Page 8 - Seniorstoday October 2023 Issue

in her career is that of a nurse in a mental
asylum in Khamoshi (1968), who takes
her job of curing two mentally disturbed
men (Dharmendra, Rajesh Khanna) so
seriously, that she loses her own mind.
She won a National Award for Reshma
Aur Shera (1971), a story of star-crossed
lovers from warring clans in Rajasthan
(opposite Sunil Dutt), not her best, but it
was just one more in her list of great films;
her filmography is also studded with
offbeat films, like Satyajit Ray’s Abhijan
(1962) in which she played a complex
part of a village widow; as the wife who
inadvertently breaks her marriage in
Phagun (1973); the small role in Yash
Chopra’s Trishul (1978), that of an unwed
mother, who tells her son to avenge
her suffering, Gulzar’s underrated gem
Namkeen (1982), in which she plays the
harried mother who worries about her
three unmarried daughters.
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In 1964, she did a film called Shagoon,
with an actor called Kamaljeet whom
she married a decade later, moved to
Bangalore, and raised two children, Sohail
and Kashvi. By the late 1970s, the leading
lady roles thinned out, the mother roles
were offered; did not officially retire, but
the films were few and far between. After
the death of her husband in 2000, she
returned to Mumbai. She just does a select
number of films and always leaves a mark,
again not playing the stereotypical granny.
In her public appearances, she always
came across as elegant and graceful, and as
every new generation interested in cinema,
discovers her films, her legend grows and
glows