Roshmila Bhattacharya (MUMBAI MIRROR; June 15, 2019)

She had already taken the curtain call by the time we met but Shyama ji was still a star, conducting the interview from her four-poster bed, surrounded by four wardrobes which, she admitted, were full of clothes none of which had been worn more than once and many not even once, while the cosmetics strewn across the dressing table had been flown in from Dubai. But what caught my eye were the photographs on the wall, many of them clicked by her late husband, cinematographer Fali Mistry, which were pointers to their beautiful life together.

“Have you seen any of my movies?” she asked, flashing that maar-dala smile.

Nodding shyly, I muttered, “Aar Paar (above), you were Guru Dutt’s sweetheart Nikki and your 'Yeh Lo Main Haari Piya' ranks amongst my all-time favourites.”

She responded with peals of laughter, “Yes, on screen, I was Guru Dutt’s girl, but off it, everyone knew I was Fali’s girl and our cinematographer V K Murthy who had been his assistant, kept a hawk’s eye on me on the set, ensuring I wasn’t out of line with our hero.”

Not that there was any chance of that ever happening because as Shyama ji went on to reveal, she had accepted the film only on Guru Dutt’s singer-wife Geeta’s request. “Geeta didi came home to convince me to do Aar Paar, how could I say no? I told her I would not even charge my price, she could give me whatever she wanted,” she recounted more than four decades later.

The whiff of a real romance was tantalizing and I pressed her for details. Her eyes dancing, she recalled how her Fali had once reduced her to tears on the sets of Sazaa, a 1951 family-drama directed by him. “Why?” I wondered. “Because he insisted on chopping off my beautiful tresses and giving me a cascade of fashionable curls,” she replied with a twinkle, adding that she had been absolutely aghast when the hairdresser, Mrs Green, had strolled in wielding a pair of scissors. “If this was my sazaa for becoming a heroine, I told Fali and her, I didn’t want to be one, I’d rather save my hair. Of course, neither of them listened to me.”

In time she came to fall in love with the debonair Parsi boy who courted her for two years despite her parents’ outraged protests. Then, one morning, she slipped away to tie the knot with him before reporting for shoot only to be told that she was getting married on camera too.

Born Khurshid Akhtar in Lahore, Shyama ji, like Alice, had entered wonderland by accident, when she had come to Prakash Studio with a bunch of her friends to see her idol, Noor Jehan, in action. Zeenat was being filmed and the film’s director and the leading lady’s husband, Shaukat Rizvi, suddenly caught sight of the young girls and wondered if they would like to feature in a qawwali being shot. While the others were too surprised to react, Khurshid instantly nodded, “Hum karenge, we will do it.” And that’s how two years before the Partition which took Shaukat Rizvi and Noor Jehan across the border to the newly-formed Pakistan, the girl with the sparkling smile made her debut with a song.

From the chorus, she graduated to become a child star with Parwana. Interestingly, it was because she shared her name with one of Meena Kumari’s siblings, along with a popular vamp, that Khurshid was rechristened Shyama by Vijay Bhatt. “I liked my new name. There were other Khursheeds but no Shyama in Hindi movies, neither then, nor in later years, which made me unique,” she pointed out, her laughter tinkling like ice cubes in a glass.

Among her films as a heroine, beside Aar Paar, she is also remembered for Barsaat Ki Raat (right), which featured some of the best qawwalis, including “Mujhe Mil Gaya Bahana Teri Deed Ka, Kaisi Khushi Le Ke Aaya Chand Eid Ka”. This song was to be picturised on Madhubala but I read somewhere that she wasn’t too impressed with Sahir Ludhianvi’s lyrics and refused to shoot for it. Since Roshan had already set it to tune, it went to Shyama ji on the rebound.

When I quizzed her on it, she told me simply that Madhubala wasn’t keeping well, so the director (P L Santoshi) decided to film it on her because she too is in love with Bharat Bhushan in the film. Interestingly, Ratna, Bharat Bhushan’s wife in real life, is also seen matching her, step for step, swing for swing, in the qawwali sequence.

On November 14, 2017, Shyama ji passed into the ages to join her Fali and continue with their love story. But her songs live on, as does the memory of that tinkling laughter, even though we never met again.

Remembering Shyama, whose screen turns in Aar Paar and in Sharada, portraying the shrew who torments Raj Kapoor-Meena Kumari, were as feisty as the woman herself.
Khalid Mohamed (MUMBAI MIRROR; November 15, 2017)

Shyama
June 7, 1935-November 14, 2017

She doesn’t live in Gulmarg Apartments on Mumbai’s sea-facing Napean Sea Road any more. Her end came, early on Tuesday. Khurshid Akhtar, named Shyama for the screen, passed away following a lung ailment, at the age of 82.

Although she chose to live alone ever since she was widowed in 1979, her son Farrokh, daughter Shirin, two grandsons, and extended family members whom she doted on, were by her bedside. Her other son, Rohinton, a businessman settled in London, couldn’t make it in time for the burial ceremony.

Shyama had married the legendary cinematographer Fali Mistry in ’53. Their love story had blossomed during the making of Sazaa (1951). She was 16, then. Rather than quit, she double-tasked as a housemaker and went on to act in as many as 250 films. J P Dutta’s Hathyar (1989) was her last film appearance.

She was buried at the Bada Kabrastan on Marine Lines. There was no turn-out of the Bollywood glitterati, since the family elected to keep her last journey quiet. “It was too early to call anyone,” a family member states, “She loved the film industry. She would spend hours watching movies on the cable, especially the golden oldies. We were hoping she would pull through, but it wasn’t to be. Fortunately, she didn’t suffer, she went peacefully.”

There’s a kind of hush at the apartment, as the family narrates that Shyama would have liked to continue acting to her last breath. But ever since she had fractured both her legs after a fall a decade ago, she needed a walker. “She never indulged in self-pity though; she had a super spicy sense of humour. You could say she was a woman of more laughter than tears,” the family recapitulates. “If she ever went silent and felt low, it was on hearing about the deaths of her peers. She was close to so many of them, especially to Nirupa Roy, Nanda and Shakila.”

At least four to five suitcases full of movie memorabilia have gone, devoured by termites. Countless photos were borrowed by the media, but never returned. A family member elaborates, “See, I used to be in charge of her fan mail, a register was kept of the number of films she had acted in and they were close to 250. She didn’t mind the transition to the mother and chachi roles at all. As long as she was at the studios, she was happy.”

Indeed, Shyama’s joie de vivre can be detected from the account of how at the age of nine she landed her first role – a bit role albeit – in Zeenat (1945) starring Noor Jehan. She was watching the shoot and, cheekily volunteered to act. Noor Jehan’s husband, director Shaukat Hussain was floored, and a little star was born.

From a child artiste to a heroine, Khurshid became the bread-earner for her family which had migrated to Bombay from Lahore. To make her sound sparky, the stalwart director, Vijay Bhatt, christened her Shyama for the screen. The spectrum of her films range from the social dramas of the late 1940s, and kinky comedies (I’ve never recovered from her wacko turn in Mr Qartoon M.A., 1958, with Johnny Walker and Mehmood), a double Ms Jekyllish and Ms Hydish role in Do Behnen (1959) and then the sashay through the glamorous route in the Arabian Nights fantasy Zabak (1961).

Undoubtedly, Shyama’s career-best performances were evidenced in Ram Daryani’s Tarana (1951) and Guru Dutt’s Aar Paar (1954). Clearly, she didn’t fuss about being the solo heroine, or fret about sliding into the supporting ensemble, gaining her award-winning moment when she portrayed a shrew of a housewife tormenting Raj Kapoor and Meena Kumari in Sharada (1957).

My favourite Shyama moment is right in the midst of Roshan’s unforgettable composition, “Na karavan ki talash hai”, from P L Santoshi’s Barsaat Ki Raat (1960). While crooning, she collapses midst-qawwali, on realising that Bharat Bhushan, loves Madhubala and not her. Terrific.

Shyama was in her prime during the black-and- white era. As colour and hypermelodrama set in, she did show up to advantage occasionally, as in A.R. Kardar’s Dil Diya Dard Liya (1969), an adaptation of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights with Dilip Kumar and Waheeda Rehman heading the cast. With time, her image became truculent and vampish as in the brothel madame in Naya Din Nayi Raat (1974).

Perhaps, she could have excelled in many more roles of the heroine. But both her screen presence and personality weren’t meant to be just decorative, or subservient to the males.

The zestful woman, to a camera born, was a trained kathak dancer. She could jive and cha cha while wearing six-inch high heels. “But who noticed or remembers that?” the family asks. “Even her carefully-preserved photo-albums are now half-empty.”