Smita Patil was a legendary actress. Her last known, and a memorable one at that, film was Waaris (1988) for which Rekha eventually lent her voice. A literature graduate from Bombay University, her first assignment was Arun Khopkar’s FTII diploma film Teevra Madhyam (1974) when she was barely 19. But the credit for introducing her to Hindi cinema rightly goes to Shyam Benegal, who was impressed with her enchanting presence as a Marathi newscaster on the small screen and cast her in a small role in Charandas Chor (1974), and then in Nishant (1975) and Manthan (1976) in quick succession. The rest is history.
Her last release, posthumously, was Galiyon Ka Badshah (1989). Smita Patil was awarded the Padma Shri in 1985. She traversed the delicate dividing line between art and mainstream cinema with great aplomb, something no other actress before or after her could do.
Other notable starrers, amongst others, included Mirch Masala (1985), Mandi (1983), Haadsa (1983), Umbartha (1982), Bazaar (1982), Namak Halaal, Dard Ka Rishta, Arth (1982), Bhavni Bhavai, Chakra, Shakti, Sadgati, (1981), Aakrosh (1980), and Mrinal Sen’s Alaker Sandaney (1980). She won two National Awards in a career spanning a little more than a decade — for her performances in Bhumika and Chakra.
Real performances
Almost all her performances were power-packed. As a person, Smita, both literally and metaphorically, represented a two-dimensional image, and that helped her essay any role with conviction, be it a mainstream film like Namak Halaal or an art-house product like Jabbar Patel’s Umbartha in Marathi, or Subah (1982) in Hindi, which brought her in touch with the famous French film maker Costa-Gavras, leading to the first retrospective of an Indian actor in France. She epitomised the modern, liberated, as well as a suppressed rustic rural woman with a rare finesse, like no other heroine, on the big screen. Her expressions demonstrated both, vulnerability and defiance, which is why she looked equally convincing in all her performances.
In the last four years of her life, the slim dusky actress was at her finest, doing both, commercial as well as serious films, with ease. While on the one hand she was doing Namak Halaal, Shakti, Anand Aur Anand (1984), Mera Dost Mera Dushman, Ghulam (1985), Ghungroo, Aaj Ki Awaaz (1984) and Dard Ka Rishta (1983), in other films like Shyam Benegal’s Mandi and Govind Nihalani’s Ardh Satya (1983), Kumar Shahani’s Tarang (1984), G Aravindan’s Chidambaram (1985) and Ketan Mehta’s Mirch Masala, she once again gave a sterling performance.
In Mandi, like the earlier Arth, she competed with arch rival Shabana Azmi for screen presence and even though Azmi had meatier roles in both the films, Smita stood out as no less a performer. Satyajit Ray’s Sadgati was her ultimate triumph as an actress. Apart from Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati and Bengali, Smita Patil also featured in other regional films like Anugrahan (Telegu), Anveshane (Kannada) and G Aravindan’s Chidambaram (Malayalam).
Feminist
Talking about her performance as a faithful, determined woman in Mirch Masala, Rita Kempsky wrote in The Washington Post: “Acclaimed for her portraits of exploited women, Patil gives an enigmatically feisty performance. If she and the filmmaker weren’t so able and the backdrop not so exotic, spices would be little more than an ineffectual rant. There is a grunting ruthlessness to the drama, a vibrancy of character and moral obstinacy that compare favourably with Akira Kurosawa’s admittedly more elegant samurai movies.”
But, while it was indeed a sterling performance, for this writer (and Jabbar Patel agrees), it was her role in the Marathi film Umbartha (Subah in Hindi) she probably
most identified with — as the manager of an ashram for destitute women, and their exploitation by the management.
The manner in which she brings a variety of emotions on her face when she realises that her husband is involved with another woman and her daughter is a complete stranger was impeccable. The climactic scene in which she boards a train for an unknown destination was not only memorable, but breathtaking. No other heroine could have bettered that shot alone, leave aside the rest.
It is often said that no artiste is replaceable; everyone comes with his own chair and when he fades away he takes that piece of furniture along. Smita Patil was a great performer and a loveable human being, something which one can’t really say about many other actresses in the good bad world of Bollywood. Very few have risen above the ‘I, me, myself’ syndrome. Smita Patil was one such woman and therefore, irreplaceable.
Unfortunately, nothing seemingly substantial has been done in her memory. Meera Dewan did attempt a documentary posthumously but it remains buried somewhere in the back rooms of the Films Division. In 1996, the Smita Patil Charitable Trust founded a co-educational public school in Shirpur, in Dhule district of Maharashtra under the chairmanship of Shivaji Rao Girdhar Patil (a former MP) to provide English medium education to children from rural areas.