On her 60th birth anniversary, family and filmmakers remember Smita Patil

“Smi (as she is fondly called) was already thinking of direction. On the sets of Chidambaram, there is a beautiful photograph of her behind the camera of cinematographer Shaji Karun. She was an avid reader and interested in scriptwriting,” says Patil-Deshmukh, who runs a Mumbai-based NGO called Pukar.

While she essayed numerous women-centric roles — from the firebrand Sonbai fighting against a lusty subedar in Ketan Mehta’s Mirch Masala (1987) to a lonely Muslim wife in Gaman (1978) and a married woman trying to find her own identity in Umbartha (1982) — her involvement with gender centric issues began at home. Her father Shivajirao Patil saw multiple terms as an MLA and led a Gandhian way of life with wife Vidya. At the age of six, Patil and Patil-Deshmukh were members of Rashtra Seva Dal (RSD), and spent every holiday travelling to remote parts of Maharashtra, participating in dance shows.

“We had to set up the stage, dress up ourselves and do our own make-up,” says Patil-Deshmukh. She remembers when Patil bagged her first National Award for Best Actor for Bhumika (1977), she donated the prize money to an organisation working for women. She did the same when she won the award for Chakra (1980).

“Had she been around, she would have been fiercely entrenched in working for women,” says producer-director Mahesh Bhatt, who famously pitted her against Shabana Azmi — then projected as her professional rival — in Arth. The filmmaker doubts she would have continued with a career in films. “It’s motherhood that she was looking forward to,” adds Bhatt. Glimpses of Patil’s longing for motherhood can also be found in the recently released biography of hers, Smita: A Brief Incandescence by Maithili Rao (HarperCollins, Rs 450).

Regarded as one of the finest actors in Indian cinema and theatre, the self-taught flautist and photographer, Shyam Benegal notes, appeared rather ordinary in real life.

“She blossomed on camera. An instinctive and spontaneous actor, she did not over analyse her roles and the audience loved her spontaneity,” says the filmmaker, who had several films lined up for her, including a character based on a real-life female guerilla war leader during the Telangana movement in the late ’40s.

“I visualised Smita in that role. She had the ability, range and personality to play that character,” says Benegal, who could not think of any other actor in the role.