Zeenat - Amanat of Bollywood

By: Anjali Anand
Friday, November 24, 2006
Yesteryear star, Zeenat Aman is still active in the film world and has recently starred in a couple of films. Zeenat and her role in Bollywood history, is finally getting the proper reassessment that she truly deserves. Her image had taken an unflattering and exploited turn after the death of her husband. Her in-laws attempted to publicly defame her. The critics often relegated her to the second list while listing the 'important' stars of Bollywood's history. Be it whatever, Zeenat Aman is arguably the most important Bollywood actress of the last 35 years. Fortunately, in the past year or two she is finally getting her well-deserved and long overdue critical accolades.

Apparently, a well-known actor saw Zeenat Aman in the late 1960s and spontaneously described her as a 'lamba khamba' (tall pillar). From then on, she went on to revolutionise the concept of the Hindi film female star and became one of the pillars of the 1970s cinema.

Zeenat was born on November 19, 1951 in Germany and was well educated and experienced living abroad as a college student in California before returning to India to work for Femina India as a journalist. She then was cajoled to enter the Femina Miss India beauty content where she won the title of Miss India and then the larger Miss Asia-Pacific title. Soon afterwards she entered films with Dev Anand's Hare Rama Hare Krishna (1971) and thereby became a star.

Her sultry personality was refreshingly different from the other beauty queens of those times. She let down her silken hair and sported hoop earrings and wore a tighter-than-a-tourniquet mini, which was never dared before by any of the actresses.

Zeenat reached a zenith in her career during the early and mid 1970's and created a revolution in the image of the Bollywood Heroine. Her popularity with fans took her to the top echelon of the 'A' list stars. In Roti Kapda Aur Makaan, she was the opportunist who deserts her jobless lover for a millionaire. Ajnabee saw her as an ambitious girl who considers aborting her baby to pursue a career. The disenchanted hippie smoking away her life with a dum-Hare Rama Hare Krishna, the girl who falls in love with her mother's one-time lover Prem Shastra, and a woman married to a caustic cripple but involved in an extramarital relationship in Dhund.

She also did conventional films like Chori Mera Kaam, Chhaila Babu, Dostana, Lawaris that ensured her stay on the distributors' radar for a good fourteen years. Satyam Shivam Sundaram was a film some critics sarcastically called, "More body, than soul". The Dev-Zeenat pair was seen in half a dozen films: Heera Panna, Ishq Ishq Ishq, Prem Shastra, Warrant, Darling Darling and Kalabaaz.

Zeenat was considered the prototype of the modern Bollywood heroine at that juncture. She paved way not only for a new look and modern attitude but also offered in her portrayals new models and standards of what a Bollywood heroine could be. All said and done, Zeenat is one of the most priced and sensuous beauty that Bollywood could ever have. Hats off to Zeenat!