Kahaan gaye woh log?

Dinesh Raheja mourns the death of the tantrum-supporting star mummy

Today, an actress would cringe at the idea of carting mommy dearest to the set, but back when the industry was not corporatised, mothers were an integral part of the heroine's entourage -- a chaperone-watchdog-companion, all rolled into one six-yard saree.


Illustration/ Satish Acharya

I haven't witnessed a star mom hollering, 'Baby ke liye juice lao' on a film set but having interacted with the 'we-are-going-to-shooting' mamma mias has been fun, fruitful and has given me an excellent insight into star personalities.

Interviewing Madhuri Dixit in the 1990s was always challenging -- she played an elaborate fan dance with her true feelings. Mama Dixit, who stuck to her like a shadow, was more forthcoming.

We once discussed Madhuri's seeming emotional sterility -- her disdain for heated exchanges or fiery revenge.

Mama Dixit revealed: "I was on some medication which seriously damaged my eyesight. Imagine, I loved reading, and now, for no fault of mine, things are just a blur. On Madhuri's sets, I once had a full-fledged conversation with a moustachioed man before I realised he wasn't Anil Kapoor! Gradually, my eyesight got better. My doctor said my case was one in a million. My friends get angry at me for accepting whatever life throws at me, but I laugh and say, 'Kya karoon, main lakhon mein ek hoon.' Madhuri too has this quality. She's an achiever but what she can't change, she accepts."

Manisha Koirala's mom, Sushma Koirala, would burst with pride when you mentioned the word 'Nepal'. Once, when I stayed back for dinner at her insistence, Mrs Koirala waxed eloquent about the many joys of the unspoiled Nepali countryside. She would have made a better interviewee than her firebrand daughter even, except for her penchant for adding "off-the-record" after every verbal volley.

Karisma-Kareena and Raveena (Tandon) are daughters to Sindhi women married to Punjabi men. Babita (whose career was masterminded by her dad, character actor Hari Shivdasani, and who went on to become the powerhouse behind her daughter's careers) is a staunch Sindhi, who missed her Sai Bhaji after she married into a Punjabi household.

Raveena's mom insisted she had been married for so many years to Ravi Tandon, a Punjabi, she had almost turned Punjabi herself.

Ask Sridevi an uncomfortable question in the early 1980s and she would coyly flutter her eyelashes and famously murmur, "Ask Mummy." Looking back, I wonder why nobody did.

Sometimes, star moms beat stereotypes. A curly-haired bundle of animated energy, Kimmy Katkar'su00a0 mom was ticked off if one called her 'aunty.'

"I am Tina," she insisted. Tina was as integral to interviews I did with Kimmy, as the dictaphone. Kimmy was na ve -- it was her gutsy mother who cleverly manoeuvred her from cat-eyed cat-walker to Bachchan's heroine.

And the mom was fun. After an interview at her Colaba residence, Tina decided to walk me to the elevator. Suddenly, the neighbour's Pekinese barked from behind a closed door, and that had her blood pressure shoot.

Tina disappeared from my line of vision. It was only when I heard a "Shut up!" from somewhere near my feet, that I realised she was down on her knees, her head flat on the ground (in Red Indian fashion, when they want to hear approaching footfalls), letting out a piercing shout through the narrow shaft between the door and the floor. It silenced the dog.

Before we reached an amiable d ufffdtente, Mrs Sundari Seshadri (Meenakshi's mum) and I began on a war footing at the Ooty shoot of Subhash Ghai's Hero. Correct but disturbingly distant, Meenakshi spent most of her time at her mother's feet. On returning to Mumbai, I casually described Meenakshi as 'the ice maiden' in one of my articles. Unfortunately, the label stuck.

Meenakshi didn't ever accost me, but her mother caught hold of me one day and gave me a piece of her mind, armed as she was with ready wit. "You were the one, who looked so green and pale, puking all the way while the bus climbed the ghats of Ooty. And you had the cheek to call my daughter an ice maiden!"

Star mamas belonged to a distinct subspecies, the extinction of whose genus I mourn. For, what I found most remarkable about them was how they were absorbed in their daughters' aspirations, but could never quite sublimate their own colourful identities.u00a0

The writer is a film historian and editor of Bollywood News Service