Fall Girls
Five decades after Reshma Pathan became the country’s first stuntwoman, Ranjita Ganesan takes a look at the lives of the athlete-actors of Indian cinema
Reshma Pathan smelled a rat. The pioneering stuntwoman had been dropped from the Amitabh Bachchan-rekha starrer Ganga ki Saugandh but the junior artists’ association, of which she was a member, was insisting that she travel to its location anyway, as an extra. The pay for that part was half of what she earned as a body double, the meals came in a box instead of a buffet spread, and the journey was in a secondclass train rather than by air. Reluctantly, only because the association threatened to cancel her membership, she had accepted. On the first day of the shoot in Jaipur in 1974, however, the crew began slowly trying to make her wear the actress’s costume and perform small stunts. She flatly refused. “I came here as a junior artist. Now you want me to risk my life. Is this the price of my life?”
Negotiating for herself, she made the team — desperate and apologetic by then — pay her on stunt artist terms not only for that day but for each of the three days it had taken to reach Rajasthan from Mumbai. Once back in her home town she convinced the Movie Stunt Artists Association, which until then had no women members, to induct her and give her the same protection from exploitation that her male counterparts got. Her argument: “If there are women in the associations for junior artists and makeup artists, then why not stunt artists?” She was swiftly given a card and, after her, four more women were registered.
Some years later, Pathan retorted to another “why” question with a “why not”. In an interview with Tabassum, the famous Doordarshan talk show host, in the late 1970s, she was asked to explain her entry into the “mardana” (manly) world of stunts. “The Rani of Jhansi, Razia Sultan and the Indian Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, are women, so why not stunt artists?” It was not the first time she was told the field was unsuited for women. Films were still considered a dishonourable place for women. Furthermore, most people thought Pathan was lying about working in films because, thanks to the covert nature of her role as a double, they never really saw her in them. But that interview with Tabassum helped. “The mohallewale (neighbours) understood my work,” the 65-year-old recollects in her modest Reay Road home in Mumbai.
Pathan entered filmdom at the age of 14, after her father’s split from the family business (selling and repairing fountain pens) left her parents penniless. Before that, her childhood in Pydhonie had been fun-filled — the eldest of five siblings used to play gilli danda, get into fisticuffs, pester the local horse-cart drivers to teach her how to ride, and leap off the Flora Fountain statue while her father worked in the shop nearby. Stunt director S Asim who frequented this neighbourhood and was her father’s friend had noted her intrepidity. When they fell on hard times, Asim coaxed the family to let her perform in action films. Pathan’s curiosity was piqued, even if her parents did not like the idea. Her mother came around first, agreeing to accompany her to a film set.
It was 1968 and Ek Khiladi Bawan Pattey (1972) was being filmed. In one scene, Laxmi Chhaya’s character was to lose consciousness while dancing, and fall off the stage. To director Ravi Khanna’s chagrin, the young stuntman playing her double kept messing up takes by flinging himself off the stage with his hands in the air. Asim asked Pathan if she would do it instead. “Karunga,” she replied, in her tomboy style of talking. Her shot was okayed in a single take but the teenager lay motionless on the floor. “I didn't realise they had stopped filming,” chuckles Pathan.
The fact that she knew how to ride a horse would land Pathan her most important role as a double for the tangewali Basanti played by Hema Malini in Sholay (1975). The stunts were choreographed by Gerry Crampton, whose team selected the young woman instantly. When she suffered an injury, she had it examined only after her scenes. In following years, she rolled about in fire, wrestled a bull (after first befriending it), and was chased by a tiger. Later, she married stunt coordinator Shakoor Pathan and they had a son. Five months into that pregnancy, she was still performing feats. She speaks in rapid Urdu, occasionally switching to Gujarati and Marathi for effect. Some of her stories are peppered with Kutchi and Memoni too.
The over 400 films in her career span various regions including southern India because “stunts have no language”.
Today, she shares her small flat with her sister Zainab, while her children live in Navi Mumbai. In her working years, Zainab says they did not see much of Pathan. “She would just call and make sure someone from the association brought us the money.” Earlier this year, a film on Zee5, The Sholay Girl, written by Sai and Sarbani Deodhar, chronicled the spitfire action woman’s life and work. After her entry into stunts and the stunt artists’ association, Pathan counts this biopic as her hattrick of “firsts”.
Before Pathan, stuntmen like Usman Khan would act as body doubles for women. And they continued to do so for a while after that. Khan has donned wigs and high heels to play Zeenat Aman and Parveen Babi among others. “My way of walking and talking had become exactly like that of women,” he says, affecting a falsetto over the phone and cackling.
He is glad there is better safety and rehearsals now because he and his contemporaries worked in perilous circumstances. Things have slowly advanced for stuntwomen, too. Encouragingly, the association’s president now is a woman, Lubna Khan. (She could not be contacted for this article.) There is no wage gap either. “We don’t distinguish on the basis of gender. The risk to life is equal,” says Aejaz Gulab, general secretary of the Movie Stunt Artists Association. They earn ~5,000-6,000 a day for stunt work, ~10,000 for body double work, and additional fees based on whether the stunt entails water, fire, animals or vehicles. Yet, of the 650 artists, only 18 to 20 are women. Gulab thinks there may still be resistance from families about sending girls into this field.
For their combination of adventurous athletics and acting, they have only recently become icons of strength. But it is necessity more than glory that drives them to throw themselves in harm’s way. Rather than an absence of fear, which is often attributed to them, they work with an acceptance of fear. Take, for instance, Anuthi Shahzad Shaikh, a prominent stuntwoman whose fear of falling from a height was overpowered by a bigger fear — the unpaid EMIS for her Malad flat. She agreed to be pushed off a 19-storey building, suspended by a harness, for a television show. She recalls this a day after returning from another TV serial shoot with a shoulder ache caused by falling into water from a height of 15 feet. There is more television work coming the way of women lately, she says, although it typically just involves tumbling down steps. Her husband Shahzad Mansoor Shaikh is also a stunt artist and father Nasir is a junior artist. Working seven to eight days a month helps her cover the month’s expenses and spend the rest of her time with her four children.
Like in every field, there is the risk of sexual harassment, say the stuntwomen. “You need to be firm and make it clear you won’t fall for such things from the very first day,” says Shaikh.
In Geeta Tandon’s case, stunts were a way out of exploitation. She left an abusive marriage and stumbled upon stunts after trying a number of odd jobs to raise her two children. The income from crashing through glass windows or simulating car crashes is paying for her son’s communication studies now and her daughter’s tax auditing soon. She wants them to have steady jobs because while stunts pay her bills, they are not a “career” and there is no guarantee of work.
These unsung heroes harbour the desire to be recognised like their celebrity counterparts who walk away with the credit. Shaikh pleads with directors to give her parts where besides stunts, she gets to speak a line or two. Sometimes they agree and she has featured in such roles in Lagaan and
Phoonk. In her experience, senior stars and star kids are generally kinder to stunt workers, while television actors tend to have a bad attitude.
The stuntwomen have similar backgrounds. They are usually from families of very modest means, quite often Muslims. The women possess what they call “jigra” (courage). Their work also begins and ends with spiritual incantations — Pathan recites the Ayat-e Karima, a verse from the Quran, 14 times and blows in all directions to stave off danger. Shaikh chants “alhamdulillah”, and Tandon relies on “bhole nath ki kripa”.
Men still call the shots and they are usually the first to demonstrate even those stunts which women are supposed to perform. “Women have to take more initiative,” observes Tandon. It is why she is busily trying to upgrade herself into a stunt assistant or choreographer. Small assignments of this type are coming her way now — she recently arranged something for a filmmaker from abroad.
In recent years, their work has been further imperiled by the onslaught of foreign stunt crews and special visual effects. “They do in 10 days what we can in two,” says Tandon. Despite safety measures, singed eyebrows, aches and stitches are common. The women don’t always report them in case this puts them out of the running. The primary instinct should be to protect yourself at all costs, says Tandon, before cautioning against the use of painkillers. She has fractured her spine on three occasions, and although she recovered each time, the injuries put her out of action for months. The artists receive small compensatory amounts from the association during such timeouts.
A positive development was the introduction of insurance benefits two years ago. The artists were covered for hospital expenses of up to ~6 lakh, with benefits of ~10 lakh for a chosen nominee in the event of death. There are no benefits for pregnancy, which also keeps women from working for several months.
Pathan points to a loophole. The insurance does not benefit stunt artists older than 55 years. Pathan and Usman Khan, both over 60, are still active. Two years ago, Pathan did a cameo in Rohit Shetty’s Golmaal Again (2017), in which a character played by Prakash Raj pushes her down. The actor promised to touch her only very lightly. But when she fell, the effect was as though she had been attacked with heinous force. After the shot, Prakash Raj asked how she had pulled off that feat at her age. “Never judge a person’s strength based on their looks.”