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MUSICAL RENDEZVOUS Beena Rai: The leading lady from Lucknow
Loreto Convent Intermediate College organised annual concert ‘Musicale: A Rendezvous on Wednesday and Thursday.
The event was held in two days so that parents of all children may witness the performance of their kids. It was a musical evening, said principal Sister Anima Kujur.
On October 23, the chief guest was Vidhi Bhargava, president of the alumni association while Uttar Pradesh minister Suresh Kumar Khanna was chief guest on Thursday.
The function began with a prayer dance. All the senior class students from class 6 to 12 participated in the concert. Students from Jagriti Loreto Vidyalaya also staged their skilled performance in the concert. Debra Bunny, principal of St Agnes Loreto was also present.
Born in 1931 in Lahore, Beena Rai (born Krishna Sarin) is an important actor from the ’60s. In 1947, her family managed to escape from the communal violence that threatened to engulf the Indian subcontinent and settled in UP.
As a student of the iconic Isabella Thoburn College, Lucknow, the leading girls’ college then, she participated in a talent hunt which opened for her the portals of the Hindi film industry which was facing an acute shortage of leading ladies that could essay the new Indian woman on screen. She debuted in ‘Kali Ghata’ (1951, directed by Kishore Sahu) with Kishore Sahu and continued to work till the mid ’60s. Apart from Nargis, Rai was the only actress to successfully challenge the Bollywood dictum of ‘no married woman as leading lady’. She continued to play the romantic lead after marriage to her ‘Aurat’ coactor Premnath in 1952 and even motherhood.
Beena was perhaps the first leading lady with a KanpurLucknow connection to achieve stardom. Most of her contemporaries were either from the South or from cosmopolitan cities or a hereditary dance-music connect. In a way, she was the predecessor of the likes of Priyanka Chopra and Kangana Ranaut, strong, successful actors with small town origins. Rai’s USP was her elfin charm combined with a rare dignity. This made her an undisputed choice for historic romances like ‘Anarkali’ (1953), ‘Durgeshnandini’ (1956), ‘Tajmahal’ (1963) and ‘Ramrajya’ (1967). Her other memorable films were ‘Hill Station’ (1957), ‘Ghunghat’ (1960), ‘Dadee Maa’ (1966).
Though she worked with many actors through her eventful career, her pairing against Pradeep Kumar always spelt a box-office hit. She and her husband Premnath made a handsome pair both on and off screen, but somehow their pairing did not click with the audience. She was co-owner of film production company PN Films with husband actor Premnath which produced ‘Shagufta’, ‘Samundar’, ‘Prisoner of Golconda’ and ‘Watan’. Beena and Premnath played the lead in their home productions but the films were box-office duds and caused them heavy losses.
The very first Anarkali, Beena Rai also has the distinction that some of Lata Mangeshkar’s evergreen classics like ‘Mohabbat aisi dhadkan hai’, ‘Yeh zindagi usi ki hai’, ‘Kahan le chale ho bata do musafir’, ‘Lage na mora jiya’, ‘Jurm-e-ulfat pe hamen log saza dete hain’, ‘Dar lage garje badariya’, ‘Chain nahin aye kahan dil jaye’, ‘Jab rat neheen katati’, ‘Dekho mo se sanchi kaho banwari’ were filmed on her. She won the Filmfare Award for best actress in 1960 for her film ‘Ghunghat’. Her last film was ‘Apna ghar, apni kahani’ (1968).
The times were changing and Hindi films no longer had substantial female characters, A new breed of macho heroes made heroines inconsequential. The scenario was not supportive for actors like Rai. Plagued by an artistic vacuum, the original Anarkali slowly sank into depression and vanished from the public eye.
She died of a cardiac arrest on December 6, 2009 at her home in Mumbai.
(The writer is an awardwinning author)