This article stresses upon the differences between the portrayal of women in Indian popular cinema and India's art film circuit. The author has used examples of films made by Satyajit Ray, and particularity those that were adaptations of short stories by Rabindranath Tagore. She suggests that Bollywood uses its women as metaphor's for suffering of the downtrodden or for India, or alternatively as the stereotype of a restricted Indian woman's life. Art films, she claims stray from this stereotype and revert back to classic Indian literature and try to explore the themes of marital relationships and steer clear of motherhood. She argues that Indian audiences in the past have preferred the stereotypical image of a woman and her ‘place' in society. But recently a growing appreciation has begun for the realistic portrayal of modern women in popular cinema. Finally, she argues that over time, women have adopted the dominant ‘subject' in all types of Indian films.

This article is very pertinent to Pather Panchali because although it is meant to be a story about a young boy Apu, the dominant characters of the film are played by two women - Durga and her mother. Apu is brought up in a household of three women who are at different stages in their lives. Thus overall the movie has a very comprehensive and real take on women of all ages, living in poverty in a small village in Bengal. Ray's depiction of women here is a mixture of the two ideas of the portrayal of women in Indian cinema. Although the mother seems to be more wary of her relationship with her husband, she is the sole caretaker of her two children, thereby stressing her role as both mother and wife. This is a realistic depiction of women in cinema, and came about at a time where people (Indian audiences) were not ready to accept such a strong reality. Thus, the movie was termed as an art-house film in India, although it received worldwide recognition.