Kamini Kaushal — a sought-after actor of the ’50s — celebrated her 92nd birthday on 24th Feb 2019 where all her children and grand children were present. She is the oldest actress and the charismatic smile and mithas in her voice is as it was some 70 years ago.
Kamini Kaushal was born Uma Kashyap in Lahore on 24 February 1927. She was the youngest among two brothers and three sisters. Kamini Kaushal was the daughter of Prof Shiv Ram Kasyap Professor of Botany, Punjab University at Lahore, British India (now in Pakistan). Prof Kashyap is widely regarded as father of Indian Botany. Her father was a distinguished botanist who discovered six species of plants. She was only seven when her father died on 26 November 1934.
She quoted in an interview, talking about her teenage days, "I had no time to fool. I didn’t have any crush, I was busy swimming, riding, skating and doing radio plays on Akashwani, for which I was paid Rupees 10." When her elder sister died in a car accident, leaving behind two daughters, Kaushal decided to marry her brother-in-law, B.S. Sood, in 1948 and she set up home in Bombay where her husband was a chief engineer in the Bombay Port Trust.
Kamini was one of the first well educated heroines (BA in English) in Hindi cinema. The Lahore-bred Punjabi girl entered films with Chetan Anand's Neecha Nagar (1946), one of the earliest art films to be made in India. She played a sympathetic role which castigated class differences and won an award at the Montreal Film Festival.
Commercial success came her way only when Filmistan's Do Bhai (1947) proved a sleeper success.
In Raj Kapoor's directorial debut Aag (1948), she did a cameo as one of his three heroines (Nargis and Nigar were the other two) whose relationship with the hero doesn't fructify. The pair also starred together in Jail Yatra.
Kamini paired opposite Dev Anand in his very first success, Bombay Talkies' Ziddi (1948), a light romance. The pair followed this up with Namoona. Kamini played the third angle to the Dev-Suraiya pair in Shayar.
She was most successful as a romantic heroine with Dilip Kumar. Shaheed (1948) was a smash hit. The audience loved the star-crossed lovers. Quick on its heels came the tragic Nadiya Ke Paar where Kamini looked fetching as a fisherwoman. The swashbuckling Shabnam (1949) was also a success with Kamini carrying off her male disguise with panache. Their last film together was the brooding, Wuthering Heights-inspired Aarzoo (1950). Her team with Dilip Kumar was much talked about in the late 1940s. Along with Nargis and Suraiya, she was one of the reigning queens of the day.
She delivered a number of hits in the ’50s and the ’60s
She won Filmfare's Best Actress award for Bimal Roy's Biraj Bahu (1954), where she played a determined village wife Biraj, who tries to keep her family together through troubled times. Biraj's problems escalate when a lecherous villain (Pran) sets his beady eyes on her, and her husband (Abhi Bhattacharya) starts suspecting her motives. Roy made Kamini read Sarat Chandra's novel 20 times. She gave a wonderfully internalized performance, several notches above her regular romantic roles.
With that lilt in her voice, she did try her hand at light roles like in Chalis Baba Ek Chor (1954), but she had a flair for finely tuned emotional drama evident in Aas, Ansoo and Jailor. In the Sohrab Modi-directed Jailor (1958), Kamini gave a goose pimple raising performance as Modi's wife who is pushed towards adultery by his ruthless tyranny. In the heart-wrenching Godaan (1963), Kamini is utterly convincing as a farmer's wife battling abject poverty. Pandit Ravi Shankar composed the score for her first (Neecha Nagar) and last (Godaan) films as a heroine.
In the late ’60s and ’70s, she made a successful transition to essaying character roles after she was offered a strong role as Bhagat Singh's mother in the Manoj Kumar starrer Shaheed (1965). She played Manoj's mother once again in Upkaar (1967). The appreciation she received ensured that Kamini became a fixture as the mother figure in a string of 1970s Manoj Kumar starrers like Purab Aur Paschim, Shor, Roti Kapda Aur Makaan, Sanyasi and Dus Numbri. Gamely willing to experiment, Kamini alternated her typically self-sacrificing roles a la Do Raaste (as Balraj Sahni's eternally supportive wife), with an Anhonee (1973), where she stunned audiences by playing a mercenary vamp with aplomb.
Her appearances became sporadic in the ’80s, and in the ’90s, she grew busy as a puppeteer, as she wrote the scripts as well as did the voiceovers for puppets.
In 2013, Kaushal returned to the big screen as Shah Rukh Khan’s grandmother in Chennai Express. “I couldn’t say no. I thought I must do a film with Shah Rukh,” says the actor, who is deliciously articulate.
She continues to get offers but has not been tempted to put the greasepaint again.
From the 1980s on, Kamini Kaushal has largely concentrated on her family, acting occasionally (in the prestigious Jewel In The Crown series for instance) and throwing herself into activities revolving around her lifelong passion, children. She has written stories for them, made television serials for them and her doll-making abilities are legend.
Awards
• 1956: Filmfare Best Actress Award: Biraj Bahu
• 1967: BFJA Best Supporting Actress Award: Shaheed
• 2013: Kalpana Chawla Excellence Award
• 2015: Filmfare Lifetime Achievement Award
Years ago, Trilok Jetley, who adopted Premchand's famous story Godaan on screen, put his film on hold while Kamini was pregnant because he wanted to capitalize on the mithas in her voice. Today, that mithas is still evident as is her lust for life.
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