For Waheeda Rehman, the Dadasaheb Phalke Lifetime Achievement Award may have come a day too late but there is little doubt that she belongs to the rare breed of actresses who blended beauty with the virtuoso of an accomplished performer. Shoma A. Chatterji takes a look at her career graph that meandered through myriad roles and did justice to each of them.
Born on 3 February 1938, Waheeda Rehman has been working in the Indian film industry since 1955, when she made her debut as a dancer in the Telugu social drama Rojulu Marayi. In her biography, Conversations with Waheeda Rehman, author Nasreen Munni Kabir writes that the film’s song ‘Eruvako sagaro ranno chinnanna’ became a rage, and Rehman became as famous as the film’s leading stars, Akkineni Nageswara Rao (ANR) and Sowcar Janaki. It is a wonder that no journalist has cared to explore her work in films in South India, especially in Telugu films.
Her very first Hindi film CID (1956) produced by Guru Dutt in which Dev Anand played the hero opposite Shakila and Waheeda Rehman played a dancing vamp, became a box office hit setting her off to a very successful career in Hindi cinema. The very sensual song number in CID picturised on Waheeda Rehman namely Jaata kahan hai deewane, sab kuch yahan hai sanam was beautifully choreographed on Dev Anand and Waheeda Rehman. However, the story goes that this song number was later deleted from the film because it was felt that the lyrics were both titillating and filled with double entendre though it was not. The lyrics were by Majrooh Sultanpuri, music by O.P. Nayyar and the song was belted out by the then very young Geeta Dutt.
Despite her many critically acclaimed performances that have stayed on in audiences’ memories, she won the Filmfare Award for Best Actress only twice in her career– the first time for Guide (1965) and then for Neel Kamal (1968). She also won the National Award for Best Actress for Reshma Aur Shera (1971). It was Guru Dutt who watched her dance performance once in Hyderabad and asked her to come to Bombay. She got a supporting role in his film C.I.D. and the film became such a big hit that she became famous as a star.
But CID was practically a ‘rehearsal’ Dutt had taken to prep her for the role of a prostitute in Pyaasa, her next film in which Dutt played a failed poet who Gulabo fell in love with. The hallmark of her performance is an element of dignity and respect that she brings to any character she plays, be it Rosie, the daughter of a devdasi in Guide, or Jaba, the impish Brahmo girl living within a feudal set-up who falls in love with the naïve Bhootnath in Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam, or a prostitute who loves poetry in Pyaasa or the once-successful film star in Kaagaz Ke Phool who loses all sense of reason when she discovers that the man she loved fails/refuses to vocalise his feelings for her. She played a sixteen-year-old girl who runs away with a diabolic man out to con her in Solva Saal. She played a psychological nurse in Khamoshi, a pretty young girl forced to play a ghost in Bees Saal Baad, a young bride coerced to imitate her husband’s dead first wife in Kohra and many more. She is subtle, even now, in senior roles, always in control and tends to underplay which makes her unique in a world filled with melodrama and loud acting. Just remember her work as the old Daaji in Yash Chopra’s Lamhe. Or, the worried grandmother in Aparna Sen’s 15, Park Avenue and the message will get across.
In Gulzar’s Namkeen, Rehman played Jugni, the matriarch of a small family in rural Himachal Pradesh. Through her spirited performance, Rehman showed how women can be self-sufficient and how often wives have to struggle against their husbands to protect their children from hardships — like the ones they have experienced. But of course, she could not save her three daughters’ lives in the end but her portrayal was beyond compare.
Many have not watched a significant film of Waheeda Rehman titled Neel Kamal for which she won the Filmfare Award for Best Actress. Neel Kamal was a reincarnation drama starring Waheeda, Raj Kumar and Manoj Kumar. Interestingly, it is Waheeda who gets top billing ahead of her two male stars in the opening credits of the film, a testament to her star power. Adding to this is the fact that the movie is titled after one of her characters— she played dual roles, starring as princess Neel Kamal and also Sita, a modern-day reincarnation of the royal.
Her films are also famous for the wonderful song-dance numbers she performed. Guide alone has songs that are still heard again and again over YouTube and other music channels. Among these are – Aaj phir jeena ki tamanna hai (Guide), Paan khaye sainyan hamaro (Teesri Kasam), Kahin pe nigaahen kahin pe nishana (C.I.D.), Jaane Kya Tune Kahi (Pyaasa), Waqt ne kiya (Kaagaz Ke Phool), Rimjhim Ke Taraane (Kala Bazaar), Rangeela Re (Prem Pujari) and more, harking back to the golden era of Hindi cinema where music, dance and romance interacted with one another to produce incredible cinema fit for the archive forever.
In Vijay Anand’s Guide (1965) she essayed the difficult role of the many-hued Rosie, the most liberated and empowered young woman who walks out a bad marriage, builds up a successful career as a dancer and then, leaves her lover Raju too when she discovers that he has cheated her which is not exactly the case. “Waheeda will be my only heroine in Guide” insisted Dev Anand when roles were being discussed because both directors Chetan Anand and Raj Khosla did not quite approve of Waheeda for Rosie’s character. But Dev Anand was firm and turned to his brother Vijay Anand to direct the film which became a grand success.
For Rosie, in Guide, dance is a spontaneous expression of pure ecstasy as the snake charmer dance number reveals so beautifully. The trance-like state in the end when she falls into a faint does not appear either melodramatic or artificial. It is inserted at the right time and place and in the situation appropriate to reveal a not very well-known facet of Rosie’s character, as much to the audience in the theatre as to Raju who is the audience-within-the-film.
The Dadasaheb Phalke Award was constituted in 1969, to commemorate the contribution of filmmaker Dadasaheb Phalke to Indian cinema. Phalke directed India’s first full-length feature film, Raja Harishchandra, in 1913, laying the foundation of the biggest film industry in the world. The Award comprises a Swarna Kamal (Golden Lotus) medallion, a shawl, and a cash prize of Rs 10 lakh and used to be personally presented to the awardee by the President of India. Waheeda Rehman is perhaps, one among the most deserving names among the awardees among who are Raj Kapoor, Dev Anand, Dilip Kumar, Ashok Kumar, Prithivraj Kapoor, Asha Parekh, Sridevi, (posthumous) and many others.