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She worked with the likes of Dilip Kumar, Ashok Kumar, and Dev Anand. At the peak of her career, she was one of the most popular female actors in the Hindi film industry. Dilip Kumar even said that he hadn’t worked with a finer performer than her. But, like so many others of her generation, when the stage lights dimmed, so did her career. Nalini Jaywant died in 2010. Her body wouldn’t be discovered until three days later. She had been a recluse for years; her relatives weren’t in touch with her; her film industry colleagues were either long gone or unaware about her circumstances. Her body was quietly taken away by a distant relative. She was veteran actor Tanuja’s aunt. This is Nalini Jaywant’s story.
She was born in 1926 in the city of Bombay, in a culturally rich family. Nalini was blessed with a face that was described as ‘cherubic’. She was discovered as a 14-year-old by a producer at Nutan’s birthday party, and was cast in the 1941 film Radhika. She was still in her teens when she appeared in Mehboob Khan’s Behen. In the next few years, before the 1950s, she worked with the likes of Balraj Sahni and Trilok Kapoor. But it was her partnership (and eventual romance) with Ashok Kumar that took her to the peak of the Hindi industry. After beginning their innings with films such as Samadhi and Sangram, she and Ashok Kumar went on to star in films such as Jalpari (1952), Kafila (1952), Nau Bahar (1952), Saloni (1952), Lakeeren (1954), Naaz (1954), Mr. X (1957), Sheroo (1957) and Toofan Mein Pyar Kahan (1963). In 1959, she won a Filmfare award for her performance in Raj Khosla’s Kala Pani, which featured Dev Anand in the lead role.
She took a break after marrying Virendra Desai, her first director, who was many years her senior and already a parent. She was only a teenager when they tied the knot, leading to him being fired from his studio and her being disowned by her family. She returned to the movies after her marriage ended. Not long afterwards, she was said to have begun an affair with Ashok Kumar, who had even planned for them to fly away to Nepal. According to Hindustan Times report from 2009, the plan was foiled by his brother-in-law, who got wind of it. Nalini was jealous of her other cousin, actor Shobhana Samarth, the mother of veteran actor Tanuja, who is the mother of actor Kajol.
Nalini retired in 1965, after appearing in the film Bombay Race Course, although she briefly came out of retirement in one film released 18 years later, the Amitabh Bachchan-starrer Nastik, in which she played the mother of his character. She regretted it. “This was a blunder to accept that film as whatever I was narrated about the role, all turned out to be false on screen. This was none less than a shock for me. Therefore, I decided never to look back to the film world,” she said, according to Eastern Eye.
In an article for The Hindu following her passing in 2010, her first cousin, journalist Pranay Gupte, described her final years as tragic, alluding to alcoholism and trauma. “I know Nalini was bothered by what she perceived — correctly — as the lack of love in her life, and her childlessness. She would confide in my mother,” he wrote, adding, “She spoke to me about her broken marriage to director Virendra Desai, and her subsequent unhappy union with Prabhu Dayal.”
“I also suspect that, if Nalini reflected on death at all, she never thought she would end her life in the company of dogs who were just plain mongrels she had found on the narrow lanes of her dilapidated suburban community,” Gupte continued. The dogs were left homeless after Nalini’s death in 2010, collateral damage in a greater tragedy. She was living in a small bungalow in Chembur. “By the time we got to know about it, it was all over,” one of her neighbours told The Times of India after her passing. “We heard from our staff that a man, who claimed to be a distant relative, came and took the body away. The house is locked and in complete darkness for the past three days, the servants have gone, and Naliniji’s pet dogs are on the streets. We neighbours have been taking care of them.”
Nalini had become a recluse after her husband’s passing. She kept to herself for the better part of a decade. “Many years earlier, we would visit each other’s houses but after her husband’s death a few years ago, she withdrew completely from society,” another neighbour told the TOI. “I don’t think anyone ever came to look her up. I happened to catch sight of her a few days earlier and noticed that she had hurt her leg. Her maid said she had had a fall. I asked her if I could do anything, send the doctor to her house. But she was never forthcoming so one couldn’t do much for her.”
On his 90th birthday, Dilip Kumar was asked in a Hindustan Times interview who his favourite co-star was. He said, “I have consistently rated Nalini Jaywant as a formidable co-star. She was the only actress who could take me by surprise in the final take if I was not alert enough thanks to the natural spontaneity she possessed.” Nalini Jaywant’s life story is among the scores of similar tragedies that Bollywood brushes under all the glitz and glamour.
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