Shining the spotlight on the talented actress Nanda, Subhash K Jha focuses on her life in reel and real.
Nanda, who was part of the illustrious Mangeshkar family, never got her due. And she was herself partly to blame for it. Fixated on becoming another Meena Kumari, she was typecast in weepy family-oriented roles of the all-sacrificing Choti Bahen, Beti and Badi Didi. These are actually the titles of three of her popular films where she was shown sacrificing her own happiness for the family.
Nanda did make a belated attempt to break out of her doleful image with her shocking murderous avatar in Yash Chopra’s Ittefaq and as a drug addict in Naya Nasha. But she is largely remembered for her sweet, benign domesticated roles (I can’t recall one film where Nanda was cast as a working woman) humming and chugging her way into audiences’ hearts in Jab Jab Phool Khile and The Train.
In 1992, Nanda discovered belated love when she fell in love with filmmaker Manmohan Desai. However, her joy was short-lived. Desai died a sudden and shocking death when he plunged to his death from the terrace of his home. No one knew what happened. Not even Nanda.
Close friends say she was shattered and stricken by guilt that perhaps the pressure of commitment was too much to bear for Desai. After his death, she became double reclusive. With Nanda’s death, the aura of tragic grace that she wore like a sophisticated perfume would linger on.
Nanda died of a massive heart attack at the age of 75. She always feared dying alone in a hospital, so it must have come as a relief. Known to be an incurable recluse, Nanda spent the last two decades completely away from the limelight. Born in 1939, she was the daughter of the popular Maharashtrian actor Master Vinayak. She has one brother, Jaiprakash Karnataki, who is married to the actress-dancer Jayshree T.
Nanda began acting when she was a child. As Baby Nanda, she was a natural-born scene stealer. She graduated to adult roles with V Shantaram’s Toofan Aur Diya in 1956. But it was L V Prasad’s Choti Bahen in 1959, where she played the title role, that turned her into an overnight star. Tragically, it also typecast her as the eternally weepy homemaker, the all-sacrificing daughter, wife, and mother. As mentioned, Nanda tried hard to shake off the image with ultra-glamorous roles in Jab Jab Phool Khile, Ittefaq and Naya Nasha, but the image of the grieving diva who was cruelly labeled the Poor Man’s Meena Kumari, remained with Nanda till the end.
Nanda’s friends were a few. No one knows how she lived or what she did with her free time. Her last screen appearance was opposite Dilip Kumar as his wife in B R Chopra’s Mazdoor in 1982 and as Padmini Kolhapure’s mother in Prem Rog in 1983.
Nanda’s Most Popular Songs:
‘Yeh Samaa samaa hai yeh pyar ka’ ( Jab Jab Phool Khile )
‘Ek pyar ka naghma hai’ ( Shor )
‘Ja re kare badra’ ( Dharti Kahe Pukar Ke )
‘Kis liye main pyar kiya’ ( The Train )
‘Allah tero naam’ ( Hum Dono )
