Actress Par Excellence

17 Dec 1986

smitapatilEverything was going well . The ”Hope 86” star bonanza at the Brabourne Stadium Bombay had the gates crashing in an unprecedented fashion. Suddenly and silently, the cruel claws of nature made their presence felt and in a way none could have dreamt of.

The news on the tube flashed a sullen and grief-stricken picture of Mrs. Smita Patil ‘Babbar’ – noted film actress. Grief stricken indeed – Smita was in a virtual comatose following severe internal hemorrhage and bleeding, she was clinging to life through the most slender of threads. And the morning papers announced the chilling news ‘Smita is no more’.

The events occurred abruptly giving no time to react or reconcile. There she was, dressed in black salwar-kameez, participating zestfully in the film industry walk as protest march, despite being in a late stage of pregnancy. Harmful and may be inadvisable it was. But that was the way Smita liked it – courageously standing up for a cause and doing her bit.

Her marriage with actor Raj Babbar last year was big news. Despite murmurs from all corners, she went ahead with it. In Smita’s own words. “A lot of things are not easy to understand. Besides, I’m not worried about the society’s hostile remarks.”

And it was not too long back that Smita was again in news; she delivered a baby boy in the previous month. But she never recovered after that. Things changed from bad to worse and in Jaslok Hospital, Smita breathed her last.

Smita Patil the youngest of the three daughters of former Maharashtra Minister Shivaji Rao Patil and Vidya Patil, was born on the 17th of October 1955 in Pune.

Smita was only 31 when she died – that’s the age when people start feeling the ground under their feet but Smita had already carved a niche in the film world, especially art cinema.

Though God had not bestowed Smita with a chocolate face, it had been more than compensated with her sharp features, her penetrating eyes with an immense depth and sensuousness that could convey a lot more than said.

Smita Patil the youngest of the three daughters of former Maharashtra Minister Shivaji Rao Patil and Vidya Patil, was born on the 17th of October 1955 in Pune. After her schooling in the Renuka Memorial Girls High School, she entered the hallowed Ferguson College of Pune for her graduation in Philosophy and Psychology. It was then, that she made her debut in celluloid. Her friend, Arun Khopkar cast her in a documentary ‘Teesra Madhyam’.

Soon she was appointed as a newsreader in the Bombay Doordarshan and this was where the renowned Shyam Benegal spotted her. Her very presence on the screen made me stir-‘I could feel the possibilities of immense histrionic talent in that newsreader’.

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