Conversation with Waheeda Rehman: A Great Book of her Memoir.

Conversation with Waheeda Rehman: A Great Book of her Memoir. 

When we start reading memoirs of any celebrities, we always try to find out insights of every aspect of their life. Through these memoirs, we would like to know about their life, their family, their professional and their relationship with other professional colleagues and try to understand their views about the life.  The same thing happened to me when I started reading the book titled as Conversation with Waheeda Rehman written by Nasreen Munni Kabir. This book is nothing but the life story of legendary actor from her childhood till leaving of film industry to start her family and to enjoy the world of her own. Nasreen Munni Kabir is working as director and author for British Terrestrial Television Channel 4 in United Kingdom.  Before this book, she has done several documentaries and written nearly fifteen books on Indian Cinema. She has published the conversation with many personalities in film industry like Gulzar, A R Rahman, Javed Akhtar, and Lata Mangeshkar. She has also written the biography of Guru Dutt and Story of Bollywood. Her recent book was on musical icon Zakir Hussain: A life for Music. All her books are really informative and very interesting to read. Conversation with Waheeda Rehman is a fantastic chronicle her professional and personal life.

From Yogesh Gogwekar

Waheeda Rehman is one of my favorite actresses. I am admirer of her natural beauty and effortless acting. I always feel that she has done the most unconventional role in Indian Cinema which may not be acceptable to Indian audiences in 50s, 60s and 70s. She played the roles of Tawaif, Moll of Gangster, A prostitute, a devoted nurse and woman who walked out of her marriage life. She was Jameela in Choudavika Chand, Gulabo in Pyasa, Rosie in Guide, Kamini in C I D,, Nurse Radha in Khamoshi, Jaba in Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam ,Shanti in Kaagaz Ke Phool, Anjana in Ram or Shyam, Rajkumari Neel Kamal in Neel Kamal, Radha in Bees Sal Bad, Rajeshwari in Kohara, so on…., All her roles she did with such art and innate grace.

Waheeda Rehman was born on 3rd February 1938 in Tamilian Muslim Family in Chengalpattu in Tamilnadu. She was youngest of four daughters.  Her father Mohammed Abdur Rehman was an IAS officer and modern in thinking and allowed his four daughters to learn classical dance Bharatanatyam. Very soon, her father had been transferred to Visakhapatnam where she started her education in St. Joseph convent school. She is fluent in Tamil, Telugu and English. Her mother, Mumtaz Begum, started teaching her Urdu. During the school days, her dream was to become a Doctor which came to an end due to the death of her father in 1952. There was no one earning members in the house and their financial position started declining day by day.  In order to help the family, she started performing dance on the stage. Her first performance was at Brahmpur’s Ganjam Kala Parishad in Orisa. This show was organized by her uncle Dr. Ferose Ali.

After seeing her dance performance of Bharatanatyam, Telugu film director Tapi Chankya and producer C V R Prasad offered a dance role in their film Rojulu Marayi for a song "Eruvaaka Sagaroranno Chinnanna". Earlier her mother opposed her to do the role but producer Prasad convinced her mother. This has become a great success to her and due to this she started getting the offers from many film directors Telugu and Tamil. Later on, she has done more films. She worked in Telugu films such as Jayasimha along with N T Rama Rao released in in 1955 and Kaalm Marri Pochu released in 1956. She also worked in Tamil Film Alivavun 40 Thirudargalum with M G Ramachandran in lead role which was released in 1956. Hindi film maker Guru Dutt saw her dance performance of Bharatanatyam in Telugu film Rojulu Marayi, he called the producer of film C V R Prasad and asked whether she knows Hindi or urdu because that time she was working in South Indian Films and without any hesitation he offered her role of Kamilni, as a Gangster’s moll in C I D which was released in 1956 and her journey in Bollywood started. 

With Guru Dutt, her next film was Pyasa in which she played the leading role of prostitute. This film was released in 1957 and received huge success and even today also, it is being considered as one of the best films. She worked few more films like Kaagaz Ke Phool, Choudavika Chand and Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam. Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam was her last film with Guru Dutt. Their relations broke away in 1963 and on 10th October 1964, Guru Dutt died due to overdose mixture of sleeping pills and alcohol. In this book , Waheeda Rehman has spoken about her professional relations about Guru Dutt in more nuanced way as a filmmaker, She was asked whether she was in love with Guru Dutt, she rejected and said ,” We are Public figures, but I strongly believed my private life should remain private. What ultimately matters and concerns the world is work we leave behind”. During the conversation, she mentioned that her success was limited to her performances in Guru Dutt’s film.

Waheeda Rehman mentioned her friendly relationship with Dev Anand. Together, they have done many successful films. She said that Dev Anand was decent flirt. He never took any advantage at the time of shooting when put his arm around actresses. She also stated her experience with Dev Anand at the time of Shooting of Guide. In one incident, she said that Dev did not like the song,”Aaj Phir Marne Ka Irada hai”. After listening to humming tune, he liked the song and apologized. She also stated that she became more emotional and started crying to know about his death.

During the conversation, Waheeda Rehman mentioned about her relationship with Raj Khosla at the time of shooting with two films. One is C I D and another was Solva Sal. In C I D, Raj Khosla insisted her to change her name and she refused and in Solva Sal he was asking her to change her costume and she did not listen to him and decided not to work for him again. When Dev Anand told her that he was going to give the direction of Guide to Raj Khosla, she was very much upset. Later on Dev Anand decided to give the film to Vijay Anand as a director. She also said that she did not like approach of Raj Kapoor at the time of shooting of film Teesari Kasam. She said that after completing shooting in Madhya Pradesh, they were returning to Mumbai by train and people came to know that Raj Kapoor and Waheeda Rehman were travelling by the train. When train stopped at Bhopal, people started shouting to see them. Raj Kapoor went out and tried to calm down the crowd but crowd wanted to see Waheeda Rehman but Raj Kapoor was not interested to bring her out.

It is true that Waheeda Rehman has given wonderful performance in all films; but her best performance was in Guide. In Guide she has played the role of Rosie who slaps her husband and walks on him. Such type of the scene was never shown in any of the films earlier. She refused to stay in failed marriage and leave the house. She met Raju and their relationship started on sympathy and converted into love. Actually, Raju is not good character. He drinks, plays gambling and using her for his use. After knowing this, she leaves him also. In Guide, she has shown the audience that Rosie was not at all depicted as an immortal character and is totally unlike stereotypical heroin. She is brave and takes her own decision. She is a modern and decent woman. Waheeda Rehman has shown the guts for doing this role and given full justification by her performance.

Waheeda has spoken about her husband Shashi Rekhi and left the films to look after her family. She also said about her daughter Kashvi and son Sohail. She also mentioned about her friends in film industry. She has spoken about Nanda, Sadhana, Shammi, Helan and Asha Parekh.

This book is fantastic to read and to know that conversation with her is candid, real and her story has been linked with the story of Bollywood in many aspects.

I am completing this writing by mentioning her inspiration words. She said “I have believed in improving myself as a person, to keep learning. I have positive attitude to life and never like discussing about past, But when I do, I think about the beautiful things that have happened “.

Mumbai

12/06/2020