Ek Aur Yaad....

Some thoughts on the passing of Nalini Jaywant who moved on last week. I do not know how old she was but I am sure the newspapers in India carried the usual cliched headlines: "The End of an Era" or "Another Great Luminary is Doused".

Truth to tell, the era has continued to end a little down the years with the passing of each cine-personality who has left, but has remained alive and well in the songs that we listen to and in the memories that we still share. I, for one, am convinced that as long our generation lasts we will remember those who created nostalgia in us! Even now during a visit to the city of one's birth one automatically looks for (and sees in the mind's eye) some billboard that used to hang at some spot in Opera House or Lamington Road. For that was, what I would like to call, the age of 'persona', when a face peering down from the billboard drew the throngs to the movie house.

Nalini Jaywant was one such face that conjures up that beautifully emotive era. It is, however, unfortunate that her name does not always come up in discussions of the actresses we have known. Not her fault: look at the films she acted in: apart from Meena Kumari I know of no other actress of that period who was given such short shrift, as was Nalini Jaywant.

The biggest banners that she acted for were Kardar Films and Filmistan Ltd. The first was a prolific banner that churned out one bad remake of western films after another. Think of 'Jadoo' and you think of 'The Loves of Carmen': thereby hangs a tale! What lifted Jadoo, however, was the Naushad Ali-Shakeel Badayuni tandem, and Nalini Jaywant's lipsynch of that master's impossibly difficult compositions for that film, vocalized by the great Shamshad Begum and Lata. And then there was Kardar's Naujawan, also in 1951 of which I know nothing but the great compositions of SD Burman.

Filmistan Ltd., that unabashedly lachrymose banner, gave her roles in films like Samadhi (1950) and a fine role in Nastik (1954) and Bombay Talkies cast her in its Sangram (1950). All three of these films also had fabulous music by the late C. Ramchandra. She came back to Filmistan in the mid-50s with two lighter but silly films like Munimji (1955) and Hum Sub Chor Hain (1956), both of which are remembered today for their frothy music: the one with SD Burman and the other with OP Nayyar.

Towards the late-50s she starred in a film called Miss Bombay, as a wife who could not forget her lover (Ajit) and would rather see him waste away before her eyes than betray her husband (Rehman). That was a good solid role in a movie that suffered from bad, nay, poor direction. There was also Ramesh Saigal's Railway Platform in 1955 (Sunil Dutt's debut) which is largely remembered for a couple of Sahir Ludhianvi's great lyrics set to music by Madan Mohan.

So, what am I going to remember her for? Well (and call me biased) for the roles that I have seen her in but most of all for what she did for director Raj Khosla as the nautch-girl in Nav Ketan's Kalapani (a fine foil there for Madhubala), and for Ramesh Saigal in Shikast in which she matched Dilip Kumar's virtuosity, breath for painful breath. An underrated classic, this film did not go much beyond the critical acclaim it received upon its release in 1953 and is remembered today mainly for its brilliant soundtrack by Shankar-Jaikishan. But then, isn't that what this blog is all about?

R.I.P.