Praveen Babi lived a tragic life

Who was Praveen babi? Most remember her as the original pin-up girl of Bollywood. Few knew she was of royal descent - her father was the nawab of Junagadh.

Praveen Babi or Parveen Mohammed Ali (Born 1955) the doe-eyed beauty sizzled in several Bollywood blockbusters of the 1970s. Deewar, Khuddar, Namak Halal, Amar Akbar Anthony, Shaan, Kaalia and Do Aur Do Paanch heralded her as a fine actress and a glamour goddess.

The sati-savitri and chammak-challo brigade looked askance as this tall, statuesque beauty from Ahmedabad took Bollywood by storm with Charitra, a ‘bold’ film by B R Ishara - her debutante flick in the early 1970s.

At a time when film heroines were supposed to sob and sing, Babi arrived to demolish the screen stereotypes. She became the symbol of the ‘New’ woman: urban, sensitive and intelligent. Single and ready to mingle, Babi lacked the well-chiseled features of, say, Hema Malini. Nor was she a buxom beauty - like Rekha of Sawan Bhadon.

However, Babi was ‘cool’. Her smouldering sensuality was tempered with a certain regal aloofness which contrasted sharply with Mumtaz’s nakhras and Zeenat Aman’s oomph. Babi’s husky voice and a faint smile which curved her lips as she scanned the fellow actor with an amused expression added to her aura.

But something happened which changed her. When she left for the US, and resurfaced a decade later in a shaken mental state, she shocked everyone. She alleged that her “one time lover” Amitabh Bachchan tried to kill her.

She was linked to Kabir Bedi and Mahesh Bhatt. Mahesh Bhatt even made a film (Arth) on his relationship with Praveen Babi. She later filed cases against several people, including Sanjay Dutt, saying she had evidence to prove his involvement in the 1993 bomb blasts.

Slowly everyone close to her started alienating away from her.

“She suffered from mental illness and isolated herself from the world,” said Javed Akhtar, who had co-scripted Babi’s first major hit Deewar (1975) opposite Amitabh Bachchan. “She had everything in the world - name, fame, glamour.”

Filmmaker Yash Chopra remembers her as a “professional who took her work seriously”. He had directer her in Deewar and Kala Patthar. “It is sad that her end came like this.”

Babi’s co-star Poonam Dhillon said: “It pained me that she suffered so much for so long. I will always remember her as an intelligent and extremely beautiful actor.”

Today as we mourn her painful death her life remains shrouded in tragedy and leaves behind several questions unanswered.