Parveen Babi Didn’t Deserve  To Go The  Way She Did

Parveen  Babi  left us  on  January 20, 2005. As  far as the film industry was concerned Parveen Babi died a very long time ago after she was reportedly diagnosed as schizophrenic. In her final  years one seldom heard or saw anything of her except for an appearance on  Shekhar Suman’s talk show a year ago where  she appeared as normal as could be.

 Distinctly overweight , it was difficult to recognize Parveen Babi in the last one-third of her life. Her neglect by the film industry epitomized the most callous aspect of stardom. Ostracized and banished into oblivion,  Parveen Babi ,still in her 40s, died a lonely isolated death .

 And to think that in the 1970s she embodied the new-age heroine!   Introduced by B.R. Ishaara along with cricketer Salim Durrani in Charitra, Babi shot to fame in the films that she did with Amitabh Bachchan ,like Amar Akbar Anthony, Do Aur Do Paanch and Namak Halaal, Shaan  and Khuddar.

  In Yash Chopra’s Deewaar she was cast  as  a liberated working girl, smoking drinking and sleeping with her lover , defying every rule of being  a Hindi film heroine. At the same time she could carry off the sari-clad look opposite Jeetendra in J.Om Prakash’s Arpan.

    Parveen Babi’s biggest moment of glory came when she was featured  on the cover of Time magazine to represent the new  face of  Hindi cinema. Then…everything began to go wrong for this defiant and reluctant bombshell.  According to her close friends Parveen Babi began to lose her mind.

     Recalled the late  media baron Pritish Nandy , “Yes , she did begin to crack up. She couldn’t take the pressures of  being naked before the camera. I think Parveen was very uncomfortable with the idea  of  exposing her feelings. The exhibitionism required  to perform in front of a camera tormented her. She quietly and quickly  withdrew from  the rat race to the extent that no one could keep track of her.”

     But why did the industry isolate this incredibly beautiful actress so completely? “She chose to be that way. Her final affair with a particular actor finished off her selfconfidence. She cracked up after that.”

  In  the 1970s, Parveen Babi had a tumultuous widely-publicized affair with Mahesh Bhatt. Later she was closely involved with his religious guru. When in the mid-1970s  Bhatt made a sensational  film Arth based on his affair with Babi, with Smita Patil playing Babi’s role, Babi’s psyche was deeply affected.

  Recalls Nandy, “Yes I suppose the film affected her, as did the  men in  her life. She was a  wonderful company, very articulate, terrific conversationalist, extremely well-read. In fact she had begun to write her memoirs which she never completed. I had published portions of her intended memoirs in the the Illustrated Weekly Of India when I edited it. Now  of course we’ll never know her full  story.”

      Parveen Babi was a major star in the 1980s. Neck-to-neck with  Zeenat Aman  as  the sexy westernized  oomphy girl Parveen could never drop her inhibitions to live up to her image.  She instead withdrew from the limelight and then from life.