SHYAMA ,LEGEND OF HINDI CINEMA BORN 1935 JUNE 7

SHYAMA ,LEGEND OF HINDI CINEMA
BORN  1935 JUNE 7



Shyama

Shyama’s Interview

It’s not a task getting an interview with veteran Shyama. She answers the landline herself, her feeble voice betraying excitement. I am also keen to meet the actor who romanced Guru Dutt in the spiffy Sun sun sun zalima in Aar Paar. When I reach her flat at the plush Napean Sea Road, she’s all ready and waiting in a pink salwar kameez, her short hair neatly combed. Daughter Shireen has dropped in to check on her 74-year-old mother, who insists on staying alone. Shireen gives a barrage of instructions to the maids, gives her mother a lingering hug and leaves us to chat on a drizzling afternoon. “I fractured both my legs sometime back. I stay at home. Main kahin nahin jaati hoon (I do not go out at all),” says the erstwhile actor pointing to the walker waiting in attendance. 

Apart from dhagas (holy threads) around her wrist there are emerald green beads. “My hairdresser gave them to me,” she says. She hands me a black diary. The pages, yellow with the years, hold a record of her films. Black and white moments of her trysts with legends Guru Dutt, Nargis, Meena Kumari and Raj Kapoor stand framed on her drawing room shelves. Memories, unlike people, do not have a shelf life. She relives those years in bits and pieces, some easily and some with effort…

Shyama, born Khurshid Akhtar, began her jaunt in Hindi cinema as a nine-year-old. She became one of the chorus singers in the qawwali “Aahen na bhari” in the Noorjehan starrer Zeenat (1945).

“I had gone with my friends to watch Noorjehan shoot for a film in Dadar. The director Shaukat Hussain (Noorjehan’s husband) asked us, `Does anyone of you want to work?’

I put my hand up and said, ‘Main karoongi (I will)’. She continues, “My parents were not well off. Yet, Abba didn’t want me to work in films. I said, ‘What’s the harm?'”

I was always interested in acting. During the lunch break in school, I’d stand on the table and dance. Later, I even learnt singing and dance. I watched every film,” recalls the actress who was one of the busiest stars of her times, playing lead, second lead and vamp roles in around 147 films.

“I was lucky to get good roles. I even got the Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actress for Sharda. I enjoyed doing family dramas like Do Behnein, Choti Behen, Bhai Bhai and Do Bhai. In Do Behnein I played the good girl and the bad girl. Rajendra Kumar was a newcomer then. So initially, the film didn’t do well. But when it was re- released, it became a hit,” says the actor who was also appreciated for her roles in Barsaat Ki Raat, Tarana and Aar Paar in the ’50s. “I had a photogenic face. Whatever direction the light fell from, I photographed well. I maintained my figure. I was particular about my diet and for days I’d just be sipping glucose water to remain slim. I used to wear all kinds of clothes — ghararas, salwars, saris and pants,” smiles the actor who was known for her puckish prettiness.

While doing Sazaa (1951), the 16-year-old Shyama fell in love with director and ace cinematographer Fali Mistry. “We were fond of each other. But I was very shy. I couldn’t express myself,” she confides. “Initially, he asked me not to work after marriage but I said that wasn’t possible. I had worked very hard to reach where I was.” They got married in 1953 and had three children, two boys Farook and Rohin and a daughter Shireen.

“I was very content in my married life. Even after my first child, I didn’t give up acting. Fali had confidence in me. When it would get late I’d say, ‘Fali hum late hogaye hain. Magar khana hum saath khayenge (I’m late. But we will have dinner together)’. We had a great understanding,” she says of the Muslim-Parsi marriage.

Though she chose Fali as her husband, she did have her share of suitors amongst her co-actors. “I got many proposals from my peers. I don’t want to take their names. Some of them are no more while the others have their families. Sometimes we call each other up and ask kya haal hai?” she laughs.

She continued acting, doing character roles, even after Fali passed away prematurely in 1979. The last film she did was the Sanjay Dutt starrer Hathyar. The highlightof her day today is just aaram (rest) she says. “I rest; I sleep and see my old films. I have sent the DVDs to my sons too,” smiles the mother who says she has `secured’ her children’s future. Her close friends are Waheeda Rehman, Nanda and Shashikala but she greatly misses Nirupa Roy and Nadira. “I was very close to Nirupa. She died suddenly. It was a great shock,” she says softly. About friendships in the industry then and now she says, “We used to hide each other’s secrets, today they let them out.”

She seems a wee tired as it’s time for her afternoon siesta. The memory jog has also been an exertion of sorts. I gently draw the interview to a close. Any regrets I ask her. “I miss my family” she says referring to her sons who have settled abroad. “Also, my parents had nine children. Today I’m the only survivor.” She continues, “Log aaye our chale gaye, yaadein chhod gaye. Meri dushmani kisise nahin, dosti hai sabse (People came and went, leaving behind memories. I have enmity with none, friendships with all).

Any unfulfilled wishes? “Last year I was honored with the Dadasaheb Phalke Award. Let’s see if I get some more!” Down yes, but definitely not out. That’s Shyama for you! – [Interviewed by Farhana Farook in 2010]

The beautiful Indian film industry actress of yesteryears, Shyama now lives a reclusive life in Mumbai, but in her heyday, she was a much sought after artiste. She played the lead role in many films, notably Aar Paar (1954), but her forte was as a supportive actress in which she excelled in many great films. 

Among them I include Shabnam (1949), Patanga (1949), Tarana (1951), Sazaa (1951), Chhoo Mantar (1956), Chhoti Bahen (1959), Barsaat ki Raat (1960), Bahu Rani (1963), Dil diya Dard liya (1966) and many more. In Sharada (1957), she won the Filmfare Best Supporting Actress Award. Personally for me, her role as Shipalee, who loves the rebel, Raj (Balraj Sahni) in Zia Sarhadi’s Marxist classic, Hum Log (1951), is unforgettable, especially the picturisation on her of the song Chhun, chhun, chhun baje payal mori, which Roshan had composed so sweetly.

Shyama was born as Khurshid Akhtar in Baghbanpura, Lahore on June 7, 1935. She hails from Lahore’s most populous biradari of Arains, who before the partition of India were the main Muslim landowning biradari in Lahore district besides the Sikh Jatts who were almost entirely in the rural tehsils of Lahore district. 

The pioneer of the Lahore film industry and later, a legendary filmmaker in Bombay, A R Kardar was also a Lahore Arain belonging to the Zaildar family of Bhaati Gate. Another Arain at Bombay film industry was the gorgeous Begum Para. Her father, Mian Ehsan-ul-Haq of Jullundur, was a judge who joined the princely state of Bikaner, now northern Rajasthan, where he became chief justice of its highest court.

For several reasons, the Arains were radicalised towards fundamentalist Islam and that created extremely conservative values among them. I know this because I myself was born in that group. I shall probe this and the overall trend of other Punjabi Muslim castes and biradaris towards ‘Arabisation’ in a forthcoming series.

Anyhow, among old-timers of Lahore, Shyama remained a legend. For a legend to evolve, it needs people who for some emotional and psychological reasons need to associate themselves with an individual. Each time I am in Lahore, I find some addition to the legend of Shyama. Yet, all this happens in gossip and whispers and not in media where there is a hush-up, even among those who write in films about Shyama.

This is because her fans, especially those from her biradari, cannot disown her because she attained fame and ruled hearts once upon a time. That in itself does not sit well with Islamism, but she violated some more taboos. 

She married the famous Bombay cinematographer, Fali Mistry, a Parsee. Her two sons have been raised as Parsees. One lives in New York and the other in London.

I talked to her in her Mumbai home on June 2, 2012 from Stockholm. The same day I had spoken to Kamini Kaushal who also lives in Mumbai. Shyama’s father Chaudhry Mehr Din was a fruit merchant who set up business in Bombay. Shyama’s family shifted to Bombay when she was only two. The megastar Dilip Kumar’s father was also a fruit merchant in Bombay, so those who are into novelty hunting can probe the connection between fruit and films. I would only stick to the facts.

Shyama was only a child when she left Lahore so she has no personal association or memories of Lahore. By the way, the same is true of the late Suraiya who died in Mumbai some years ago. In 2001, I was in Mumbai and knocked on her door, pleading for an interview but Suraiya refused it. On that occasion, Shyama was not in town.

And now, some gossip about Shyama’s Lahore connection. One is that she was at college in Lahore and then went to Bombay. Another, that she was engaged to Chaudhry Abdullah, popularly known as Chaudhry Thhailla of Mozang, Lahore. Another is that she visited Lahore in 1960 and was given a rousing reception.

According to Shyama, she visited Lahore only in the 1990s and stayed with Madam Noorjahan, whom she met in Bombay at the age of 10 when she visited the sets of Zeenat (1945). She was recruited to take part in the famous qawwali Aahein naa bhareen shikwa naa kiya by Noorjahan’s first husband, Syed Shaukat Hussain Rizvi. She had come to the sets to watch the shooting with a bunch of schoolgirls and was offered the job. That gradually paved the way for more roles.

Shyama told me she had an old sister and brother who were settled in Lahore, but when she came in the 1990s, they were not alive anymore. Therefore she did not meet any relatives in Lahore. I know, however, that her cousin, Naseer Maliki, who worked at the Lahore Television Station, used to talk about her. He was a good friend of my brother-in-law.

On March 26, 2004, I met Ripudamman Singh in his shop at Rambagh Bazaar, Amritsar. He gave me an eyewitness account of what happened in that town in the 1947 riots (The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed; Oxford University Press, Karachi, 2012). He told me that in the early 1960s, he met a Muslim woman and her daughter who wanted to see their old home in Amritsar They had come from Lahore and were going to take the train to Bombay next day. He brought them home. She told him that she was a relative of Shyama and was going there to meet her. Hence, until then at least, Shyama did have contact with her Lahore relatives. All this had faded from her memory when I talked to her.