Nirupa Roy (aka Kokila Balsara) passed away last month (October 13th), I learnt only today. An actress who made a career out of playing the teary-eyed (sometimes blind) long-suffering mother, she was a costume designer’s joy (one sad-looking unwashed saree for the entire movie is not too hard to stock).
Jokes apart though, here was an actress who had no qualms in playing mother to an actor older than her (Dev Anand in Munimji (1955)), at a time when heroine roles were still being offered to her. Her pre-glycerine-factory career included playing the heroine in over a hundred films ranging from mythologicals and social dramas to off-beat cinema classics like Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zameen (1953) against stalwart Balraj Sahni.
Amidst the angry-young-man, wounded-hero histrionics of Amitabh, she stood her own and shone as the moralistic mother in Yash Chopra’s Deewar (1975). Playing a mother who chooses righteousness over the love for her son, this was arguably her most famous role of all for moviegoers of today. A role preserved in time with the famous dialogue —
Vijay (Amitabh): Mere paas paisa hai, bangla hai, gaadi hai, kya hai tumhaare paas?
Ravi (Shashi Kapoor): Mere paas maa hai!
(Translated : I have all the wealth and luxuries in the world, what have you got? I have a mother on my side!)
May her soul rest in peace.
