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There was a time in the 1970s when Hindi cinema was distinctly divided into two categories – commercial mainstream and parallel art cinema. It might sound bizarre now because the lines between what counts as mainstream, and what is seen as ‘artsy’ are extremely blurred, but even 50 years later, one knows what to expect from a Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari vs a Homebound, even when they are from the same producers, and have the same female actor. But, the 1970s were another beast altogether. Back then, the actors had to choose a path, and once they made their choice, they had to stick to it. Amitabh Bachchan wasn’t seen in any Shyam Benegal films, and when Sai Paranjpye tried to make a film with Dharmendra, it never materialised. Female actors had it much worse. They were largely seen in flower pot roles in mainstream films, and even in those, they were boxed to play stereotypes. So when actors like Smita Patil tried to have it all, the mainstream filmmakers tried to box them too. And that is probably why an actor of such repute was reduced to dancing seductively in the rain in a white saree, an act that broke her heart, and left the audience wondering how she ended up there.
Smita Patil started working in the movies in the 1970s, and she was an enigma from the get-go. With films like Nishant, Manthan and Bhumika, Smita was a revelation on screen. She didn’t wear the bouffants for exaggerated glamour, and didn’t dance around trees (until she had to). This was also the era when Shabana Azmi and her were vying for the same parts, but Shabana, unlike her, would also dabble in some mainstream films like Amar Akbar Anthony, Ishq Ishq Ishq, Parvarish among many others. Smita also wondered how this balance would work out for Shabana, as she contemplated her own future.
In a 1976 chat with India Today, Smita was wrestling with this thought as she said, “I used to think that doing one commercial film just for the heck of it would be fun, but in Hindi films you can’t stop there. I don’t know if Shabana wanted to get so swamped in commercial films, but I wonder if she will be able to get out of the commercial whirl – I think she is too far in it now.” Smita was just a couple of years into her career and even then, she knew that she was slowly heading towards the point where she would have to choose a path for herself. “I know I want to act in good films. But good directors are so difficult to come by. Moreover, most good directors prefer to take on faces which are not very well known. I hope I don’t get pushed into doing commercial films because, truly, that will be the end of Smita Patil,” she said as she pondered over her future in the movies.
Smita spent years dedicating herself to the cinema that she believed in, but soon realised that the business of movies was a business after all, and if she wanted to continue her journey as an artiste, she would have to make some compromises as well, even if they made her uncomfortable. And so, Smita took up films like Shakti, Namak Halaal, among others. These were diametrically different from Smita’s other films like Bazaar, Ardh Satya and Mandi. But by the early 1980s, Smita knew that if she wanted people to spend money watching her art, she had to build a bigger fan base which could only be brought in via the big ticket films.
Smita’s sister Manya Patil-Seth, in a chat with Filmfare, shared that the actor did these films “only to prove a point.” She quoted Smita as saying, “I want to draw audiences to the smaller socially relevant films. The commercial actor’s reach is wider.” She also recalled that Smita wasn’t the kind of person who would schmooze around for meaty parts, and it led to her losing some coveted roles. “Many a time, she was made to believe she’d be working with a certain filmmaker. But when it didn’t happen, it would disturb her. She’d say, ‘I can’t sweet-talk to people.’ It’s no secret that, as a result, she lost many roles,” she said. One of the most high-profile projects that Smita lost in this phase was Yash Chopra’s Silsila, where she was set to play the role that was eventually done by Jaya Bachchan.
In a chat with Shah Rukh Khan, Yash Chopra had shared that he didn’t even call Smita to tell her that she was out of the project, when he replaced her just a day before the shoot. He sent Shashi Kapoor to communicate his rejection, which hurt Smita. He recalled that after a while, when they ran into each other, they had a chat about the same. “She came to me and said, ‘Yash ji, you did what you felt was right, but there was only one thing wrong with it. You should have communicated it by yourself. I wouldn’t have felt bad if you told me but since Shashi was the one who was sent with the message, I was hurt’,” he recalled and added, “I said, ‘You are right but I was embarrassed. I know I did the wrong thing.”
Amitabh Bachchan was the biggest star of this era and Smita landed a couple of mainstream projects with him as the leading man. She appeared in the 1982 film Namak Halaal, directed by Prakash Mehra, where she appeared in, what could be best described as, a flower pot role. Smita’s role was limited to being Amitabh’s love interest and as the mainstream films demanded, Smita was also expected to do a dance number in the rain. This clashed with the ethics of her profession, and she broke down. Years later, Bachchan recalled, in his blog, that Smita was “uncomfortable during the shooting of the entire film because she just could not understand why she was asked to do what she was asked to do in the film.” During the launch of the book ‘Smita Patil: A Brief Incandescence’ in 2015, Bachchan spoke about the rain dance, “Aaj Rapat Jaye” and recalled, “She felt it was away from her culture and thinking.” He added that doing such films was “against her nature.” In fact, such was the aftertaste of working in a film like this, that it actually left her embarrassed. “She told me she had worked in so many good films but once, when she was at the airport, she felt awkward and embarrassed that people remembered her for Namak Halaal,” he recalled further.
Not just this, Smita was also a part of Ramesh Sippy’s Shakti, which wasn’t as frivolous as Namak Halaal, but it still didn’t have much for her. The film also starred Dilip Kumar, Rakhee and Bachchan but Smita’s character was probably the weakest here. Her sister Manya, in the same chat, recalled that when Smita was asked to say a particular dialogue on screen, she put her foot down. “There was a scene in Shakti where she had to tell Amitabh Bachchan’s Vijay, ‘Main tumhare bachche ki maa banne wali hoon.’ A visibly upset Smita came to the dressing room and said, ‘I can’t say this idiotic ghisi peeti (cliched) line!’ Finally, after much discussion she agreed to say, ‘Main maa banne wali hoon.’ Usually, with seasoned filmmakers/actors an actor tends to get intimidated. But she didn’t,” she recalled.
Smita was visibly upset with the dilemma of choosing one path over another and in a chat with Doordarshan, she was quite vocal about the fact that women in mainstream films were getting the same roles. When asked about the state of female actors in cinema, Smita said that it was her “good luck” to have played nuanced characters on screen. “Those women were portrayed as who they truly were. Like Bhumika, or Manthan, where you don’t just see the woman who is suffering, but you also see her inner strength,” she said.
But, she also brought up the crisis of mainstream films in the same chat. “When I started working in commercial movies, the formula films that are being made, I saw that all the women here are the same. Either the woman is suffering, stupid and obedient to her husband or you see them as weak, or they are vamps where they play negative roles,” she said, as she acknowledged that women’s bodies and their sexualisation on screen was done with the direct intention of getting more eyeballs.
The 1980s, was unfortunately, the worst decade for mainstream Hindi movies, and it was during this time, that Smita was trying to balance the two worlds. Towards the end, Smita appeared in some classics like Mirch Masala, but she also appeared in films like Amrit, Ghulami, Dahleez. The scales could have probably found a better balance if the gap between the two worlds wasn’t as wide.
Smita died in 1986 at the age of 31.
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