PEOPLE WE LIKE: Smita Patil

MY SCREEN GODDESS

To say that I have been obsessed with Smita Patil for 25 years would be an understatement. But that’s the only way to describe my love affair with an actress whose shocking death in 1986 left an inexplicable void in my life. I’ve spent the next 23 years gathering any scrap of information I can get hold of about her and watching her films over and over again to rationalise my fixation. Yet, when it comes to Smita, reason fails.

I spoke to her just once, a couple of months before she died and casual as that conversation was (a typical star-struck teenage fan calling up her idol and miraculously hearing her voice on the line) it was my only tangible connection with her. Her poster was on my bedroom door; I paid regular visits to the raddiwala to collect magazines featuring her articles and photographs, which in turn landed up on the pages of my scrapbook. I’ve heard people speak of her with moist-eyed affection, others with matter-of-fact accounts of her whimsical behaviour.

For me the real Smita is the one whose smouldering eyes stare back at me through the screen. Every now and then I revisit the handful of memorable films that lie at the core of my peculiar relationship with her.

Umbartha is a personal favourite. I believe it was a film close to her heart too. Sulabha Mahajan is a truly modern woman. She takes the audacious decision of leaving her daughter with her childless sister-in-law, to accept a job as the superintendent of a women’s reform home in a faraway place. Her decision could be perceived as very 'non-maternal' and irresponsible, particularly in a culture like ours. I consider it an act of courage, because she is walking away from a seemingly secure life to take on the challenge of working amidst women who have been discarded by society. Most women in her place would have got weighed down by guilt and by the fear of an uncertain future. Perhaps she too carries this burden within her. But when she realises that her husband and daughter don’t need her anymore, she accepts their alienation and packs her bags to embark on another uncertain journey. Sulabha is a woman who acts upon her conviction and pays the price she must, to realise her true self. A little like Smita herself....

Or, like Usha in Bhumika—another woman in search of her identity. Usha is a consummate actress, a tragic heroine whose reel and real lives keep blurring into each other. Like many actresses in Hindi cinema, her troubled personal life lies buried under the persona of the larger-than-life screen goddess. Once again, Usha must abandon the conventional framework of marriage and family to find her self, and risk many failures along the journey.

Kavita in Arth, on the other hand, is too weighed down by her own insecurities to be free. The games her mind plays with her start wrecking her relationship with her lover and her fragile psyche cannot cope with the guilt of being a home-breaker. I rate Arth among Smita's best performances—playing a schizophrenic actress without going overboard was a serious challenge and she met it with enough steel to make the audience sympathise with her.

Another memorable role was that of Sonbai in Mirch Masala. Sonbai is a fiery young woman in 19th century rural Gujarat who knows her mind and is capable of fending off the advances of the lecherous subedar, who chases her relentlessly, first as a sport and then to bolster his bruised ego after being snubbed by her. Smita brought tremendous passion and dignity to Sonbai's doggedness. Sadly, she didn't live to see Mirch Masala on screen.

One doesn't just remember the Smita of these acclaimed films. But of her mainstream adventures too. I cringed as she danced in the rain with Amitabh Bachchan in Namak Halal, and almost wished that song away. Or even that silly 'item number' in Sharaabi, once again with Bachchan—and wondered what she thought when she saw herself doing things that she obviously couldn't carry off with ease.

I remember dragging my grandmother to Bandra Talkies to watch Aakhir Kyon?—one of her few roles in popular cinema I thoroughly enjoyed, despite all the melodrama. Or sitting in the first row of the Plaza stalls with my favourite uncle, craning my neck up to watch a disastrous film called Nazraana. And the time when we went to Chitra talkies to see Jawaab, and to Shaan for Waaris a film that released months after her death.

I was 14 when Smita Patil died. The night before she passed away, I stood before our little temple in the kitchen and fervently asked god (I don't recall which one) to save her life.

I haven't prayed ever since.

Comments

[Jayashree]

Lovely article. I just bought the Dvd of Smita patil's Mirch Masala today and it seemed very uncanny to suddenly find this article here ... smita patil always stood out as someone who had so much intensity in her presence whether in screen or real life..and it was lovely to read up on her..
great article on hrishikesh mukherjee too...and classy photos..

congrats to all of u! and all the best!

[Annie]

Nice piece. But hey, I LOVE that rain-dance number in Namak Halal. It is one of the few that I think of as 'joyous'. One where the woman is in a wet saree and lust is very much in the frame, but yet, somehow, Smita Patil escapes turning into an object of lust, so to speak. You know what I mean?

[ratna]

Lovely...one small quibble. I thought Smita in that rain dance was one of the most smoulderingly sexy women I have seen on screen. And to me, it was a measure of what a consummate actress she was that she could do a "mainstream" role like that so well!