Sharmila Tagore, the original oomph girl who challenged India’s conservative bent: ‘When I showed 2-piece bikini to the photographer…’ – The Indian Express
Sharmila Tagore, the original oomph girl who challenged India’s conservative bent: ‘When I showed 2-piece bikini to the photographer…’ – The Indian Express
Sharmila Tagore, who turns 78 on Thursday, could easily walk the line between being the oomph girl and the girl next door, and she did them both with equal finesse.
Hindi cinema has seen some graceful, effortless actors in Meena Kumari, Nargis, Waheeda Rehman but it can be safely said the versatility of Sharmila Tagore remains unmatched to this day.
When thinking of Sharmila Tagore, one’s mind goes toward the big bouffant hair, the decorated eyes and those carefully draped sarees.
The hesitation in her eyes when she played a woman in love in Aradhana, the naughtiness in her demeanour in Chupke Chupke, the longing on her face in Amar Prem or the ease in her body language when she donned a bikini for An Evening in Paris – none of these avatars looked like they were facades.
Sharmila Tagore started her career with Satyajit Ray but when she moved to Hindi cinema with Shakti Samantha’s Kashmir Ki Kali, Sharmila was discovered by a whole new audience.
This was the beginning of her journey with Shakti Samantha who eventually presented her in some of her most popular films – An Evening in Paris, Aradhana, Amar Prem.
In her words, she “wanted to enjoy every aspect of being a woman,” both on screen and in real life..
At the time when An Evening in Paris released in 1967, Sharmila made waves for wearing a swimsuit on screen.
And while the world saw it like she was trying grab eyeballs, she just did it without giving it much thought.
In a candid conversation decades after the shoot, Tagore wondered if it was the ‘exhibitionist’ in her as she had ‘no qualms’ doing the shoot and she was left completely puzzled when the readers reacted strongly to that cover..
Another attempt by Tagore do something really sexy and bold was the song Roop Tera Mastana in the film Aradhana.
The situation of the song is such that Sharmila and Rajesh Khanna’s characters are stuck in the middle of nowhere.
The 4-minute sequence has Sharmila and Rajesh looking deep into each other’s eyes as they take turns in making moves on each other until the song ends with a thunder sound and it is suggested that they have consummated their love.
There was a certain sense of dirtiness associated with the act of sex but here, Tagore and Khanna walked that line in such a fine fashion that the erotic nature of the video still doesn’t come across as sleazy in any way..
Perhaps, this confidence of Sharmila Tagore came from the fact that she was very casual about being a career woman at a time when women were expected to become home bodies as soon as they got married.
She once shared with Firstpost, “We’ve always had very strong women in my family.
I wasn’t career-oriented.
I liked the work, and I enjoyed it.
But I had other interests.” Her saying the she wasn’t career oriented, while she continued to work through all her pregnancies just suggests that it was never and either/or situation for her.
I didn’t want to be only a career woman.
Though I come from a middle-class family, where all of us had to share everything, I never felt any insecurity about my career.
Sharmila Tagore was a major movie star throughout the 1960s and 1970s and women were generally slotted into two categories at the time – the saree wearing ‘good girl’, or the woman who wore western clothes and made bad choices.
Sharmila easily walked between the two without being stereotyped.
In the 1970s, when Hindi cinema got introduced to the likes of Zeenat Aman and Parveen Babi, the idea of a ‘modern woman’ redefined.
But Sharmila never got classified into this category as her beauty and appeal was seen as timeless..
Sharmila Tagore went on to scale great heights in her career and even though she doesn’t appear in as many movies today, her elegance has stood the test of time..
Read Article: The Indian Express