When Rekha Spoke About ‘Sleepwalking’ Through Umrao Jaan

Muzaffar Ali’s classic  study of the Kotha  culture in the Lucknow of  the 1850s Umrao Jaan is all set to release on June 27. Rekha who received the National award for her mellow  muted meditative performance, doesn’t think  much of  herself  in this, her  most celebrated work.

There is a supreme  stillness that shrouds Rekha’s  character Umrao Jaan Adaa ; an inexplicable  tranquillity which  Rekha  famously called “doing nothing”.Not too many of our actors know much  about the art of doing nothing. In  Indian cinema, the more  you do on screen, the more your chances of being  noticed. Rekha took the risk and sailed  through a character which is  dreamy,distant  sensuous and impregnable. I don’t think any of  the men who cross her path  ever get to know who Umrao really is.

 In that sense, Umrao is the daughter  of Meena Kumari’s Sahibjaan in  Kamal Amrohi’s Pakeezah . Neither tawaif is  all there. When Meena Kumari sings, ‘Yun hi koi mil gaya ttha sare raah chalte chalte’ she has the dreamy faraway look of a woman who is  physically here  but emotionally some  place else.

I saw the same look in Rekha’s eyes as she sings ‘Justju jisski  tthi ussko toh na paya humne/Iss bahane se  magar  dekh lee duniya humne.’ The lucid words of  regret and hope by Shahrayar in many ways define Rekha’s own life.

Like Umrao, Rekha never found what she  was looking for.I speak in the past as  the  time to find that elusive  idea called True Love has passed  her  by.

Just  like Umrao. Rekha didn’t play Umrao Jaan Adaa. She  lived  the character through the sighing silences.

 How on earth  did she retain that “not here” look so consistently?

“Because I wasn’t there,” Rekha once giggled when I  asked her this question.

One thing is  for sure:  no other actress  could have made Umrao look so unattainable, so  far removed  from the  men who  adored her.

A  great deal of  the central  performance’s  efficacy depends on  the poetic aura that Muzaffar  Ali,  along with music composer Khayyam and lyricist Shahrayar created for  Rekha’s character. The  words that Umrao throws so casually even in her ‘saheli’ scenes with Prema Narayan(there, only so that  Umrao could speak her  mind) are  so embedded in the elixir of life, they seem to have been carved by the pen of  destiny.

Pravin Bhatt’s cinematography, Muzaffar Ali , Manzoor and Bansi Chandragupta’s art direction , Gopi Krishna and Kumudini Lakhia’s  choreography and Subhashini Ali’s costumes gather their  glory  into embodying Umrao as the pinnacle of seductive enigma.

 I  don’t think Rekha is aware of what she has achieved in Umrao Jaan. It is one of  the most silently articulate  portrayals of  love’s pursuit ever seen. Its wordless lucidity is  timeless.  Fifty years hence Umrao Jaan would still remain the work of art that it is  now.

With her chiselled expressions, mysterious smile and subtle adaas Rekha  was  sufficiently able to cover up her inadequacies as a dancer in  Umrao Jaan. Cinematographer Pravin Bhatt(director Vikram Bhatt’s father)  did an outstanding job of catching Rekha’s face in the light of approaching evening. She never  looked more dusky, inviting and sensuous.

     The director Muzaffar Ali later complained that he had a tough time getting Rekha to concentrate on the  role. Luckily, like Smita Patil in Shyam Benegal’s Bhumika, Umrao Jaan was the story of a restless woman whose wandering soul  takes her through warm and robust relationships with a  bashful Nawab(Farooq Shaikh), her childhood  friend and admirer(Naseeruddin Shah) and a long-haired dacoit(Raj Babbar).

Rekha shocked  me by saying  she “sleepwalked” through Umrao Jaan.  “I mean  it. I don’t remember a single shot or moment. I  was  thoroughly disinterested in what I was doing.”

But what about the stunning dances? “That’s no big deal. I think I danced well even in  Sheshnaag. How many people remember that film? It’s not the dances that make a film.”