Kamini Kaushal: The Quiet Radiance Of A Long, Unhurried Career
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Kamini Kaushal never chased mythmaking, yet her life reveals the deeper patterns of stardom, survival, and selfhood. Vikram Phukan writes.
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AS A THREE-YEAR-OLD being ferried around a market in Colaba circa 1978, I apparently had my cheeks pulled affectionately by none other than Kamini Kaushal. That’s a tiny, throwaway anecdote my mother carried more faithfully than I ever could. It was an odd entry point into the work of an actress whose career began in the mid-1940s, but it captures her longevity. At that time, Kaushal was still a familiar pillar of the silver screen, recognisable and current in a way that later decades would quietly forget, even though she would sporadically return to our screens in films as recent as Kabir Singh (2019) and Laal Singh Chaddha (2022), more than seven decades after her debut. Your pop culture fix awaits on OTTplay, for only Rs 149 per month. Grab this limited-time offer now! For someone who held her own alongside the top actors of her time, and carried films like Biraj Bahu (1954) and Godaan (1963), she was absolutely an A-lister of her moment. What’s striking is how little of that standing travelled into posterity, especially when set beside counterparts like Nargis, Meena Kumari, or Madhubala. She belonged to that quieter cohort of leading ladies respected within the industry, trusted with substantial roles, and widely visible in their time, but later eased out of the canon by the culture’s fixation on a handful of icons. That erasure surfaced, almost accidentally, when a younger critic like Uday Bhatia watched Kabir Singh and found himself struck by the performance of Kabir’s grandmother, unaware that he was watching the star of Neecha Nagar (1946). His description of rediscovering Kaushal in his Mint Lounge piece wasn’t ignorance; it was evidence of how easily someone once central to the industry could slip out of collective memory. |
In the late 1940s and early ’50s Kaushal had a poise that sat somewhere between the older theatrical mode and the emerging naturalism of the post-independence era. She played desire, sorrow, and moral conflict without surrendering to full melodramatic excess, yet her style still carried the formal edges of her time. She was, in effect, a transitional performer. When you scan through her filmography, there’s a striking range of subject matter and literary influences, but most of it sits inside films that have been completely forgotten, even though it was the so-called Golden Era with its profusion of classics. Even so, she enjoyed a seventeen-year run as a leading lady before shifting to character parts.” CONTINUE READING... |
Senna Hegde On Setting Avihitham In Kanhangad: 'Working From Home Takes The Stress Off Filmmaking' |
In a conversation with Subha J Rao, the filmmaker spoke about his movie-making process, why he prefers working out of Kanhangad, and why he’s partial to working with non-stars.
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IN THREE OF Senna Hegde’s films — Katheyondhu Shuruvaagidhe (Kannada), the National Award-winning Thinkalazhcha Nishchayam and the more recent Avihitham (both in Malayalam), the women get amazing character arcs. If the first was about a young woman discovering life after a heartbreak, the second was about another asserting her right. Avithitam (Illicit), on the other hand, is about women, but primarily features men, though most of the women on screen have agency. Of all his movies, by now called the Kanhangad Cinematic Universe (Senna laughs at this, but says, "Who are we to stop people from giving it a name?"), Avihitham hits the hardest, though it has a healthy vein of humour running through it. The story can be narrated in a single line: a couple is engaged in furtive love in a garden, and the villagers gang up to find out who the woman is. What Senna and co-writer Ambareesh Kalathera manage is shine the spotlight on patriarchy and its myriad faces — the men who size up women, those who don’t mind sitting on their haunches amid stinging nettles to find out who the woman is, men who casually forgive the man, because he’s a ‘man’, and men those don’t know how to even talk kindly to their wives. Stream the latest Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada releases, with OTTplay Premium's Power Play monthly pack, for only Rs 149. In a conversation, even as the skies poured in Kanhangad and Mangaluru, Senna spoke about his movie-making process, why he prefers working out of Kanhangad, and why he’s partial to working with non-stars. Edited excerpts below: |
Senna, your film is about a space for women. In your opinion, what’s a safe space for women? I’d probably look at a safe space for anyone. It is where they can be themselves without any fear or interruption, where they don’t have the thought that someone is watching them or taking advantage. Women, sadly, have always been at the receiving end because of this lack of safe spaces. I wish, in an ideal situation, no one should have to double-think. The film tapped into our subconscious bias. At one stage, the audience saw the character of Nimmi, coloured by what they had seen and heard… Ah, that’s exactly what happens, no? In smaller towns, it is so easy to feed into that kind of information and sway people’s perception. It is so easy to pass on your bias to others. In Avihitham, if you notice, all the perceptions are reserved for women. After a point, every action of hers is seen through the lens of what you think you know. The men, on the other hand, even if they maintain blouse sizes before and after Onam, are seen as custodians of culture. Tailor Venu is seen as trustworthy because of his loyalty to Nirmala’s father-in-law, Madhavan. CONTINUE READING... |
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