Atul Rawat
Bollywood’s legendary villains terrified generations with their sinister smiles, chilling laughter, and unforgettable screen presence. Here’s why these iconic baddies remain etched in popular culture.
Growing up, we were genuinely terrified of the Bollywood baddies. We hated their sinister smiles. We hated their menacing laughter. We hated their sidekicks with long sideburns, bell-bottom pants, and a thick belt with a big buckle.
We silently begged the hero to hurry up before he was tied to another conveyor belt heading towards certain death. We silently pleaded with the heroine not to open that door. We wanted the hero’s mother to stop believing every forged letter conveniently delivered by the villain’s henchman.
Yet, strangely, we loved them.
Long after we forgot the storyline, we remembered their dialogues:
“Arre O Samba… kitne aadmi the?”
“Tera kya hoga Kaalia?”
“Mona… darling!”
“Isko liquid oxygen mein daal do.”
The heroes came and went.
The villains became legends.
Long before corporate fraudsters, ransomware gangs and cyber criminals arrived to terrorise us, Bollywood’s baddies ruled the underworld with remarkable professionalism.
They were very good at branding. Every villain had a signature laugh, a signature cigar, signature dialogue delivery and signature shoes with different numbers.
His introduction was always magnificent. Somewhere in the Arabian Sea, a speedboat sliced through the waves. It reached an enormous yacht. Out stepped the villain—immaculately dressed in white, puffing a Cuban cigar. Beside him stood his glamorous companion in an itsy-bitsy floral dress wearing oversized sunglasses.
He would remove the cigar, look into the horizon and ask in slow motion, “Michael… gold biscuits ka shipment pahunch gaya?” And, in the background, a crescendo would erupt.
Every respectable villain operated from an underground den. This was not an ordinary hideout. It was like the Pentagon. Flashing red lights. Flashing blue lights. Huge world maps. Secret tunnels. Hydraulic doors. Buttons. Switches. Levers. Television screens showing every corner of the globe. One wondered whether he was planning a robbery or launching a cruise missile.
Oddly enough, despite this technological superiority, he never managed to stop one unarmed hero from entering through an air duct, somehow avoiding the giant rotating fan blades.
Security was extraordinary. The entrance required passwords. The guards carried machine guns.
Yet, once every week in the evening, the entire security apparatus paused for a cabaret performance. Apparently, international crime syndicates believed cultural programmes were essential for team building. The vamp in her fishnet stockings and plumed hairstyle would gyrate to a foot-tapping number. The vamp was an essential part of the underworld. Wrapped in sequins, she was surrounded by cigarette smoke and performed impossible dance moves. All this while, fifty international smugglers politely watched her without spilling their drinks. And, during the third verse, she would have overheard the villain’s master plan and passed the information to the hero.
After all, she had a golden heart and secretly pined for the hero.
His other trusted lieutenants also had a personality of their own. While one was bald, the other one had an eye patch. One had a scar running dramatically across his face, while another wore dark glasses indoors, even at night. No one ever asked how they got these injuries.
And who can forget those elaborate midnight meetings—at lonely jetties, in the middle of the sea, or in abandoned factories—where coded lights flashed in the darkness and halves of torn banknotes became the ultimate password.
No self-respecting villain could function without crocodiles. These poor reptiles waited patiently beneath a trapdoor for years, hoping a hero would eventually arrive. Why every criminal empire dealing in gold biscuits required a live crocodile remains one of Indian cinema’s greatest mysteries.
The methods of execution were wonderfully theatrical. Nobody simply shot the hero. There was no entertainment in this simple act. Instead, the Baddy would drawl:
“Isko liquid oxygen mein daal do.”
“Isko acid ke tank mein phenko.”
The villain would then leave the room without checking whether the job had actually been completed. This remarkable confidence in middle management cost him dearly in every single film. Delegation, it turned out, was the greatest weakness of organised crime.
The police, meanwhile, maintained impeccable consistency. A convoy of jeeps, sirens blaring heroically, would arrive exactly five minutes after the villain had escaped. The escape was also dramatic. Sometimes he used the helicopter, sometimes the submarine, and sometimes he just sped in a speedboat to be chased by the hero.
Smuggling itself was refreshingly uncomplicated. There were no shell companies in those days. There were no offshore tax havens. There were only shiny gold biscuits, which were always neatly packed.
The grand finale never disappointed.
There would be hundreds of bullets flying all over. There would be thousands of punches, kicks, somersaults and gravity-defying jumps. Glass bottles would shatter with astonishing frequency. Whenever the hero—or, occasionally, even the heroine—threw a punch, ten henchmen would fly through the air in perfect synchronisation. The fight would finish with a small cut on the hero’s forehead, which would be lovingly bandaged by the heroine. The villain would fall dramatically from the highest available platform. Justice was restored. The national economy survived yet another gold (biscuit) crisis.
Looking back, those villains were strangely comforting. They had style. They had manners. They announced every evil plan in advance. More importantly, they never hid behind fake social media profiles or anonymous emails.
Sadly, today’s protagonist is often the baddie himself. He is no longer the spotless hero we grew up with, but a deeply flawed character—someone who drinks heavily, teases women, breaks the law, and lives in shades of grey. Perhaps cinema is merely reflecting the changing values and complexities of the society it serves.
Frankly, I miss the old Bollywood baddies. He arrived without statutory health warnings, without sensitivity disclaimers, and without social media outrage waiting outside the theatre. He was simply the villain—and gloriously so.
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Illustration Source: AI/Courtesy: Atul Rawat
(Views are personal.)
