Veteran actor Farida Jalal, who has worked with some of the biggest filmmakers of Indian cinema in her decades-long career, spoke about her experiences with Gulzar on the 1975 film Khushboo. The film was notable for featuring Jeetendra and Hema Malini playing against type in the lead roles, and Farida recalled how insistent Gulzar was on shedding all kinds of glamour on set.
Appearing on The Ashoke Pandit Show, the veteran actor recalled that Gulzar would routinely instruct her to look plainer, and to underplay her scenes. “If you look like this, what will I tell Hema ji?” he told her on the first day, when she arrived on set with a striking hairdo. Farida said that she became ‘angry’ at him in that moment because she wanted to ‘doll up like the rest of them’, but agreed to change her hairstyle into something simpler. “Kaam dikhana hai, yeh sab nahi dikhana aapko (You are here to show your talent, not to look pretty),” he told her.
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“He made me realise my potential. There was one scene where my husband dies, and he said, ‘In this, you have to scream and cry. You wanted to be a serious actor, now show me what you’re made of’. He made me do that in one shot, then he told Sanjeev Kumar about it. I met Sanjeev Kumar on a different film’s set, and he told me, ‘Suna hai bada acha shot kiya, murda bhi rone laga (I heard you gave such a nice shot that even the dead character teared up)’.”
Farida also recalled Gulzar’s direction to her before they shot a song sequence in Goa. “He came into my room and said, ‘Aaj aapka gaana hai, Mumtaz mat ban jaana, extra phool aur yeh woh. Log tareef karte hain ke aap dialogue naturally bolti hain, waise hi gaana karna hai (You have a song today, please don’t turn into Mumtaz with all the razzmatazz. People praise you for your naturalistic acting, retain it for the song)’,” she remembered, adding that she was looking forward to ‘thumkas’, but was forbidden.
Farida praised him for showing audiences a whole new side of Jeetendra and Hema Malini, who were best known for playing glamorous characters in populist films.
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