Sharmila Tagore – The Graceful Rebel

A lady soon to celebrate her 80th birthday held forth for two hours, without a pause and a sip of water, as witnessed at a recent public reception, surprising all. And if, in her 67th year of work, one of the longest runs in Indian cinema, she spoke with erudition, without being critical of others, she commands respect.

Sharmila Tagore remains in the limelight, surrounded by a family of stars, with Tagore pedigree and royalty to match. Imagine her modelling alongside daughter-in-law Kareena Kapoor Khan, at least 35 years her junior. She remains in the public eye, selectively, and elegantly.

Along with Vyjayanthimala (90) and Waheeda Rehman (86), she is the last of the heroines who have straddled the last century’s second half, moving from black & white to colour, from matinee shows to single and multi-screens and from television to OTT series. It is difficult to club her with these two seniors and contemporaries like Mala Sinha and Asha Parekh as a ‘yesteryear’ actress. For, she has a movie in the pipeline ready to be released next year.

Granted, she was ahead of her times in public persona, billed as a ‘sex symbol’, and for her choice of roles. But is she a ‘quiet rebel’ as hosts of the show sought to project? “It feels nice. But no rebellion. I did what I did because I wanted to and felt it was necessary.” Period.

Of myriad things ignoring the advice of many, she played an old woman/mother in Aradhana when only 25. Her role was etched well, but appearance does matter to the discerning. Critics have applauded the mother’s performance but found the appearance not convincing enough. Like Alia Bhatt as ‘Gangubai Kathiawadi’. She played a prostitute in Mausam, years before Alia and Kareena. Her swearing that shocked many carried the day.

Her most significant contribution when it comes to appearance is staying slim, her age apart, after marriage and as the mother of three. After her first pregnancy, one recalls late Bollywood film gossip queen Devyani Chaubal’s writing that at parties, every eye was glued to Sharmila’s waist more than her face.

She must have excited generations of men. A young army officer who went to war in 1971, recording the harsh life he then lived, wrote that the only ‘soft’ possession he had was Sharmila’s photo on the transistor he was gifted. It kept him going amidst blood and the booming of guns.

She began when just 13. She was fortunate to be discovered by Satyajit Ray, already a big name after Pather Pachali. She played ‘Devi’ and says it remains her best film. Ray, “Manik Da”, remains her idol. She did more movies with him even as she pranced around in a starkly different cinema with the likes of Shammi Kapoor.

Although many others from Bengal carved a niche for themselves in Bollywood, Sharmila remains the most successful. And she didn’t transit; she kept working in Bengali cinema, even as she paraded in a bikini in Bollywood. The latter bit was controversial, but hugely popular. People forget that she was not the first to don a bikini. Nalini Jaywant did it in Sangram (1950) and Nutan wore a swimsuit in Dilli Ka Thug (1958).

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The story has it that Sharmila was to marry the Nawab of Pataudi, and the game of cricket, Mansoor Ali Khan. The final say was with the Nawab Begum who was flying to then-Bombay. A nervous Sharmila asked her staff to remove overnight all the posters of An Evening in Paris that advertised her in a bikini.

Her marriage linked two worlds of glamour – cinema and cricket. Some more such alliances followed in later years. But it also meant conversion. She embraced Islam. The conservatives felt that this was an ‘insult’ to the Tagore family legacy. She joined the other interfaith couple, Nargis and Sunil Dutt. High profile and respected, the quartet has in a sense defined India’s secular ethos.

For an A-lister in an era that required the heroine to emote heavily to make the necessary impact, Sharmila rarely screamed or raised her pitch to show her anger and frustration. Her weeping was but a few drops of tears on her dimpled cheeks. No bawling and hiding her face. A bit too sophisticated, some said then. But it would gel with today’s trend of emoting.

Beyond Satyajit Ray, she was the favourite of not just Shakti Samanta who launched her in Bollywood, but also those who gave a more meaningful cinema like Bimal Roy, Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Gulzar.

In her days of running around the tree, she walked and swayed daintily, pursued by prancing heroes. She popularized the curved hair strand falling on the side face along with the bird-nest hairdo. Her grace and charm on the screen have been an inspiration to many a present-day star like Priyanka Chopra, as acknowledged by them.

A ‘rebel’ or not, Sharmila remains bold in public. In a recent interview, she said that she refused when her husband, Tiger Pataudi, asked her to go into the kitchen thrice a day: ‘He started cooking himself’.

To complete her CV, Tagore is a recipient of two National Film Awards, a Filmfare Award and the Filmfare Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2013, the government honoured her with Padma Bhushan for her contributions to Indian culture through performing arts.

She also served as the chairperson, one of the longest tenures, of the Central Board of Film Certification from October 2004 to March 2011. During that period, despite her past ‘bikini’ persona, she would caution against nudity and vulgarity in cinema.

Call it lucky, bold or thoughtful, her decisions came forth at the right time. Her schooling suffered when she began working. She was regarded as a bad influence on her classmates. Her father advised her to commit herself to a film career.

She straddled Bollywood and Kollywood with ease, contributing to box-office hits in the former and carving a niche of her own in the latter by working in films of Ray and others. Arguably, no other actor, despite being a woman and a family person, has retained the top slot for so long.

Looking back at her motherhood journey, she said, “When I had Saif, I was very busy. I was working two shifts a day and for the first six years of his life, I was absent. I went to the parent-teachers meeting and attended his plays but I don’t think I was a full-time mom. My husband was there, but I wasn’t. Then when I became a mother, I became an overzealous mother. I wanted to feed him, bathe him and everything. That was the other side of the pendulum. I made a few mistakes, honestly.”

Very hectic, life has not exactly been a roller-coaster. She revealed last year that she was diagnosed with cancer. This and other recent admissions and revelations, perhaps, indicate that she may soon be gracefully slipping into her well-earned “phursat ke raat-din”. But one never knows how the mind of the ‘rebel’ works.

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