LADIES GET A SWINGING: ’60’s club going

Mumbai:

Have you wondered what happened to the lovely ladies of Hindi movies in the swinging 1960s? Grace-personified Waheeda Rehman, danseuse-actress par excellence Vyjayanthimala, subtle-and-sensuous Sadhana, naughty and sexy Helen, cutely tragic Nanda and of course glamorous go-go-gal Asha Parekh? To today’s generations, who think hip means Ayesha Takia, Asha Parekh would just be a known name from the bygone eras who starred in such televised favourite feature films as Love In Tokyo, Teesri Manzil, Aan Milo Sajna and Caravan.

But Parekh and all her colleagues are still around and rocking.

Nanda and Sadhana don’t step out of their homes any more. Nanda, always a recluse, lost the will to socialise even nominally after her fiancé Manmohan Desai jumped to his death. In contrast to Nanda, Sadhana was always gloriously gregarious. Her husband, filmmaker RK Nayyar, and she hosted and attended the swankiest parties in town. After Nayyar’s death Sadhana stopped ste-pping out of her stonewalled cita-del altogether.

“It was very, very frightening,” says Parekh, who turned 64 on October 2. “All of us close actress-friends from the 1960s were living lives of self-imposed seclusion and solitude. One fine day, I decided we don’t need to do that. Now we meet regularly at one or the other friend’s place, chat, catch up with old times, have lunch, maybe watch a movie. Believe me, there is nothing more therapeutic in life than companionship. Half the illnesses that we think we have come from loneliness.

“We actress-friends, Sadhana, Nanda, Waheeda-ji, Shammi aunty and Vyjayanthimalaji (whenever she’s in town) have decided to take stock of the situation. I suggest other retired actors try the same remedy for dissociation. Reach out to your colleagues before it is too late,” she says.

Like many of her contemporaries, Parekh never contemplated marriage. “It just didn’t happen, not because I was too busy, or because no man was good enough for me. There was just no one that I wanted to marry. I couldn’t have affairs with my heroes. All of them were my buddies. But, yes, I have been in love. Remember I am a nice maiden, not an ice maiden.”