SMITA PATIL ,HINDI FILM LEGEND BORN
1955 OCTOBER 17-1986 DECEMBER 13
Smita Patil (17 October 1955[1] – 13 December 1986[3][4]) was an Indian actress of film, television and theatre. Regarded among the finest stage and film actresses of her times,[5] Patil appeared in over 80[2] Hindi, Marathi and Malayalam films in a career that spanned just over a decade.[6] During her career, she received two National Film Awards and a Filmfare Award. She was the recipient of the Padma Shri, India's fourth-highest civilian honour in 1985.
Patil graduated from the Film and Television Institute of India in Pune and made her film debut with Shyam Benegal's[7] Charandas Chor (1975).[8] She became one of the leading actresses of parallel cinema, a New Wave movement in India cinema, though she also appeared in several mainstream movies throughout her career.[5] Her performances were often acclaimed, and her most notable roles include Manthan (1977),[1][8] Bhumika (1977),[1][8] Aakrosh (1980), Chakra (1981), Chidambaram (1985) and Mirch Masala (1985).[9][1][5]
Apart from acting, Patil was an active feminist and a member of the Women's Centre in Mumbai. She was deeply committed to the advancement of women's issues, and gave her endorsement to films which sought to explore the role of women in traditional Indian society, their sexuality, and the changes facing the middle-class woman in an urban milieu.[10]
Patil was married to actor Raj Babbar. She died on 13 December 1986 at the age of 31 due to childbirth complications. Over ten of her films were released after her death. Her son Prateik Babbar is a film actor who made his debut in 2008.
Early life
Smita Patil was born in Pune[11] to a Maharashtrian politician, Shivajirao Girdhar Patil and social worker mother Vidyatai Patil, from Shirpur town (Village-Bhatpure District-Dhule) of Khandesh province of Maharashtra State. She studied at Renuka Swaroop Memorial high school in Pune.[citation needed]
Her first tryst with the camera was in the early 1970s as a television newsreader on the newly transmitting Mumbai Doordarshan, the Indian government run broadcaster.[12]
Career
Smita Patil belongs to a generation of actresses, including Shabana Azmi and, like her, who are strongly associated with the radically political cinema of the 1970s. Her work includes films with parallel cinema directors like Shyam Benegal,[8] Govind Nihalani, Satyajit Ray (Sadgati, 1981),[4] G. Aravindan (Chidambaram, 1985) and Mrinal Sen as well as forays into the more commercial Hindi film industry cinema of Mumbai. Patil was working as a TV news reader and was also an accomplished photographer when Shyam Benegal discovered her.[13]
She was an alumna of the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune. In 1977, she won the National Film Award for Best Actress for her performance in the Hindi film Bhumika.[9] In her films, Patil's character often represents an intelligent femininity that stands in relief against the conventional background of male-dominated cinema (films like Bhumika, Umbartha and Bazaar). Smita Patil was a women's rights activist and became famous for her roles in films that portrayed women as capable and empowered.
I remained committed to small cinema for about five years ... I refused all commercial offers. Around 1977–78, the small cinema movement started picking up and they needed names. I was unceremoniously dropped from a couple of projects. This was a very subtle thing but it affected me a lot. I told myself that here I am and I have not bothered to make money. I have turned down big, commercial offers because of my commitment to small cinema and what have I got in return? If they want names I'll make a name for myself. So I started and took whatever came my way.
In time she was accepted by commercial filmmakers and from Raj Khosla and Ramesh Sippy to B.R. Chopra, they all agreed that she was "excellent." Her fans, too, grew with her new-found stardom. Patil's glamorous roles in her more commercial films — such as Shakti and Namak Halaal — revealed the permeable boundaries between "serious" cinema and "Hindi cinema" masala in the Hindi film industry. In 1984, she served as a jury member of the Montreal World Film Festival.[14]
Director C. V. Sridhar was the first one to pair her opposite Rajesh Khanna in Dil-E-Nadan in 1982. After success of this film, Smita and Khanna were paired in successful films like Aakhir Kyon?, Anokha Rishta, Angaarey, Nazrana, Amrit. The songs "Dushman Na Kare Dost Ne Woh" and "Ek Andhera Lakh Sitare" from the J.P. Omprakash directorial venture Aakhir Kyun became popular. With the release of Aakhir Kyon? her popularity and her pairing with Khanna were at its peak. The film Nazrana, also co-starring Sridevi released posthumously after her death and became box office success with the film being among the top 10 highest-grossing films of the year 1987. Each of her films with Khanna were different and spoke about various social issues. In the film Awam, Smita was paired opposite Raj Babbar in supporting role whereas Khanna was in the lead role. In the year 1987, Amrit directed by Mohan Kumar became fifth highest-grossing film of the year. Her performance along-with that of Khanna were critically acclaimed in case of the films Anokha Rishta, Amrit, Aakhir Kyon?.
Her association with artistic cinema remained strong, however. Her arguably greatest (and unfortunately final) role came when Smita re-teamed with Ketan Mehta to play the feisty and fiery Sonbai in Mirch Masala (1987). Smita won raves for playing a spirited spice-factory worker who stands up against a lecherous petty official. On the centenary of Indian cinema in April 2013, Forbes included her performance in the film on its list, "25 Greatest Acting Performances of Indian Cinema".[15]
During the making of Chakra, Smita Patil used to visit the slums in Bombay. It culminated in another National Award.
Personal life
When she became romantically involved with actor Raj Babbar,[16] Patil drew severe criticism from her fans and the media, clouding her personal life and throwing her into the eye of a media storm. Raj Babbar left his wife Nadira Babbar to marry Patil.[17]
Death and legacy
Smita died from childbirth complications on 13 December 1986,[4] age 31, barely two weeks after having given birth to her son, Prateik Babbar.[18]
Nearly two decades later, one of India's greatest film directors, Mrinal Sen alleged that Smita Patil had died due to gross medical negligence.[19]
In 2011, Rediff.com listed her as the second-greatest Indian actress of all time, behind Nargis.[20] According to Suresh Kohli from Deccan Herald, "Smita Patil was, perhaps, the most accomplished actress of Hindi cinema. Her oeuvre is outstanding, investing almost every portrayal with a powerhouse realistic performance."[21]
In 2012, the Smita Patil International Film Festival Documentaries and Shorts was initiated in her honor.[22][23][24] [25] [26] [27]
The Unforgettable Smita Patil
In my youthful exuberance I had described her as “a long-stemmed, coffee-coloured lily”, as she wafted like a breath of fresh air into the lobby of the hotel in Kolkata’s Little Russell Street. This was way back in 1985, a couple of years after I had landed my desk job with The Statesman. And the woman I had waxed eloquent about was the distinguished actor, Smita Patil, who had blazed a trail, as they say, as one of the best-known faces of parallel cinema. Although her career as an actor started earlier, she came into the limelight as the feisty Bindu in Shyam Benegal’s 1976 film, Manthan, about Verghese Kurien’s milk cooperative movement in Gujarat.
I still get goosebumps as I recall the extraordinary performances of Smita Patil and Naseeruddin Shah, who were so convincing in their roles, that for quite some time I was absolutely sure that Benegal had picked up these ‘naturals’ straight from some rural outpost. Later, Patil revealed, when she was shooting for Satyajit Ray’s Sadgati, the auteur asked her to try on the costume for the character. She changed, and Ray remarked: “It is so simple to turn you into a peasant.”
Here was Smita Patil wearing outsized glares, a smart young woman without any Bollywood airs. She had arrived by the early morning flight. Her long hair was not in place and her nail varnish was chipped, but she was unruffled otherwise. Her generous mouth was lightly lipsticked. That, and the mascara on her lashes, were the only traces of make-up on her. Her luminous eyes were a trifle close-set and that made them look larger than they actually were. No wonder they looked so intense. The ‘rustic’ spoke fluently in English. The only thing that seemed out of sync was the bright red streak of sindoor in her parting. But she is single, I said to myself. She brushed aside my question with a laugh when we were inside the car: “But then I wear it on and off. Well, I am almost married. That will start another story. The whole tape will run out.” It was soon after my interview was published at the end of June that it was revealed amidst a public outcry that Smita Patil had married actor Raj Babbar, who had left his wife Nadira to do so. And Smita was known to espouse women’s causes.
Smita Patil was in Calcutta for the shoot of Debshishu, a Bengali film, and she was about to leave for the studio in Tollygunge. I was feeling a bit awkward to approach her. Lugging around a ghetto blaster that belonged to my mother, I wondered if she would be put off by it. But she was most affable and accommodating, and agreed to be interviewed inside the car that was to take her to Tollygunge. It was my first interview of an actor and it went off remarkably well.
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Smita Patil as Seeta in the 1985 film Debshishu
I asked her a range of questions and she remained unperturbed even when I asked her about her putative ‘rival’. Debshishu is a powerful study of the tragic consequences of poverty and superstition on human lives—the kind of serious films that were being made in those days. Patil was, for the umpteenth time, playing a poor villager’s wife. Wasn’t ‘new cinema’ too, becoming formulaic? She did agree, but stressed that social realism was one of the most “important and vast” aspects of Indian life, as most of India lived in villages, and a good percentage of them lived below the poverty line.
“Small cinema began with the portrayal of the real Indian woman, who happens to be very much a ‘zamin ki aurat’ ... ‘mitti ki aurat’ (woman of the earth). I am continuing to do earthy roles because I am that sort of a person myself. I was fortunate that I could extend the kind of person I am to the roles that were given to me in the beginning of my career.” Hers was a political family and her parents would “breathe, eat and live by J.P. (Jayaprakash Narayan) and his socialist party”. So she and her family travelled all over the country doing a programmed Bharat Darshan based on national integration.
She was delighted that Greek–French film director Costa-Gavras had organized a retrospective of her films in France, and after Bhumika, a woman “touched me on the shoulder, looked into my eyes and said ‘Do you know, that is my story’.” Bhumika was the biopic of Hansa Wadkar, a screen and stage actress from the 1930s and 40s.
Patil revealed that she wanted to make films on “very serious women’s issues”, and added, as if prescient, “There is a project on rape. The kind of trials a molested woman has to go through.”
We parted company when we reached the studio. I tried to play the recording. Silence. Not even a sigh. What’s gone wrong? I discovered soon that the battery was down. How was I going to tell her this? Against my better judgment, I broke the news during the lunch break. No fireworks. Nothing. A week later, I met her again. That was the last time I saw her.
Smita Patil died from childbirth complications on 13 December 1986, at the age of 31. Her son is actor Prateik Babbar.
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