Filmi yore has it that when recalcitrant children wouldn’t sleep, Mothers would coax their children to bed with the warning “Beta, so ja varna Gabbar Singh aa jayega” (Sleep child or else Gabbar will come) ! Gabbar Singh of Sholay, that much remembered villain, with his maniacal laugh and gleaming eyes, asking that question “Kitne ? Kitne aadmi they?” Menacingly he cracks his whip, takes the lives of his unfit gang-members, and chops off the Thakur’s hands. His eyes dancing with insane delight, we were never quite sure how psychopathic Gabbar really was. What we were sure of was that he was the Bad Guy. The original bad penny – malicious and destructive, vicious and vile. Just like Mogambo or Dr. Dang, Daaga or Teja, or the almost harmless sounding Prem. Prem Chopra that is.

Well, 35 years later, Gabbar Singh, the fierce dacoit will probably not scare many kids but all those years ago, there was only one type of Hindi film villain. Mustachioed, goatee-d, this terribly evil person was perpetually upto no good. And when his nasty plans didn’t succeed, as was often the case (else whither the film folks ?) he and his cohorts would kidnap female relatives of the main protagonist (yes, the brave, chivalrous hero) and subject the women to some form of torture – tying them up, taunting them, and sometimes making them dance on broken glass (a la Basanti). Of course, if the villain was spectacularly clever, or thought himself creative, he would place the tied up females on strategically located drums, atop which he slung nooses. A little slip of the foot, and Aha! Off the poor women would go into the EverLasting Sleep.

These were ofcourse the 80s and the 90s, where Hindi films were romances, and the villains were those who had axes to grind with the hero or his family. That was then – technology was at a premium, bow-ties were in, and the only scholarly folk around lived in the universities. The villains were bold, brassy, and so over-the-top that one never associated subtlety with them. Their characters were always painted in broad brushstrokes; a very general and identifiable evil. They wore hats, smoked cigars and pipes, rolled their eyes, glared, leered and laughed menacingly. The bald look was considered impressive for a man up to no good. When the villain stepped onto the screen, you knew that that was the villain; there was no mistaking him.

Seeing that the villains were typecast then, and their looks and names so stereotyped, there really was no “Crime/Thriller” genre, no filmi noir to speak of in Hindi Cinema. Not until recently that is – that is when they broke the mould. In the past ten years, the villain of Hindi cinema has gone from spectacularly overt to subtly nuanced, from one easily identifiable entity to a many-headed diverse compendium of evil qualities. Where the bald villain of older films flashed his large, red eyes at us, possibly cracking a whip, and at the same time smiling crookedly from the corner of his twisted mouth, today’s smart, sophisticated, well-read villain peers at us from above a James Hadley Chase, hands well-manicured and hair smartly styled. He’s probably also lounging around in extremely fashionable clothes, in digs one would die for, and has a careless, nonchalant attitude to boot. He’s smart and he’s slick and so sure of his appeal, that it comes as no surprise that he even gets away with it (Don, 2006)

In the year 2000, there came this little known film called “Dil pe mat le yaar”. Starring Manoj Bajpai as a naïve country bumpkin, Ram, who has recently moved to the city, this had several villains. Not the ones that leered, and not the types that the audience could easily identify as such. These villains were within us, the little voices of evil in each of the characters. Smarmy and menacing, this evil was more pervasive, harder to identify and kill, because you knew not where it lived.

It has to be said that films reflect the goings-on in society, because there was a sudden spurt of gangster noir. From the early ones like Shiva, Vaastav and Satya, characters were honed until we had subtly nuanced, and soft-spoken gangsters like that of Abbaji (Pankaj Kapoor) a tottering old man, strong of will and machismo, and head of the mob, in the classic Maqbool. And then there was “Company”, a film that pitted gangster against gangster and still managed to make one of them look good.

Politics has been much associated with crime, and cinema depicts this. In the romance with the dark undertones – Haasil, the wily politician, played by Irfan Khan, wants to bump off our hero, baby-faced Jimmy Shergill, so he (Khan) will get the girl. “Manorama 6 feet Under”– one of the most recent additions to this great set of noir films, is deliciously cast, languorously told, and tells the tale of our very own home-grown, firmly-entrenched-in-the-middle-class, detective Satyaveer Singh Randhawa, from the small desert town of Lakhot. Randhawa, beautifully fleshed out by Abahay Deol, comes complete with bickering wife and corruption charges of his own, but does not give up hope in this politically charged thriller.

And let’s not say today’s noir movie makers are not inspired by the masters. “Omkara”, Vishal Bharadwaj’s highly anticipated take on Shakespeare’s Othello featured rural inter-gang rivalries, item numbers and betrayal. “Johnny Gaddar” on the other hand, was about an urban traitor, an innocent looking city-slicker who you couldn’t imagine squashing a bug, much less betraying his fellow con-men.

Well there you have it folks – the appeal of the atypical villain! Welcome the smart, soft-spoken, subtle scoundrel! You cannot guess his intentions and you cannot see his black heart. May he live long and spawn more interesting cinema !

The edited version of this article originally appeared in the Deccan Herald here.