Bhabhi Ki Chudiyan (1961)

A sentimental melodrama which helped establish Kumari’s image as ‘the queen of tragedy’. Shyam’s (Sahni) wife Geeta (Kumari) is like a foster-mother to her young brother-in- law, Mohan (S. Kumar). Mohan’s filial devotion becomes an erotic obsession, to the distress of his new bride. The virtuous Geeta tirelessly serves and mothers the men in the family until she dies of exhaustion. The relations between a wife and her younger brother-in-law, echoing Seeta and Lakshman from the Ramayana, were often used in films to titillate the audience’s expectation of images of sexual impropriety.