Silken Smooth!

Just read that Ekta Kapoor plans a film on the life of Silk Smitha, this takes me back to the early eighties when I met "thunder thighs" in person in a Chennai film studio. I was taken around by a photographer who had a lot of clout with Kollywood. I had a choice between Mandakini (of the waterfall fame in Raj Kapoor's Prem Rog) and Lady Silk, I chose the latter having earlier written a spoof with a galaxy of characters named Nylon Nalini, Rayon Ramya etc; and having seen Silk in just one film, Moondram Pirai (Sadma in Hindi), I was most curious. To say the woman oozed sensuality is an understatement, she was like a panther with the piercing eyes of a predator, albeit a panther gone berserk with his fatty feed! Yet there was this unmistakable vulnerability, her eyes were averted, when she met my gaze there was this uneasy feeling of being judged and perhaps even condemned. Slowly she opened up and went on to narrate her status in the industry, the good time, available woman, who was thought to be no better off screen than her on screen vampish persona. She narrated an incident to prove her point, while shooting in the wilderness, the actors had to make do with makeshift toilets, just an enclosure with no roof. While seated inside she suddenly found to her horror, half a dozen unit hands staring and sniggering down at her from the top. She screamed and ran out of the enclosure and complained to the director. The man at the helm called up the "erring boys" and made a pretense of shouting at them, he then patted her back assuring her it won't happen again, it was back to work like nothing happened! "Would the reaction have been so casual had it been a heroine" she asked me. I had no answer; a few years later Smitha ( more Jute than Silk) committed suicide - weary of an uncaring, censuring, parasitic environment. In retrospect it would seem SS was a little ahead of her times, had she been a contemporary of our 5 star item girls, Mallikas, Malaikas, Rakhis ... or even the present day heroines who have blurred the demarcating line between dance and item numbers...life dare not deal her such a rotten hand!