The Girl Next Door
Nanda passed away on Mar 25th. She was 75. While her enduring legacy is that of the pliant girl-next-door, she has displayed great versatility in a career spanning thirty odd years, with films like Ittefaq, Hum Dono and Prem Rog to her credit.
- This is a still from 1957's Laxmi featuring Nanda who, at just 18, already had half a dozen film credits to her name. She was introduced as a child artist in her father, Master Vinayak's Mandir, in which she played younger brother to Lata Mangeshkar (in one of the singer's early acting outings). Her father died in 1947 before that film's release, and less than a decade later, Nanda was launched as a leading lady in Toofan aur Deeya, from the V Shantaram stable, with her breakout film being Bhabhi (1957) as the child-widowed sister of Balraj Sahni, for which she was nominated for a Filmfare Award.
Mujhe abhi pata chala ki abhinetri Nanda jise hum baby nanda kehete the wo ab humare bich nahi rahi,ye sunke (cont) http://tl.gd/n_1s14fmq- The three films Nanda did in the 80s were solid dramatic additions to her oeuvre. In all three, Prem Rog, Mazdoor and Ahista Ahista, she played mother to Padmini Kolhapure. They were melodramatic turns with a lot of hand-wringing involved, but Nanda was in her element, especially in her confrontation sequence with Shammi Kapoor in Raj Kapoor's widow emancipation saga.
#KetanDesai, son of legendary filmmaker #ManmohanDesai said about late #Nanda that if destiny had willed he would have called her Mummy.
Tribute to Baby Nanda... pic.twitter.com/3NcyjUsoQC- In these times, the gender politics of some of Nanda's roles would raise eyebrows. In Pati Patni, she is poised against the reckless independence being promulgated by women libbers led by a scheming Shashikala, even as she holds her corner with self-sacrifice and domesticity while being the household's breadwinner. Shades of Satyajit Ray's The Big City, subverted in Hindi melodrama, and taken forward in films like Tapasya and Humkadam by Rakhee, and Jeevan Dhara by Rekha.
