Waheeda Rehman: A rare commodity a nice person – Throwback profile

She has come through the hothouse of top stardom unscathed, unsinged. There’s something unchanging about Waheeda Rehman.

She’s so gentle and self-effacing you wonder how she came to be in films at all in the first place, a profession in which you need both talent and claws but claws alone will sometimes do, and having come how she reached the top (her talent apart, what about others’ claws?) and stayed there for years. You guess, in a place where everyone is making noises about himself or herself, a bit of stillness draws attention to itself and that stillness is Waheeda Rehman.

She’s super-cool in a natural, intrinsic way—it isn’t something cultivated or put on. Your praises, you suspect, never sent overdoses of adrenalin coursing through her system and your dispraise… but then she never really got a lot of this. Her performances on and off screen have always been liked by everyone.

She has come through the hothouse of top stardom unscathed, unsinged. There’s something unchanging about Waheeda, yet she hasn’t gotten dated. And always, she has had a way of looking at herself, shrugging an invisible shoulder, and saying, “All this fuss—about me?”

How do you describe her apartment at Bandra, with the sea just across the road? An apartment, a bungalow, a flat or a bungalat or flatlow? It’s a bungalow, still standing squat and steady by itself, though, nearby, highrises rise and perhaps will keep rising. There are, unless one is mistaken, two other families sharing the bungalow. The house is called ‘Sahil’, meaning the shore, or beacon or hope. But it seems very likely that Waheeda will presently shift to Bangalore. The Rekhis have bought a farm there and are planning to build themselves a house on the land. But it doesn’t look as if Waheeda is planning to give up films altogether—she can always come to Bombay for shootings of the occasional films she signs these days. What’s there to do, she sighs, except the endless mother?

Namkeen, Sawal, Dharam Kanta, Namak Halaal, Pyaasi, Mahaan, Coolie and Sunny constitute the list of films which Waheeda has either just finished or recently begun and involving directors of the order of Gulzar, Sultan Ahmed, Prakash Mehra and Raj Khosla. There was a time, following her marriage with Shashi Rekhi (the former Kamaljeet of films), when Waheeda didn’t accept any roles—she and her husband were seriously considering migrating to Canada. Then Yash Chopra coaxed her into Kabhi Kabhie. After that, Waheeda has always been doing some film or the other. But recently when she drove into Mehboob Studios quite near her home, she suddenly realised the last she was there was 15 years ago. Her shootings in the in-between years have been in other, sometimes newer, studios, or on locations, or, following today’s trend, people’s bungalows. “My first reaction was to wish Mehboob Saab had been alive,” she said. “The studio used to be so much cleaner in he older days.” (Actually the studio in those days was much more of an exclusive place, which Mehboob Khan largely kept for his own productions).

Waheeda Rehman and Shashi Kapoor must be the only two Bombay stars who do not own a TV set. Waheeda hasn’t bought one because she fears that her two growing young children will keep watching it neglecting their studies, but she and her family do sometimes go over to the Yash Chopras’ to watch a movie on video.

Playing a mother in real life obviously is all a delight to Waheeda. You can sense that life at the Rekhis centres largely around the two children—Suhail, the boy, is seven and is in the first standard, and Kashvi the girl is five and a half, and in kindergarten. Suhail takes after his mother, in looks as well as a quiet nature. Kashvi is quite a spirited number, Waheeda Rehman said. Her name had been chosen by Waheeda’s husband. It’s a slight variation of the surname of Anna Kashfi, the supposedly India-born woman who married Marlon Brando and eventually parted from him amidst great public turbulence. Shashi Rekhi chose the name for his daughter because he liked Anna Kashvi’s fighting spirit.

Her children, Waheeda said, had a way of wolfing down ice cream in Bombay but when she took them on a trip to the U.S. and exposed them to the famous 21 flavours of Baskin-Robbins, they showed no interest at all, preferring to munch the lowly potato chips and tomato sauce. That’s sometimes what happens amidst plenty. Amazing as this was, it was nothing compared to what America did to Waheeda herself. Once, appearing on stage with a performing troupe from Bombay, the shy lady was actually induced to sing a song, Jane kya tune from Pyaasa.

Suhail and Kashvi keep a couple of rabbits at home as pets — (Oh, hell, doesn’t Waheeda know of their famous multiplying capacity, but then she has never been a calculating woman) and a sheep (that’s right, as in bah, bah black…) called Naughty. The latter, Waheeda says, is almost human, eating, as she recounts in rapid order, “dal, chaval, phulka, angur, sev, chocolate and what you will.” In fact, it seems everyone in the house enjoys good food. Waheeda’s husband likes sometimes to putter about in the kitchen, trying assorted skills with the skillet. (Sayeeda, a sister of Waheeda’s, has published a cookbook).

The Rekhis are Punjabis but Waheeda never had any adjustment problems. Her mother-in-law, she says, for instance, has always been kind to her. And you guess, here’s a daughter-in-law easy to be kind to.

Curious about the origin of the name, Waheeda asked her friend Sultana (Mrs. Ali Sardar Jafri) to find out. After her research, Mrs. Jafri said Kashfi was of Persian origin and meant someone able to express herself. “That my daughter certainly is,” Waheeda smiled.

Typical of Waheeda was the way she went about, or rather didn’t go about, arranging her children’s school admissions. Like the other mothers, she queued up and stood patiently outside the principal’s office of the school she had chosen, and was eventually turned down.

Later, Mrs. Ali Yavar Jung, wife of Maharashtra’s former governor, coming to know of Waheeda’s plight, put in a word for her. Waheeda was summoned to the school a second time and the first thing the authorities asked her was, “Why didn’t you tell us you were Waheeda Rehman?” And why ever not? Because it never occurred to Waheeda. She never thinks she is someone special or that movie stars are special, entitled to various priorities.

After giving up his film career Shashi Rekhi went into the garment export trade but he is no longer in it — obviously, there are too many hassles to it. He is good at furniture designing and even making, Waheeda says, and is very interested in period pieces.

The Rekhi’s tend to avoid large parties (it’s a fixed, almost an obsessive principle with Shashi Rekhi never to seem to be keen on sharing his wife’s limelight) but go happily to small gatherings of close friends. The only time Waheeda’s home and lawns are en fete is when, by standing consent of Waheeda and her husband, producer Yash Johar, an old friend who used to be Waheeda’s secretary hosts his annual party there. It’s at one such party that the rumour, which is even now going around, started that Nanda, Waheeda’s closest friend, and director Manmohan Desai are going to get married. It seems Lata Mangeshkar and Nanda are two performers Desai most admires, so much so his wife good-humouredly used to say she was reconciled to having both these women as her souten. After Manmohan became a widower, some friends started suggesting to him that he propose to Nanda.

Nanda continues to be Waheeda’s best friend—the two enjoy their once-in-a-while drive down to town. They like to go to the Taj, and order their favourite items—lobster thermidor, fish baked in butter and prawn cocktails. Waheeda’s husband has always been friends with the Nayyars and now Sadhana has become a good friend of Waheeda’s. Not so far back, they were just two ruling stars.

If Waheeda really goes off to live at Bangalore, you will miss a nice person around here — not a commodity we have in plenty.
On Waheeda Rehman’s 87th birthday we bring for her fans an invigorating read. Continue reading …Read More