Remembering Vidya Sinha, the actor who made low-key performances, fluid body language, unaffected dialogue delivery and an ethnic wardrobe her calling card
Khalid Mohamed (MUMBAI MIRROR; August 16, 2019)

Her handloom saris were selected from the rows of discount-rate shops in Dadar and Girgaum. At most, she was allowed to apply kajal around her eyes. Make-up and lipstick were strictly forbidden. No bouffants or teased hair-styles please, either. She had to look and behave like the quintessential girl-next-door of a middle-class colony of the 1970s for Rajnigandha.

The parsimoniously-budgeted film—commuting between Delhi and Bombay—established her as a heroine who didn’t require an iota of glamour to score a surprise hit when it opened on September 13, 1974 for limited shows at the Akashwani auditorium at Churchgate in South Bombay.

To date, Vidya Sinha who passed away on Tuesday at 71, after a protracted illness, is called the ‘Rajnigandha’ girl.

This was her second film. She had already featured in Raja Kaka opposite Kiran Kumar, an actioner which had tumbled under the cracks. Ignoring her inauspicious debut, film society activist-cartoonist-turned-film director Basu Chatterjee didn’t audition her for the role of Deepa, a young woman who has to decide between her two suitors, a mousy white-collar worker of Delhi and a flamboyant ad guru of Bombay, portrayed by Amol Palekar and Dinesh Thakur respectively.

Incidentally, the to-die-for role of Deepa had been initially offered to Mallika Sarabhai, who had turned it down politely.

Vidya Sinha, the daughter of film producer Pratap A Rana, who had modelled for fabrics and consumer products, was recommended to Chatterjee who in his patented casual manner had said, “Why not?” Although the director went on to cast frontline heroines, ranging from Hema Malini and Jaya Bachchan to Neetu Singh and Tina Munim, he collaborated with Vidya time and again through Chhoti Si Baat, Tumhare Liye and Safed Jhooth, not to forget a cameo in Jeena Yahan, which the auteur has often cited as his best work.

Chatterjee at age 89 is bed-ridden and cannot remember things easily, states his filmmaker-daughter Rupali Guha. Speaking on his behalf, she points out, “Dad was never demonstrative or given to praising anyone. But he regarded Vidya as an actor he could depend on. Since she considered him a mentor, she immediately agreed to act in my TV serial Ishq Ka Rang Safed. I always found her to be an extrovert and she treated me like a baby who’d watch her with round eyes at the shoot of Rajnigandha.”

The Rajnigandha girl had acted in almost 20 films, and nine TV serials, kicking off with Kkavyanjali. She was last seen in the Salman Khan-starrer Bodyguard and in the serial Kulfi Kumarr Bajewala. The transition from status of the leading lady to the typical hand-wringing maa and next, grandma, wasn’t exactly smooth, perhaps because she had resettled in Australia for close to a decade.

Towards the end of 1986, roles reduced to a trickle. Her childood neighbourhood sweetheart, Venkateshwaran Iyer, whom she had married, passed away in 1996. Next, she moved to Sydney where after chatting online, she married Dr Netaji Bhimrao Salunkhe in 2001. Eight years later, she filed a complaint against him for physical and mental torture and divorced. The actor, with her daughter Jhanvi, then returned to start life again in an Andheri apartment.

Low-key performances, an infectious smile, fluid body language, an unaffected dialogue delivery and an ethnic wardrobe were her calling card. Besides the interpretation of a girl who’s charmed by the scent of tube-roses in Rajnigandha, her other impactful performances were evidenced in BR Chopra’s Pati Patni Aur Woh, Raj N Sippy’s Inkaar, and in Gulzar’s Kitaab and Meera.

Gulzar recalls, “Vidya and I enjoyed working with Uttam Kumar in Kitaab. That was a lovely journey which comes rushing back to me today. In Meera, the title role was Hema Malini’s of course, Vidya enacted her sister gracefully. She was a director’s actor, sincere to the script to the last letter and punctuation mark. She would be friendly on the sets with the assistants, spotboys and technicians. I wonder if that quality still exists today. We will always miss her unbridled joy for life. She had a doodhiya (milky) laughter. Whenever she laughed, you had to laugh with her.”