Poonam Dhillon on the making of her 1979 superhit, Noorie, and how it catapulted her into the big league
Poonam Dhillon (MID-DAY; June 24, 2016)

How time flies! 1979 was a special year for me. I actually cannot believe that so many years have passed since Noorie’s release. It was my first big film which propelled me centre stage. That very year, mid-day was born and since then, I have been a regular reader.

Coming back to Noorie, I remember shooting at a place called Bagharwa (in Uttar Pradesh), which, I am sure, nobody has ever heard of. I don’t know how the makers zeroed in on that location. Back then, we were not fully equipped to handle the whole unit in a remote village and so, had put up at a school there. Imagine classrooms being turned into bedrooms for the cast and crew! And there was no proper toilet facility. We used to wait for days for our lightning calls (priority trunk calls) to come through since it was a very small village. In those days, it was difficult and time consuming to contact somebody through ordinary trunk calls, but booking a lightning call did not always mean that it would come through at lightning speed! However, they were good ol’ days. The entire unit was like a close-knit family.

There was no concept of ‘star’ and ‘technician’; everybody was the same. The bonding among all of us was pure and genuine. That is why many of us are still in touch even today.

Noorie’s songs were an instant hit. At that time, Binaca Geetmala (a weekly radio countdown show of most loved film songs) used to have Noorie’s songs as the top tracks. Music was always an important part of filmmaking, but it didn’t really mean a huge amount of money for the producers back then. Also, we would never think about the first week collections. All we had were golden and silver jubilees. I must say that things have now changed in a big way. We are in a completely different era of filmmaking today, be it the kind of films that are being made or the market for them. But the industry’s growth over the years has been quite commendable.

We are getting recognition overseas and the world is keeping a tap on our films. Hindi films were always looked upon as dance dramas and people used to make fun of us, but today, the industry and the artistes get respect.

Having said that, I do miss that little innocence that we had back then.

Roshmila Bhattacharya (MUMBAI MIRROR; November 17, 2015)

"I was disappointed with my performance. Those days there were no monitors on the set and when I saw what I had done during the dubbing, I wanted to choke myself. I was so gawky and amateurish but Noorie did really well," Farooq Sheikh had reminisced in an interview, revealing that thanks to a weekly show on Doordarshan, he had started sparking off curiosity on the streets, and this love story, the surprise hit of '79, made him even more famous.

However, Farooq candidly admitted that, as an actor, he never created mass hysteria, but his co-star, Poonam Dhillon, took off like a rocket after Noorie. "Ramesh Talwar, who had introduced me to IPTA (Indian People's Theatre Association) and was associated with the film, was confident it would work. He was the only one who believed that," Farooq had laughed, adding that Talwar was equally confident that Poonam, who had been introduced in Trishul and was playing the lead in this film, would make it big. "She was a pretty face so half the battle was won anyway."

Over a quarter of a century later, the actress in question informs that she had been in the 10th standard when she did Trishul for a lark and after that had gone back to her studies. When Noorie was offered to her she was far from excited, even after she was told that some really established actresses were vying for the role. The academically minded Poonam only gave her nod to her second film, albeit reluctantly, when the director, Manmohan Krishna, agreed to shoot in one start-to-finish schedule during her vacations so that she would not have to bunk classes.

Trishul had been shot in Delhi and Poonam had stayed at a five-star hotel. Noorie was filmed in the beautiful but inaccessible Bhaderwah Valley of Kashmir and she was put up in a hostel. It was actually a school that was closed for the holidays and hence bunk beds had been dragged into the classroom. There was no room service but cooks had been flown down to prepare meals. There were no attached bathrooms, a few common toilets serviced the entire unit staying there.

"Hot water often ran out and I was teased by Rajiv Rai and Rajeev Sethi, who were Manmohanji's assistant directors, about whether I had taken a bath or not," chuckles Poonam, who was the youngest in the crew and the most inexperienced actor amongst the cast which boasted of theatre veterans like Bharat Kapoor and Geeta Kak. "The budget was small but spirits were high. There was plenty of camaraderie and no starry tantrums. Rameshji would help out with the rehearsals and the villagers opened their homes to us, supplying us with a steady stream of kawa. Till today, I share a great bonding with everyone who was part of that shoot."

It was a simple love story of a Noorie and Yusuf, with an unhappy ending after the beautiful Kashmiri girl catches the eye of her fiance's boss. Bashir Khan gets her father murdered, rapes Noorie who then commits suicide, fatally shoots Yusuf who dies on his beloved's grave. He is finally killed by her pet dog, Khairoo. "I was an unwilling film heroine but the look and Khayyam saab's songs caught on in a big way. People liked my performance too, I even got nominated for the Filmfare award for best actress, and to this day I am remembered as the Noorie girl," smiles Poonam, who is equally picture perfect even today.

The rape scene, aesthetically shot but still darkly disturbing because a sweet, pure girl is brutally violated, is what makes Noorie unforgettable. But Poonam remembers another scene because she just couldn't get the dialogue right.

"I must have given at least 20 retakes. Farooq and Manmohanji thought I had forgotten my lines despite my telling them that I was word perfect. I kept slurring over them because in an effort to cure a bad cough and cold, I had drunk almost half a bottle of cough syrup which had left me groggy and disoriented. Today, whenever I read the warning on a medicine bottle, I remember Noorie and how I overdosed," she sighs off with a shiver.