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SHE REPRESENTED the cult of committed melodrama in Hindi commercial cinema. This Nepali beauty with a hyper-expressive face could express the most melodramatic emotions in a mode that pierced the masses' hearts. The learned intellectual audience looked down on her heavyhanded histrionics. But what did they know about star power? As Shah Rukh Khan once said, in order to overact, you need to know how to act. By that definition, Mala Sinha qualified as a consummate actress. In film after film in the 60s, she constituted the essence of tearful acting, portraying the downside of the man-woman relationship in blockbusters like 'Hariyali Aur Raasta', 'Himalay Ki God Mein', 'Do Kaliyan' and 'Suhagan'. Though regarded as the most conventional heroine of her times, Mala Sinha actually took the maximum career risks. In Yash Chopra's 'Dhool Ka Phool' and B.R. Chopra's 'Gumrah', she played the first unwed mother and adulterous wife respectively. In Guru Dutt's classic 'Pyaasa', she played the relatively unsympathetic part of an ambitious woman who ditches her impoverished lover Guru Dutt for a loveless marriage with Rehman.
Waheeda Rehman walked away with all the sympathy. But it was Mala Sinha who played the tougher role of the material girl. Born in Calcutta, Mala Sinha's family originally hailed from Nepal. She did several Bengali films before being introduced into Hindi cinema by Kishore Sahu in 'Hamlet' (1954). The film wasn't a success. Soon, films like 'Lai Batti' (actor Balraj Sahni's only directorial venture), 'Nausherwan-E-Adil' (where she starred as the fair maiden Marcia in Sohrab Modi's romance about forbidden love) and 'Phir Subah Hogi' (director Ramesh Saigal's adaptation of Dosteovsky's 'Grime & Punishment') established Mala Sinha's reputation for broad and bravura histrionics that dared to stretch the limits of a Hindi film heroine's image. Surprisingly, in the mid-60s, Mala Sinha's sense of adventure slackened. She allowed herself to be part of a series of romantic potboilers co-starring the Bengali chocolate-box hero Biswajeet.
These fluffy duffers like 'Tamanna', 'Paisa Ya Pyar', 'Jaal', 'Nai Roshni' and 'Night In London' diminished Mala Sinha's reputation as an actress with audacious aspirations. She continued to be a leading lady even in the 70s with hits like 'Maryada' (with Rajesh Khanna) and 'Holi Aayi Re'. But gradually, she gave up her career to concentrate on her daughter Pratibha's career. After almost a decade away from the camera, Mala Sinha made a comeback in 1992 in 'Khel' and 'Radha Ka Sangam'. The comeback went unnoticed. Audiences would rather remember the Mala Sinha of yesteryears, whose emotive ebullience surfaced spectacularly specially in song sequences where she could create a whole history of emotions for her characters. No actress gave so much of herself to her roles as Mala Sinha. Whether as the elder sister to Tanuja secretly pining for Dharmendra in 'Baharen Phir Bhi Aayengi' or the glamorous Indian intelligence agent chasing Dharmendra all over the world in 'Aankhen', Mala Sinha could project the various facets of woman hood with startling clarity. No wonder she was almost like an inhouse heroine for big-banner producers like Ramanand Sagar and B.R. Chopra.
Relatively scandal-free and fiercely disciplined, Mala Sinha was the first heroine in Mumbai to undertake a long-distance marriage with her Nepali husband Mr. Lohani. The couple lived in different cities and time zones long before Madhuri became Mrs. Nene. Way ahead of her times, Mala Sinha represents the quinessential commitment to excellence that today's generation of actresses may perhaps not identify with. Though never acknowledged in the same histrionic league as her colleagues Nutan, Meena Kumari or Waheeda Rehman nor considered glamorous enough to compete with Saira Banu, Asha Parekh or Sadhana, Mala Sinha used her neither-here-nor-there personality to extend her versatility from the sari clad illiterate in 'Anpadh' to the sophisticated Japanese siren in 'Humsaya'. As late as 1969, when she was way past her prime, Mala Sinha wore frocks in 'Paisa Ya Pyar'. She could still carry them off convincingly. Well, that's what the legend called Mala Sinha
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