The lyrics: “Anjaane saayo kaa raaho me deraa hai, Andekhi baaho ne ham sabako gheraa hai, Ye pal ujaalaa hai baaqi adheraa hai, Ye pal ganvaanaa na ye pal hello teraa hai. (The darkness ready on the opposite aspect of it’s inevitable, and this prompt, nevertheless transient, is the one one that actually belongs to you).”
Whereas the track nonetheless stays recent in public reminiscence, the twinkle-eyed, dimple-faced girl who launched the track grew to become a one-song surprise.
Not one of the three charismatic feminine actors who gave us legacy songs constructed the profession that ought to have adopted. All three actors are etched in public reminiscence within the immortalised songs. However not many know the after-life of those actors.
In an business notorious for under celebrating heady successes, the also-rans who weren’t fairly the failures are simply forgotten. But, Nivedita, Yasmin and Erica Lal defy that template too. They’re remembered, liked, however nonetheless light.
Right this moment, a forgettable movie position doesn’t need to be the top of the story. An actor can construct a following on Instagram, go viral, or reinvent themselves on a streaming platform. However within the Nineteen Fifties and Sixties, there was no such lifeline for Yasmin, Nivedita and Lal. They arrived at a second when Madhubala, Nutan, Waheeda Rehman, and Sadhana had an unstated monopoly on the period’s creativeness, leaving little oxygen for anybody new.
Filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt says the movie business was as soon as “unforgiving” towards these who didn’t come from movie households.
“The movie business was run largely by movie households. It was unforgiving for individuals who didn’t come from that background to carve out an area for themselves,” Bhatt advised ThePrint.
The sooner lot, he mentioned, didn’t have any “consideration economic system”, which exists in abundance in the present day due to various choices like social media, commercials and extra.
The place Nivedita and Yasmin a minimum of bought a second probability, nevertheless modest, Erica Lal, an America-born Indian girl, by no means did.
‘Erica Lal was introduced in for unique functions’
Lal’s track has now discovered an surprising second life many years later, resurfacing within the soundtrack of Made in India: A Titan Story, sending recent listeners again to the unique on YouTube in a grand revival.
“She wasn’t a heroine materials,” movie historian Anjila Gugnani mentioned. “Sure, she seemed like Helen; there was somewhat glimpse. However in contrast to Helen, she didn’t have the ‘namak.’ Helen labored on each character and each merchandise track. She introduced the masala to her efficiency, however Lal failed to try this within the one probability she bought.”
Bhatt recollects that one of many main criticisms levelled towards Lal was her lip-syncing. The track was central to the movie as a result of it captured its core message. And Lal struggled to lip-sync it. He cuts her some slack, saying, “She was not Indian.”
“She was introduced in for an unique function…so as to add a sure zing to the movie,” added Bhatt, recalling the track sequence by which Kumar makes an attempt to steal the necklace.
Movie critic Bhavna Somaya, nevertheless, has a distinct lens. She doesn’t have a look at it as a missed alternative, however a task that was by no means meant to face out within the first place.
Waqt, she factors out, was Hindi cinema’s first true multi-starrer: Sunil Dutt, Raaj Kumar, and Shashi Kapoor, Sadhana, Sharmila Tagore, and Shashikala. What the movie wanted for that one social gathering scene wasn’t an actress with a profession to guard. Chopra simply wanted a “fairly face to carry the eye.”
“It was so typical of Yash Chopra to select a stupendous girl who’s wanting partly Indian and partly western,” Somaya mentioned.
To the movie critic, Lal wasn’t miscast a lot as precision-cast. She describes her as a “bombshell within the robe,” styled to look horny, precisely the form of aesthetic calculation Chopra was recognized for.
“He was too aesthetic for all the pieces he wished: a stupendous face and a stupendous physique. However he was cautious together with his cash, and he wasn’t throwing it round,” she mentioned.
There’s even a resemblance she flags. Lal, to her eye, seems nearly like a slimmer Rakhee, a touch, Somaya suggests, of the precise kind Chopra saved chasing till he lastly discovered her, years later, in Kabhi Kabhie.
Author Madhulika Liddle, in a blog post, discusses Waqt’s music and says Ravi and Sahir produced a “clutch of excellent songs,” the place “Aage Bhi Jaane Na Tu” stands out as an exception. She praises Sahir’s philosophical writing, Ravi’s composition and Asha Bhosle’s singing.
But, the track didn’t make it to Binaca Geetmala, which Bhatt describes because the gold commonplace, and maybe probably the most dependable barometer, of a track’s recognition on the time.
However the radio charts weren’t the one measure of a track’s attain. Bhatt highlights two different markers of recognition: whether or not a track discovered its means into weddings and festivals, and whether or not tawaifs adopted and carried out it.
“I used to be too younger to go to such locations, however I’ve heard that Walker sahab’s track, Jaane Kahan Mera Jigar, was broadly sung,” he added.
Lal light into oblivion very like the closing strains of Aage Bhi Jaane Na Tu. Its remaining phrases, “Kal kisane dekhaa hai kal kisane jaanaa hai; Is pal se paaegaa jo tujhako paanaa hai; Jinevaale soch le yahi vaqt hai kar le puri aarazu. (Who has seen tomorrow, who is aware of what tomorrow will carry? This second is all it’s a must to discover what you search. So, when you are alive, give it some thought — that is the time to fulfil your needs.).”
Nobody appears fully positive the place she went. One whisper insists that regardless of marrying a Mumbaikar, she finally moved again to America.
However her id itself has generated its personal mythology on the vintage-Bollywood blog Atul’s Music A Day.
An extended-running remark thread claims that Lal was reportedly a flight attendant with Air India, her identify showing within the movie’s credit alongside a particular ‘thanks’ from producer BR Chopra to the airline.
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Dream debut that fizzled out
If Julie the workplace typist had a signature weapon, it was her eyes. In Mr & Mrs 55, Johnny Walker’s comedian flirtation meets its match in Yasmin’s extensive, expressive gaze. The 2 of them duck below desks collectively, dodging the watchful eyes of their co-workers as they convey their emotions by the track “Jaane Kahan Mera Jigar Gaya Ji”, sung by Mohammad Rafi and Geeta Dutt.
Guru Dutt had first noticed Yasmin on the Bangalore Beginner Dramatic Society and supplied her a task on the spot, a proposal she initially turned down. Years later, she made her debut, sharing body area with Guru Dutt himself together with Madhubala and Walker.
Many years on, the track’s YouTube remark part is filled with reward for Yasmin.
“Even the black and white colors can’t have an effect on her magnificence,” one particular person wrote within the feedback. One other argued that Yasmin packed extra expressiveness into that single track than some trendy actresses handle throughout a complete filmography.
“Ananya Panday’s complete profession doesn’t have the quantity of expressions Yasmin gave in only one track,” the remark reads.
The track was described as a “frothy” quantity by Filmfare, “the place workplace colleagues Johnny Walker and Yasmin are seen flirting with one another”, whereas newer protection referred to as it an “enduring instance” of OP Nayyar’s music, which continues to enchantment even many years later.
The nostalgic worth of the track, sung by Rafi and Geeta, gave her about as perfect a launch as any newcomer might hope for.
However, in keeping with Nationwide Movie Award-winning writer and Bollywood commentator Vittal Balaji, Jane Kaha Mera Jigar Gaya Ji in the long run was a “Johnny Walker track, interval.” He was the lighthearted counterbalance to Guru Dutt, who performed the intense man, the social critic.
Balaji, who has co-authored ‘Gaata Rahe Mera Dil – 50 Basic Hindi Movie Songs’ (amongst different books), says that whereas the monitor was probably the most widespread ones from the movie, nobody spoke about Yasmin.
“She was put below the class: ‘Johnny Walker ke sath jo ladki thi. (the lady with Johnny Walker),’” Balaji mentioned.
Whereas Gugnani considers Yasmin’s debut “a great technique to take off a profession,” Balaji factors to a different purpose she struggled to make an impression: the character she performed in Mr and Mrs 55.
Within the movies of that period, the secretary or typist who would usually be a younger girl from an city, Westernised household, talking Hindi with an accent, wearing a frock, was usually written as a well-known stereotype who occupied the margins of the plot.
“Nevertheless, characters like Leena (performed by Geeta Bali) in Baazi (1951) or Sheila (performed by Cuckoo Moray) in Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi (1958) additionally belonged to the identical stereotype. However Bali had a few successes already earlier than Baazi, and Moray was already a longtime dancer,” Balaji mentioned.
Yasmin, too, was solid squarely inside that typecast mould. However she didn’t come into Mr and Mrs 55 with matching credentials. Nor might she capitalise on Jaane Kahan Mera thereafter both. She performed one more model of the stereotypical lady who grew to become tough to tell apart from the sort itself.
The one who ought to have recognized her probably the most didn’t actually keep in contact along with her.
Johnny Walker’s youngest son, Nasir Khan, advised ThePrint he nonetheless remembers the craze the quantity generated again in its day. However he added that the 2 households by no means stayed in contact after the movie. No matter bond existed between his father and his on-screen sparring associate didn’t survive the years. To at the present time, a query haunted many from that period: did Yasmin finally go to Pakistan, or settle someplace within the West?
“When father give up performing, he left the business and didn’t keep in contact with anybody, solely a handful of individuals like Guru Dutt, Dev Anand,” Khan mentioned.
Yasmin’s highway to that debut, although, wasn’t a straight line. In keeping with movie historian Suresh Sarvaiya, she spent her first seven years in Kashmir earlier than being educated at a string of hill-station faculties, and finally got here to Bangalore for her increased research. It was there that she joined the Bangalore Beginner Dramatic Society and commenced showing in performs, the place Guru Dutt first seen her, providing her a task in his subsequent movie and asking her to maneuver to Bombay.
At the moment, she was often known as Vinita Butt, who was born in Rawalpindi in 1937. It was Guru Dutt who renamed her for Mr & Mrs 55, the identify below which she continues to be remembered.
“Yasmin turned him down within the first go,” Gugnani added.
Her precise entry into the business, as per each Sarvaiya and Gugnani’s account, got here by a wholly completely different route. When Yasmin finally did go to Bombay, she met Anwar Hussain, actress Nargis’s brother. The 2 households have been buddies from earlier than.
“Hussain launched her to Chandulal Shah, the proprietor of Ranjit Studio, who solid her in a small position in Utpatang (1955). The movie was shot at Mehboob Studio, the place, because it occurred, Guru Dutt was taking pictures on the similar time,” Gugnani mentioned.
The 2 crossed paths once more throughout a break in filming, and Dutt made his provide a second time, for a movie that might change into Mr & Mrs 55. This time, Yasmin couldn’t say no.
“She had fairly and really expressive eyes, and her options have been these of a traditional magnificence. However she didn’t do a lot work for anybody to evaluate her performing expertise. Perhaps she might have made it massive,” she mentioned. “I might say she is a ‘misplaced potential’.”
After Mr & Mrs 55, at Mehboob Studios, she met Zul Vellani, who solid her as Desdemona in a Theatre Group open-air manufacturing of Othello, in keeping with an archival Filmfare journal, 1956 version.
That not directly led to her subsequent contract: Hollywood actor Alex D’Arcy, who met her and was impressed. That is how she landed the position of Rukmini in Filmistan’s bold Cinemascope and Technicolour manufacturing Three Headed Cobra, initially titled Bombay Flight 417.
Filmfare’s August 1955 problem described her as somebody making “a bid for stardom on this bold worldwide movie.”
Senior journalist Bharti Dubey has a sharper analysis for why that potential by no means transformed into an actual profession.
Yasmin, in her evaluation, had the “glamour quotient, however not the elusive X issue” wanted to show a dream debut into an enduring one.
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Weak diction, flat expressions
Whereas Lal didn’t get one other shot in movies and Yasmin grew to become a ‘misplaced potential’, Nivedita, of the ‘Tum Apna Ranj-o-Gham’ fame, quite the opposite, tried relentlessly to show her price till someday, she too gave up.
Within the movie Shagoon, Nivedita sits on the piano, singing to Madan (performed by Kamaljit), a person who belongs to another person. The track is a confession of affection that she is aware of can’t be returned.
She does little past inhabiting the track, as talked about in Ganesh Anantharaman’s e-book Bollywood Melodies: A Historical past of the Hindi Movie Music (2008). Jagjit Kaur’s voice does the singing; Sahir Ludhianvi’s phrases do a lot of the emotional work.
A 2021 remembrance of Jagjit Kaur calls “Tum Apna Ranj-o-Gham” her best-known and hottest track, saying that the track gave her an id that lasted all through her life.
“The track supplied her an id for all times. Little question, it’s very dedicatedly sung with excellent expressions. Although the actress Nivedita could be very stunning, her face isn’t very expressive. The track maybe expressed Kaur’s personal feelings in the direction of her husband,” reads an excerpt within the weblog submit by Mehfil Mein Meri.
On display, Nivedita’s lowered eyes, a fleeting smile, and occasional glances towards Kamaljeet are sufficient to counsel what the character can’t say aloud. Her efficiency is passive. It’s the poetry which supplies it an emotional lifetime of its personal.
That is exactly Somaya’s level. The nice songs of that period didn’t essentially require an amazing star or a widely known face to promote them. As a result of the lyricists have been writing with such depth and emotional intelligence.
“A filmmaker might solid whoever the manufacturing might accommodate, and the phrases, music and scenario would carry the second, even when the actor’s efficiency was understated. Even when the actor offers naked minimal expressions, it was sufficient for the filmmaker,” Somaya mentioned.
That confidence has largely disappeared from the business. Earlier, filmmakers trusted their writers and music administrators sufficient to imagine an amazing track might change into a star in its personal proper, regardless of the particular person performing it.
Tum Apna Ranj-o-Gham, as per Somaya, might belong to anybody nursing a damaged coronary heart, or to anybody telling a liked one which they’re keen to share the burden of their ache.
Right this moment, even the smallest cinematic second is anticipated to come back with recognisable star energy or a marketable face. It’s, in Somaya’s phrases, a “pragmatic shift in the direction of movie star tradition and inside the movie business, a rising anxiousness about whether or not a challenge can maintain an viewers with out the reassurance of a well-known identify.”
However that logic has its limits. The fixed pursuit of visibility, she says, finally turns into exhausting. And when the equipment of movie star grows too giant, the bubble can solely stretch up to now earlier than it bursts.
After her fleeting appearance in Shagoon, Nivedita picked up smaller roles in movies like Tu Hello Meri Zindagi, Rocky Mera Naam, Dharti Kahe Pukar Ke and Financial institution Theft. The form of elements that preserve an actor employed with out ever making them memorable.
One movie got here near altering that trajectory: the 1969 movie Jyoti, directed by Dulal Guha, the place Nivedita performed a spiritual girl, Radha, who’s married to an atheist, Nirmal (Sanjeev Kumar). Nevertheless, the movie didn’t work both.
“I don’t assume she did justice to the position; she didn’t have the energy to painting the character. It was a missed alternative,” Gugnani mentioned.
In keeping with Gugnani, Nivedita’s limitations went past a single underwhelming efficiency. Her diction was weak, her expressions flat, and beneath the surface-level prettiness, there merely wasn’t the vary a number one position demanded.
Nivedita’s profession quietly wound down in 1976, with Sabse Bada Rupaiyaa, the place she performed the position of Miss Bela, the stenographer.
However not many know that she tried her luck as soon as extra after nearly 20 years. She made a comeback. Nivedita performed an uncredited position in Ajay Devgn-Twinkle Khanna-starrer Jaan (1996), after nearly 20 years since her final look. Jaan was the final movie she ever appeared in.
Her identify itself carries its personal confusion. Some bear in mind her as Libi Rana, the credit score she carried in her debut, Shagoon (1964), and once more in Walait Move (1961). Later movies billed her as Nivedita as a substitute, and it’s unclear which identify got here first, or why the change occurred in any respect. No account explains the reasoning, in contrast to Yasmin’s renaming.
Lengthy after stepping away, she mirrored on the business with a mixture of fondness and clear-eyed distance. IMDb quotes her from a 2006 interview: “Okay sure, I used to be within the films as soon as. It was enjoyable however you’ll be able to’t dangle on except you need to undergo on Sundown Boulevard.”
In a photograph gallery printed in Amar Ujala, it’s cited that movie critic Khalid Mohammed met Libby Rana at a bookshop in Mumbai’s Taj Resort. Khalid instantly recognised her and tried to strategy her. However Rana reportedly turned and ran away.
Recalling their assembly, Mohammed said, “When confronted, Libi ran away, saying, ‘No, it’s essential to have misunderstood.’”
She reportedly handed away in 2014, having stayed in Mumbai lengthy after her marriage, in contrast to Lal and Yasmin, who each left the nation.
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‘Marriage was a means out’
If there’s one factor that ties Lal, Nivedita, and Yasmin’s tales collectively, it’s marriage. All three, in their very own means, vanished from the display not lengthy after strolling down the aisle.
It’s price remembering this was a distinct period; there was no comeback platform for a feminine star as soon as she married or grew to become a mom; stepping away hardly ever meant stepping again in.
For Yasmin, the ending got here quick. On the set of Three Headed Cobra, she fell for the movie’s make-up man, Jimmy Vining, and the 2 married in November 1955, a matter of months after her breakout in Mr & Mrs 55. She left the business to settle overseas.
Some accounts counsel she finally returned to Pakistan; some declare she moved to someplace in Europe, however then there’s an account which states that she settled in Valsad, Gujarat.
Sarvaiya provides yet one more thread to her story, although he flags it himself as unverified: that her son reportedly went on to change into a pilot with SpiceJet.
Producer and movie historian Viveck Vaswani sees a blunter thread operating beneath all of it.
“They have been smaller than supporting actresses. After they discovered good husbands, it was a means out from the hopelessness. They realised that they couldn’t change into a heroine, in order that they left,” he mentioned.
He highlights a broader sample: Sadhana, Kalpana Kartik, Tanuja, Rakhee Gulzar, Bindiya Goswami, Mumtaz, and Kumud Chugani, amongst others, who married producers, administrators, or businessmen, and largely walked away from performing quickly after.
For Vaswani, marriage functioned as an exit ramp exactly as a result of nothing else was on provide.
“Cinema is as straightforward or as tough because it was again then. They didn’t have any various again then,” he mentioned.
It’s a bleaker image of in the present day’s panorama than maybe holds up fully. Vaswani argues that even now, a big social media following is one thing of an phantasm.
“Right this moment, you’ll be able to change into a social media star, however it doesn’t translate into theatre footfalls. Even when somebody has 25 million followers, 25 folks don’t come to look at their movie,” he mentioned.
Vaswani’s level sits awkwardly towards the careers of Kajol, Rani Mukerji, and Alia Bhatt, all of whom proceed to work throughout movies, OTT platforms, and social media concurrently. The “no various”-era Vaswani describes could also be extra particular to the Nineteen Fifties and Sixties than a set regulation of the business.
(Edited by Saptak Datta)
