Excerpted from Shammi Kapoor: The Game Changer by Rauf Ahmed
Rail Ka Dibba had a silver lining for Shammi (Kapoor): The 'exciting experience' of working with the 'gorgeous' Madhubala, 'who was just out of this world,' as Shammi had gushed.
'When I met her on the set of Rail Ka Dibba for the first time, I could not take my eyes off her. I was like hit by a thunderbolt,' he had confessed.
In spite of his overt self-confidence and cavalier disposition, he was 'extremely nervous' taking Madhubala in his arms for an intimate scene. 'I was so nervous that I kept forgetting my lines,' he had said. 'And she was fully aware of the effect she had been having on me and was relishing it thoroughly.'
He just couldn't stop the rhapsody: 'She was breathtakingly beautiful... Woh jab paani peeti thi toh aisa lagta tha jaise yahan se (runs his finger down his neck) ek nas mein se paani guzarta hua neeche ja raha hai... (when she drank water, it was as if I could see water flowing down her throat). She was so delicate.'
'Those days Madhu was romantically involved with Dilip Kumar on the one side and Premnath on the other. I kept wondering yeh Shammi Kapoor beech mein kaise aa gaya? (How did Shammi Kapoor land in between?) Since I was just a nobody at that stage, no one had bothered to associate my name with Madhu's.'
'She was very much in love with Dilip Kumar, so was he with her. I remember during the making of Naqab at Prabhat Talkies in Poona, he would often drive to the location all the way from Bombay to see her. If she was shooting, he would stand at a distance outside the 'field' of the camera and single-mindedly watch her perform without disturbing her.'
'I must admit, in spite of knowing that Madhu was already in love, I could not resist falling madly in love with her. No one can blame me for it. Even today, after meeting so many women and having had relationships with God knows how many, I can swear that I have never seen a more beautiful woman. Add to that her sharp intellect, maturity, poise and sensitivity. She was awesome.' (Shammi was speaking to me in early 2011, a few months before his demise.)
Becoming very nostalgic about Madhubala, he wondered 'why women like Madhubala don't happen anymore?' After a pause, 'When I think of her even now, after six decades, my heart misses a beat. My God, what beauty. What presence. Today's girls make me feel they might have just hopped out of incubators.'
After another pause, he had said, 'I think
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Too much in too little time. Beauty, fame, love and heartbreak… Madhubala had lavish doses of this in her ephemeral life. She seemed to be in a great hurry to play out her karmic trysts. Bestseller at the age of 16. Beloved at 18. Broken at 23. Bedridden at 27. Buried at 36. Yet five decades later, her photographs and memories ignite social media. Her beatific face continues to mesmerise generations. In a career span of two decades, she did around 75 films, most of them hits. But what continues to consume fans, biographers and cineastes is her life off the camera. Her doomed affair with superstar Dilip Kumar. The chimera of a marriage with Kishore Kumar. The excruciating illness. The desertion of her celestial looks and dreams… Her extreme rise and fall are compared to that of her Hollywood counterpart – Marilyn Monroe. Their heads thrown back in similar abandon, their full smiles concealing their hollow hearts. Once featured in the Life Magazine, as ‘the biggest star’ in the world… an ailing and anguished Madhubala had died in spirit years before she was buried. Such a story as hers deserves to be told believes sister Madhur Bhushan. Disappointed that the biopic on Madhubala by Imtiaz Ali was stalled due to familial opposition, Madhur isn’t yet willing to give up on the celluloid dream… In her words...
The star sister
My parents (Ataullah Khan and Ayesha Begum) had 11 children - seven girls and four boys. I’m the youngest. Madhu Apa (Madhubala) was the fifth child. In the ’40s, Abba lost his job in the Imperial Tobacco Company in Delhi and came to Mumbai. My parents saw extreme poverty. Also, not one of my brothers survived. There was no money even for their kafan (shroud). Abba used to take Apa (Madhubala) from studio to studio in search of work. She was nine when she first appeared in Basant (1942 as Baby Mumtaz). Her first lead role, at 14, was in Kidar Sharma’s Neel Kamal (1947). Kamal Amrohi signed her for Mahal (1949) when she was only 15. After Mahal, there was no looking back. Hits like Dulari, Tarana, Amar, Mr. & Mrs. ‘55, Barsaat Ki Raat… established her as a star. I was born in a chawl in Kandivali when Apa was around 16. But my parents believed I was lucky, because Apa became a top heroine after that. There’s a reason why Abba was strict. A journalist once wrote that we were not Ataullah Khan’s daughters. That he had brought us girls to Mumbai to earn money out of us. My father took him to court. Since then, Abba didn’t allow journ
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