Zeenie Baby, as the Press were quick to christen her, was different from any other heroine of her times, both on screen and off of it. At a time when the average film heroine barely struggled through schooling, Zeenat had attended the University of Southern California on student aid, although she could not complete her graduation. Armed with impeccable language skills, her first job was as a journalist for Femina, before she moved on to modelling. A gorgeous face combined with a fabulous figure, she was crowned Miss Asia Pacific 1970.
In hospital for eight days under constant supervision, her eye was scarred for life. Anti-depressants would be administered to her three times a day
A lacklustre debut in Hindi films followed but she soon hit the jackpot. Her role as the chillum-smoking, hippie Janice in Dev Anand’s Hare Rama Hare Krishna saw her grab attention nation-wide. A star was born. Hit after hit followed. She appeared on every Hindi film magazine cover in the 1970s. Even the classes were smitten; her anglicised accent and urbane polish made even the hoity-toities fervent fans of Hindi films.
And oh the trends she set… Every gal worth her high heels had to grab hold of a guitar and fake it to ‘Churaliya hai tumne…’ (Yaadon Ki Baaraat). The more daring would ape her sexy cholis from Raj Kapoor’s Satyam Shivam Sundaram. Her lacy dresses, her plunging necklines, her glossy hairstyles, her perfect diction - all were sought to be emulated. This was a Poster Girl to be proud of.
“My biological clock was ticking and I wanted to be a mother. I wanted to raise a family and now I think Mazhar just happened to be there at the right time.”
The Seventies was her decade, as her success with Dev Anand and Navketan Films flowed on into a winning spree with filmmakers like B.R. Chopra, Raj Kapoor, Manmohan Desai, Feroz Khan, Nasir Hussain, Manoj Kumar, Prakash Mehra, Raj Khosla and Shakti Samanta. Along with Hema Malini, she was the highest paid actress in Hindi films from 1976 – 1980.
The Eighties were less spectacular but no less successful as she starred in a flurry of multi-starrers. Barring the rare performance-oriented Insaaf Ka Tarazu, she continued to bring Westernised glamour and sex appeal into the hero-dominated Qurbani, Alibaba Aur 40 Chor, Dostana and Lawaaris.
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The poise she brought onscreen, however, concealed a painful vulnerability in her personal life. A vulnerability that was to eventually rob her of her professional standing and distract her from sustaining her success… Of all the men in the world at her feet, she fell headlong in love with the very handsome and very married Sanjay Khan. They had met in 1970, and it was an affair that consumed at least a full ten years of her life. The couple reportedly even got married in Jaisalmer in 1978. It ended in one of the goriest scandals ever, with Sanjay beating her to a bloody pulp at a party in 1980. In hospital for eight days under constant supervision, her eye was scarred for life. Anti-depressants would be administered to her three times a day. In time, the wounds healed; the gashes that tore through her psyche perhaps never did.
“I was very naive and vulnerable at that time. It was a few weeks of madness, that’s it,” she had said in an interview much later. However, this naivety and vulnerability was to become a frightening pattern. Her marriage to the relatively lesser known actor Mazhar Khan, was a disaster from start to finish. She tried rationalising it, “My biological clock was ticking and I wanted to be a mother. I wanted to raise a family and now I think Mazhar just happened to be there at the right time.” It was a bad decision. “Mazhar never wanted me to grow as an individual or as an artist. During the very first year of marriage I realised I had made a huge mistake, but I decided to live by it and make it work. I tried to make it work for another 12 years. There was no light at the end of the tunnel for me. There was not a single moment of happiness or joy during those 12 years. But I still tried making it work,” she shared years later.
The once irresistible Zeenie Baby looked beaten by life. As she confessed to a friend, “getting beaten up was becoming the story of my life”.
A philanderer who engaged in extramarital affairs even while Zeenat was pregnant, Mazhar was also physically abusive. Zeenat avers that if she hadn’t sought a separation when she did, she would have surely suffered a nervous breakdown. Ironically, when Mazhar’s health failed – pancreatic disease and kidney failure had left him a shadow of his former self – Zeenat was by his bedside, caring for him constantly. From 1993 to 1997 it was a “continuous battle” for her, as she lived with him in hospital, administering injections, and learning how to dress his wounds.
After his passing, she more or less retired from the public eye. The once irresistible Zeenie Baby looked beaten by life. As she confessed to a friend, “getting beaten up was becoming the story of my life”. If her once-boyfriend Robin Kumar reportedly hit her in public, another boyfriend, Frank Marino vamoosed with her money. Marriage to Mazhar was far from being a bed of roses either. It is said that but for Dev Anand, Zeenat had the uncanny ability to always pick the wrong guy.
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She did seem to make half-hearted attempts to find love and companionship again – there was her young boyfriend Zaheer and a longer relationship with businessman, Sarfaraz. She and the latter were in a live-in relationship till things went bad between them. Ironically, as recently as yesterday, Zeenat Aman hit the headlines again after the Mumbai Police arrested Sarfaraz, acting on a complaint of stalking and criminal intimidation filed against him by the veteran actress. It was revealed by the police that Aman and the accused knew each other; however, the relationship had soured over some issues following which she had stopped talking to the businessman. He however allegedly kept calling and following her, forcing her to seek police intervention.
Unsavoury controversy continues to dog the now 68-year-old one-time top actress. At a time when her contemporaries like Sharmila Tagore and Hema Malini have moved on to successful careers in politics and are respectable grandmothers, it might seem like Zeenat remains lost and unanchored. The fault – if one were to call it that – might lie in her friend Simi Garewal’s summing up of her - “Zeenat never shared her life. She just gave it away…”
…Which is why it is entirely to Zeenat Aman’s credit that she remains silent no longer. Today she is empowered enough to say enough is enough. “It’s inexcusable and a punishable crime,” she says of the horror of domestic violence. “The victim in an abusive relationship has to speak up…Unless your voice is heard, no one will be able to help you.”
Some lessons are learnt the hard way; what’s important is that they are finally learnt!
