"The Woman Waylaid at the Well" or Paṇaghaṭa-līlā: An Indian Folk Theme Appropriated in Myth and Movies

This article seeks to contribute to studying the manifold and interesting ways Indian popular movies have appropriated folk and mythological materials by focusing on the paṇaghaṭa-līlā or the theme of "the woman waylaid at the well." This theme is an important one because it raises the issue of so-called "eve-teasing," a form of sexual harassment of women omnipresent in public spaces in South Asia. The article in turn discusses the folk and the mythological treatments of the paṇaghaṭa-līlā, before analyzing its adaptations in song in three popular Hindi movies: the recent remaking of Devdas by Sanjay Leela Bhansali (2002), P. L. Santoshi's Barsaat ki Raat (1960), which deploys the theme in a Qawwālī context, and finally the classic Mother India by Mehboob Khan (1957). Each movie illustrates a different type of contextualization of the theme.