The Other Side

Whenever we think of cinema, we think of glamor and glitz; of rich people leading affluent lives; of beautiful people being adored by millions. But there is another darker side to all this that we rarely see or think of and occasionally, it rears its ugly head. Kunal's suicide a few weeks ago was the latest incident reminding us of this other side but it certainly was not the first.

The earliest such incident I remember was the suicide of actress Shobha. A fantastic actress with a beaming smile that lit up her face, she was probably the first one to usher in natural, realistic acting in Tamil cinema. She captured our collective hearts in movies like MuLLum Malarum, Moodu Pani and Nizhal Nijamaagiradhu and even won the National award for her performance in Pasi. But her career - and her life itself - was rudely cut short when she committed suicide by hanging herself. Foul play was suspected in her death and director Balu Mahendra's name figured prominently in rumors relating to it but the bottomline was that we lost one of our best actresses.

The next incident, again a suicide, was the death of 'Silk' Smitha. Essentially an item number gal, the dusky actress rose to great heights. In the period when she was riding the crest of success, no film, including films of Rajni and Kamal, was deemed complete or assured of box-office success without her and her song sequences were greeted with whistles and cat-calls that rivaled those that welcomed the heroes. She avoided looking vulgar even in those teeny dresses that left little to the imagination and rose above the tag of vamp to be generally liked by most viewers - and not just men. While her death came when her career had almost ended, it still shocked everybody. I remember talk about a 'bearded man', who she had been romantically linked to when alive, being a suspect but not for long.

The actresses who died since then did not reach the peaks that the above actresses did in their careers but that doesn't mean their ends were any less sadder. Divya Bharati, after an unsuccessful debut in Tamil, went on to become a hugely successful actress in Telugu and was on her way to rising to the top in Hindi when she committed suicide by jumping off a building. As in all such incidents, there were various theories about her end and she was supposed to be rather depressed in the days leading upto the fatal day. Actress Viji committed suicide in 2001, after a failed affair with an already-married director. A popular actress in the 80s, she had successfully fought illness and made a rare comeback before her demise. Pratyuksha's case was particularly tragic. Though she was said to have consumed poison, there were several rumors about she being a victim to a gang rape in which her then-boyfriend was involved. But inspite of a lot activity in her case, her death was eventually ruled a suicide. Monal, who arrived with great fanfare as a relative of Simran, committed suicide apparently due to a failed love affair.

The number of actors whose lives were cut short is relatively less. I do remember Prince, brother of actor Urvashi, ending his life in what was apparently a suicide pact with his girlfriend. The news was particularly shocking since Prince was a classmate of my brother at one point and had actually visited us at home. And we just heard about Kunal, who never made it big as an actor but did remain in the public eye with roles in several small movies.

The pressures inherent in filmdom, the constant struggle to make it big, the complete lack of privacy, the constant presence in the public eye, the lack of job stability, the fragility of their livelihood since a single flop could end one's career - one doesn't have to look far to figure out the reasons behind why our cinema is plagued by so many untimely deaths. We can only hope that others learn their lessons before its too late and avoid making the mistakes that led to so many other lives being nipped in the bud.

PS: While I wrote the post purely from memory, a little googling revealed that the list of actresses who killed themselves is much longer, with names like Vijayasree, Lakshmisree(who played Rajni's sister in Dharmayudham) and 'Fatafat' Jayalakshmi.