O MERE DIL KE CHAIN!

By SHAGORIKA EASWAR

The phone buzzed. A text message from our friend Nitin. “Kind of a late invitation, but Tanuja ji is in town. We’re taking her out to dinner tomorrow. Can you join us?”

Tanuja ji?

It was past my bedtime, and took a few seconds for the fog to clear.  Did he mean Tanuja? The Tanuja?

The actress whose movies we continue to watch in reruns and who never aged in our minds and hearts? Remaining eternally young, never transforming into someone we’d address with the respectful ji added to names of older people.

“Wouldn’t miss it!” I texted back.

And there she was at Folco’s Ristorante in Markham when we walked in, surrounded by other friends of our hosts, theatre personalities Jasmine and Nitin Sawant.

Among them, Prakash Date, Marathi stage playwright and director, and filmmaker Mazahir Rahim.

We all had one thing in common – a love for old movies and Tanuja.

Tanuja’s very name evokes a kaleidoscope of memories of an impish actress with a beautiful smile, loved by fans spanning generations.

Old black and white movies like Mem Didi and Baharein Phir Bhi Aayengi of the 1960s through Do Chor and Mere Jeevan Saathi of the 70s to Death in the Gunj (2016), Shonar Pahar (2018), and the very recent Modern Love Mumbai. With countless others in between. For who can forget the haunting beauty of the actress who crooned Mujhe jaan na kaho meri jaan in Anubhav (1971)?

“I know someone who says he wants O mere dil ke chain to be played when I die.” said Prakash, referencing a very popular song from one of her movies.

She responded with a smile that is as radiant as ever.

She was unpretentious, happy to share entrees and dessert. “You can try some,” she said, passing her plate of limoncello. “But it had better come back to me, you can’t have all!”

She regaled us with stories from her heydey, while insisting that she was able to walk down the streets of Mumbai without being recognized.

“Not really,” she conceded, when we expressed disbelief. “Occasionally someone would come up to me and say, hesitantly, ‘You look so familiar’, and I would say, ‘You know what, so do you!’ and they’d carry on, certain they were mistaken. There’s no way they looked familiar to Tanuja!”

Or the time someone spoke of the two sisters who were both actresses – he obviously meant Tanuja and her sister Nutan, another famous actress – clueless that he was speaking to one of them. After a three-hour-long conversation!

Incidents from her film sets, or interactions with Asha Bhosle who has sung some of her most memorable songs, and Gulzar, poet and filmmaker who is a friend of hers.

What came through clear and strong was that here was a woman who was enjoying life to the hilt at almost 80 (birthday coming up this month), travelling alone again after a break necessitated by COVID and a surgery.

A woman who has very definite views on how to live the best life for oneself.

“It’s all about control,” she said. “Just a little control in your life. How much you eat, how much you sleep, exercise, indulge yourself.”

 And it’s all here, she emphasised, tapping between her eyebrows with her finger. “Our minds control everything. What are we without our minds?”

My husband quoted words from an old Asha Bhosle song from the film Kaajal, 1965:

“Tora man darpan kehlaye... jag se chahe bhaag le koi, man se bhaag na paaye...” The mind is a mirror, one can escape the world, but there’s no escaping one’s mind.

She said, “Exactly! That’s what it really is!”

She was as interested in our lives as we were in hers. Asking how long we’d been in Canada and what life was like here, and so on. When someone said that they’d been here for a good many decades and it was a good life, the only sort of regret being that the kids were culturally more “Canadian” than “Indian”, she had a different take. “Don’t regret anything. Of course they are not Indian, but if they are good kids, be happy!”

In Canada on a holiday, Tanuja came with Gita Bader, an old friend she is staying with. As the evening wound to a close, and everyone got ready to leave, she whispered “Dugga-dugga” under her breath.

A way of saying goodbye in Bangla, it invokes the blessing of goddess Durga.

The star who continues to shine brightly was wishing us all a safe journey home.