Vimi: The stoic beauty Sunil Dutt serenaded in Humraaz

Hindi cinema has a history of actresses who died young. Madhubala died of a heart ailment at age 33. Meena Kumari died at 39 of an alcohol-induced liver problem. Geeta Bali died at 35 of small pox. Silk Smitha committed suicide at the age of 36.Smita Patil died at 31 of post-pregnancy complications. Parveen Babi died at the age of 55 of severe depression. Divya Bharti died in a freak accident age 19. Jiah Khan died at 25.

Does anyone remember Vimi? She died at the age of 34. In B R Chopra’s Humraaz, the only Bollywood hit of her career, Sunil Dutt serenaded Vimi with the hit song Kissi patthar ke moorat se mohabbat ka irada hai. Indeed, Vimi seemed carved out of marble. She had the impassive impenetrable personality of a woman whom one could never get to know well, no matter how close you think you were to her.

The chartbuster from Humraaz was composed by Ravi Sharma, who brought Vimi and her husband entrepreneur Shiv Aggarwal to Mumbai and introduced them to the powerful producer-director B R Chopra. Chopra decided to launch Vimi in an author-backed role in Humraaz with Sunil Dutt and Raj Kumar as her co-stars.

Humraaz was a hit. But Vimi’s career never took off. Her follow-up film Aabroo, was a miserable flop, and Vimi was  not to blame. She was paired opposite a talentless newcomer Deepak Kumar in a powerful drama with some hit songs composed by Sonik-Omi, including Mukesh’s Jinhe hum bhoolna chahe woh aksar yaad aatey hain.

Sadly, none of the songs in Aabroo or Humraaz were for Vimi. I believe one of the reasons for her failure was the  absence of songs in her screen presence. Back during those days, leading ladies were closely identified by the songs that they lip-synced on screen. In Humraaz, all the chartbusters were filmed on Sunil Dutt and the one track featuring a female voice was filmed on Mumtaz. The audience did not carry home the image of Vimi with any songs.

Vimi, like some other instant successes (from Kalpana to Kumar Gaurav ), vanished from the scene. Many, many years later, one heard of her death in penury. It is said there were no relatives, no money for her last rites. She had to be taken away by the municipal corporation on a makeshift vehicle. Rumour has it that Vimi was so hard up for money that she began to consume cheap country liquor which killed her.

But I beg to defer. What actually killed Vimi was the ephemerality of the fame that hit her after Humraaz. She was launched in style with two stalwart leading men in Humraaz. But critics found her wooden and expressionless.

Many stars fall because they can’t cope with their success. Vimi fell because she couldn’t cope with her failure. The final straw was her mentor B R Chopra turning her back on Vimi. Rejection wiped out her self-esteem. The stoic beauty ended up on the curb, her career mowed down by many actresses far more talented and prettier.

Between 1967 and 1981, Vimi’s acted in only ten  films, of which two, Humraaz and the Punjabi hit Nanak Naam Jahaz Hai, were hits. Several star kids have much worse track records. They continue to feature in film after film after a mountain of flops. Vimi never got a second chance. When B R Chopra abandoned her after Humraaz, reportedly due to her husband’s interference, she had nowhere else to go.

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.

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