On Parveen Babi's birth anniversary, remembering the vivacious actor who lived a lonely, isolated life

If Parveen Babi had lived she would have been 67. She died at 50, lonely and frightened of exposure to the outside world. Neighbours complained of a stench spreading from her apartment before her door was broken down to extract her corpse. Parveen was one of many showbiz personalities who died alone. Lalita Pawar too was discovered dead in her apartment days after she passed away. Nadira was so frightened of being alone in her final years that she would ‘bribe’ her company with drinks to stay a little longer. Meena Kumari died in the outhouse of the bungalow that she had gifted her sister Minoo Mumtaz and her brother-in-law Mehmood. They were “kind” enough to give her a roof when she had nowhere else to go. They were also kind enough to give her two meals a day until she passed away, or more like faded away. Even Parveen Babi who sparkled on-screen singing songs like ‘Jawaani jaan-e-mann’ for Shashi Kapoor in Namak Halaal, ‘Jab tum chale jaoge toh yaad bahot aaoge’ for Dev Anand in Bullet and ‘Likhne wale ne likh daley’ for Jeetendra in Arpan simply faded away, though luckily she didn’t die in poverty. Vimi the statuesque beauty in BR Chopra’s Humraaz lost her career and life to alcohol. When she died there was no one to claim her body and had to be taken to the crematorium on a cart. “There are so many like Vimi and Lalita Pawar who foolishly squandered away their earnings. It is very essential to know how to manage your earnings. This industry is ruthless in failure,” says veteran actress Asha Parekh who lives a comfortable life in old age. Her close friend Sadhana had to undergo the ignominy of being evicted from her home of 35 years when she was dying of cancer. Parveen’s death was not penniless. It was not painless either. Her life was one of affluence. Born into a royal family she lived life queen-size, travelled across the world and dated some of Bollywood’s most prominent personalities: Kabir Bedi, Danny Deonzongpa and Mahesh Bhatt. Mahesh is often held responsible for Parveen Babi’s ruination. It is said the film Arth which was based on his relationship with Parveen tilted her over the edge. Bhatt denies any hand in the tragedy that is Parveen Babi. “People said Parveen Babi was emotionally affected because I had cannibalised my relationship with her in Arth. But Parveen was genetically predisposed towards mental illness. To say that Arth was responsible for her breakdown was absurd. I wasn’t affected by accusations of cannibalising my life for the screen. How can the truth hurt the filmmaker?” Parveen Babi had it all: chiselled looks, hourglass figure, emotional heft and a tremendous screen presence. She worked with the best of costars from Amitabh Bachchan and Vinod Khanna to Shatrughan Sinha and Rajesh Khanna and the best of directors: Manmohan Desai, Prakash Mehra, J Om Prakash, Ramesh Sippy, Yash Chopra, Hrishikesh Mukherjee. Shatrughan Sinha, Parveen’s co-star in Badd Aur Badnaam, Shaan and Iraada remembers her as “vivacious, articulate, intelligent and very beautiful…She was one of the rare heroines with beauty and brains. What a sad sad loss” Actor-anchor-host Shekhar Suman who was the last known person to meet Parveen recalls her as “a perfectly normal, intelligent, charming, expressive woman.” It must have been traumatic to be all of this and then to plunge into a bottomless abyss. Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.