NOT AT ALL DIRTY – A TRIBUTE TO ‘SILK’ SMITHA

In the late 80’s, I had the habit of walking for an hour after dinner and one night while I was walking in our garden, I saw a lady walking her dog on the road.  She looked familiar and when I went close, I was shocked.  It was none other than ‘Silk’ Smitha.  I rushed into our house and told my people about this.  Next day, my dad found out that Smitha had moved into a palatial house in our colony.

Several of our neighbours were associated with the film industry and many of them were troublesome.  They poached servants, parked cars haphazardly on the road, tampered with water connections, let out sewerage into open drains, threw garbage on the road, picked up quarrels with neighbours and more than anything else, were arrogant.

Smitha, or rather her family was different.  They were unusually silent. They never interacted with any neighbours, let alone fight or trouble.  Her house was isolated.  She lived with her partner, a man who was much senior to her and his grown up children.  I had seen her occasionally in the nights, cycling, walking her dogs or just walking with her partner, holding hands.

The only time I saw her during daytime was when our road was dug for laying of underground sewerage drains.  By the time she returned from a shooting in the afternoon in her car, the road was cut and she could not drive down. Since ours is a blind lane and there is no other route, she had to get down the car and walk to her home.  Shod in stilettos, she walked very briskly and with great confidence over the mountains of clay on the bumpy road.  She looked very dignified even in her glamorous costumes.

She regularly visited the Vinayaka temple in our colony and donated liberally.  We felt the presence of a film star only when she shuttled in her Standard 2000 car and when they burst expensive crackers during Deepavali.

Poor people approached her seeking monetary help.  When refugees from Sri Lanka arrived in India in large numbers during the mid and late eighties, many of them visited her and sought her help to settle down. People generally asked us for direction to her house, as ours is the first house in the lane.  One such refugee, who asked us for directions, while returning stopped at our house, thanked us for helping him with the address and praised Smitha’s magnanimity.

An adolescent girl from rural Andhra, annoyed with her parents, with no money in hand, boarded a train to Madras and hired an auto rickshaw and directed the driver to take her to Smitha’s house.  The driver who initially thought that the girl was known to Smitha, later understood that she had run away from home and with great care drove her to our colony and like many others, stopped near our house asking for direction to Smitha’s house.  On seeing the girl and from a conversation with the auto driver, my dad understood the gravity of the situation and worried about the girl’s safety, advised her to go back to her village.  The girl was very determined to stay at Madras and become an actress and went on to meet Smitha.  Smitha paid the auto charges, fed the girl and not only convinced the girl to return to her home, but also made arrangements for her return home with an escort.  She was so responsible.

One evening in mid 90’s when I returned home from work, my colony was barricaded by Police and there were nearly a thousand people in my street.  My heart stopped for a moment.  I thought there was either a fire accident or some other catastrophe.  When I managed to enter my house, my mother informed me about Smitha’s death.  She had committed suicide the previous night, after writing a letter to ‘God’ in Telugu.  The letter was published in several vernacular papers and many of my friends brought it to me for translation.  I don’t remember the exact content, but obviously it was written when she was very depressed.  The cause for the depression is not known.  It could have been her declining work assignments, or the money she lost in film production or the stress of being in an undefined relationship.  Whatever be the cause, the end is really sad,

After she died, we learnt that the house she lived in was not her own, but was a rented one.  Her partner vacated the house soon after her death and since there were rumours of the house being haunted, the landlord could not get a new tenant and the house was later demolished.

I don’t know how she is being portrayed in the to-be released ‘Dirty Picture’.  She certainly was not dirty.