Vidya Balan's role

arrantee, I definitely agree with you on this. Measuring the importance of role by it's screentime alone is just one way of looking at it. True, quantity is important, but so is quality. The quality of a role can echo farther than the minutes of screentime. One example is Hannibal Lecter's role in The Silence of the Lambs. He only had 16 minutes in a 2 hour movie but that didn't stop his oscar from being in the *leading* actor category. Of course, that's an extreme example, but the point it makes is that the quality of a performance can carry lots of weight. Vidya Balan's role wasn't made to be a leading one, but it was made to be a powerful one for the amount of screentime it got, and it was. If there was any scene that put a knot in my throat it was when Shyam proposed to Vidya and the emotions she went through (and conveyed) before she finally submitted. It's quite possible that's the scene I'll remember most in this movie. So you can't call her role a wasted role.

No, it doesn't. It just made the movie longer; creating unnecessary characters makes the movie complicated, not interesting.