SMITA AND HER DANGEROUS PREDICTIONS.

Ali Peter John

It was a scene at a hotel called Rajnigandha facing the beach at Alibag. Smita Patil who had made a formidable reputation as an actress in what was called art cinema was doing one of her first commercial film called “Bheegi palkein “one of the many film she had signed with Raj Babbar as her Hero. She was not very comfortable while doing those routine song and dance numbers, but she had to do one such number with Raj and it was during the shooting of the song, “janam janam ka saath hai hamaara tumhaara”, that I could see the signs of her being madly in love with Raj who was a married man with two little children . I knew her when she was a news reader in Marathi on Bombay Doordarshan and we had become very good friends after I first met her in her father’s house ( her father Shivaji Rao Patil was a minister in Maharashtra )and when I had seen her first, I saw a woman sweeping the floor and I told the woman who was sweeping that I wanted to meet Smita Patil. She had turned back and screamed “can’t you recognise me, I am Smita Patil” I wrote my first piece on her and the way she reacted made us better friends.

It was Lunch break and Smita asked me to join her for a Maharashtrian lunch which I gladly accepted. After lunch we sat outside the Rajnigandha Hotel and talked about various subjects and she suddenly took me by surprise when she told me that she was in love with Raj and was pregnant .
I, a boy from an orthodox family didn’t know how to react to what she told me and she was surprised about how I was not reacting to the bombshell she had thrown at me and we continued talking as there was still time for her to give her next shot. At around 4.pm, while we were having tea, she threw another bombshell at me. From out of the blue, she said, “you know, Ali ,I will die when I am thirty” I told her not to talk nonsense and she said,” mark my words, Ali, you will be one of the first to know about my death”. She went for her shoot and was her normal self, but I kept wondering why she talked about her death when she was at the peak of her career..

It was 1986 and the film industry had gone on a strike and on one day the entire industry came out on the streets to protest against the taxes levied on the industry. Smita was eight months pregnant and was advised by the doctors not to walk in the sun, but she was determined and joined the march or the industry from Opera House to Chowpatty .She fell seriously sick after delivering a baby boy who she and Raj decided to name Prateik. She was at home in “Kismat”,a building on Carter Road, a little away from the bunglow of Rajesh khanna. All was well with the mother and the baby, Raj who had separated from his wife the well known theatre personality, Nadira Babbar, and was living with Smita.

One evening, Smita complaint of severe pain and Raj’s family doctor P.K. Aggarwal adviced Raj to rush Smita to the Jaslok Hospital. She had developed serious complications and the news about her battling death spread all over. I was at the Jaslok Hospital and was sending out reports on her condition. At 11.pm a team of doctors declared her dead. I don’t know why my mind went back to that afternoon in Alibag when she had made that prediction and I discovered that she was exactly thirty years old when she died .

Her funeral rites were performed in the open at the Shivaji Park and there was a sea of humanity crying over the games destiny played with one of the most talented actress of this century. The only other time a young actress had died when she was at her peak and only was thiry nine was when the “Venus of Indian cinema”, Madhubala had died.

Smita had another prediction, she had worked with Amitabh Bachchan in “Shakti”and “Namak Halaal “with Dilip Kumar and Raakhee her co-stars and had become a good friend of Amitabh. One morning she called Amitabh in Bangalore where he was shooting for Manmohan Desai’s “Coolie” she told Amitabh that she had seen a very bad dream about him and asked him to be very careful as she said her dreams came true. Amitabh remembered what she told him and the next day, he met with an almost fatal accident while doing a fight scene with “Duriyodhan “(Puneet Issar). And had made people all over the world pray for him to come back alive.

The only other actor who had made a prediction about his death was Sanjeev Kumar. We were at the Hindustan Ambassador Hotel and when we were drinking one night he became very silent and told me that no male member of his family had lived beyond fifty . He said his father had died at the age when he was exactly fifty years old and he said he was sure that neither him nor his other two brothers, Kishor and Nikul would live for more than fifty years. Sanjeev died when he was forty six. His younger brother, Kishor who was a failed music director died when he was forty nine and their youngest brother, Nikul died when he was only thirty six .What a way my freind Hari bhai’s prediction had come true !

What sense do we, the living make about the strange stories told to me by two of my best friends and two of the greatest actors of our time ?