Mumbai: The passing of Kamini Kaushal at the age of 98 severs the last link with 1940s, pre-independence Hindi cinema. Her debut film, Neecha Nagar, was released in 1946 and won the Palme d’Or and after that, she was a regular in Hindi films till the 1980s.

Kaushal was born Uma Kashyap in Lahore in 1923. Her father, Dr Ram Kashyap, was a highly regarded botanist and is said to have discovered many plant varieties. He was a professor of Botany at the University of Punjab, Lahore.

She had often said that the environment at home was one of intellectual curiosity and leisure activity like swimming, riding, skating etc. She went to the elite Kinnaird college. Director Chetan Anand, offered her a role in his proposed film Neecha Nagar, based on Gorky’s Lower Depths and written by K.A. Abbas. 

During an onstage conversation at the screening of the film some years ago, I had asked her if her family had no objection to working in films, then considered a disreputable profession for young women from good families. She had said that her parents were persuaded by the fact that Chetan Anand and his wife Uma were family friends. Uma Anand and Uma Kashyap were friends – the latter’s father Gyaanesh Chandra Chatterjee was the principal of Government Law College, then the most prestigious college for boys and she too had grown up in a similar environment as Uma Kashyap.

Since Uma Anand too was in Neecha Nagar, Uma Kashyap was given the name Kamini Kaushal to avoid confusion. Neecha Nagar was the story of a city’s rich diverting a dirty stream through the village to force the residents to leave and let him build residential buildings. In the hands of Chetan Anand, Abbas’s script based on Gorky’s novel, became an allegory of the Raj but also a critique of the greedy capitalists. Progressive ideas were in the air, and the fervour for independence was at its height.

Kamini Kaushal followed this film with films like Nadiya ke Par and Ziddi, with budding stars Dilip Kumar and Dev Anand. She began a romance with Dilip Kumar but in 1947, her sister died in an accident the same year and she was made to marry her brother in law B.S. Sood in 1948 out of a sense of duty, to look after her sister’s two young daughters.

She continued her film career and acted in a few other films with Dilip Kumar but things became very complicated after her marriage. In his biography, Dilip Kumar said she was the first woman he fell in love with. She had three sons of her own and brought up all the children, while acting in films. She was being recognised as a dramatic actress and in 1954 won the Filmfare award for Biraj Bahu, based on a novel by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay.

In the late 50s, her career as a leading actress came to an end and she became a much in demand character actor, mainly playing mothers. One highlight was The Jewel in the Crown, where she was in two episodes along with well-known British stars.

Her film appearances became few and far between in the 2000s, the last one being Lal Singh Chaddha in 2022. She was 95 then.

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