The heroine’s role in India’s first ever film was not played by a woman, but a man. In Dadasaheb Phalke’s Raja Harishchandra (1913), the character of Queen Taramati was enacted by Anna Salunke; the other female roles too were played by men. That was because women considered acting a more demeaning job than even prostitution those days. But, such a total absence of women in India’s first film was, in a way, a portend of things to come: it would always be a struggle for the fairer sex to work in our cinema, except in acting.

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