patriarchs, in stories written by men, it is just so easy to make the woman the villain.