Regarded as the Mother India of Rekha’s career, the character of the Lucknowi courtesan whose adventurous life is defined and defiled by the various men she encounters, Rekha was pure dynamite in Umrao Jaan. Director Muzaffar Ali has gone on-record to say Rekha would often disappear from location. But who cares! Rekha wowed audiences with her interpretation of Asha Bhosle’s timeless mujras.
There is a supreme stillness that shrouds Rekha’s character Umrao Jaan Adaa; an inexplicable tranquility which Rekha famously called “doing nothing”.
Not too many of our actors know much about the art of doing nothing. In Indian cinema, the more you do on screen, the more your chances of being noticed. Rekha took the risk and sailed through a character which is dreamy, distant sensuous and impregnable. I don’t think any of the men who cross her path ever get to know who Umrao really is.
In that sense, Umrao is the daughter of Meena Kumari’s Sahibjan in Kamal Amrohi’s Pakeezah. Neither tawaif is all there. When Meena Kumari sings, ‘Yun hi koi mil gaya ttha sare raah chalte chalte’ she has the dreamy faraway look of a woman who is physically here but emotionally someplace else.
I see the same look in Rekha’s eyes as she sings ‘Justju jisski tthi ussko toh na paya humne/Iss bahane se magar dekh lee duniya humne.’ The lucid words of regret and hope by Shahrayar in many ways define Rekha’s own life.
Like Umrao, Rekha never found what she was looking for. I speak in the past as the time to find that elusive idea called True Love has passed her by.
ALSO READ: Muzaffar Ali Reveals Why He Chose Asha Bhosle Over Lata Mangeshkar For Umrao Jaan
Just like Umrao. Rekha didn’t play Umrao Jaan Adaa. She lived the character through the sighing silences. How on earth did she retain that “not here” look so consistently? “Because I wasn’t there,” Rekha once giggled when I asked her this question.
One thing is for sure: no other actress could have made Umrao look so unattainable, so far removed from the men who adored her. A great deal of the central performance’s efficacy depends on the poetic aura that Muzaffar Ali, along with music composer Khayyam and lyricist Shahrayar created for Rekha’s character. The words that Umrao throws so casually even in her ‘saheli’ scenes with Prema Narayan (there, only so that Umrao could speak her mind) are so embedded in the elixir of life, they seem to have been carved by the pen of destiny.
Pravin Bhatt’s cinematography, Muzaffar Ali, Manzoor and Bansi Chandragupta’s art direction , Gopi Krishna and Kumudini Lakhia’s choreography and Subhashini Ali’s costumes gather their glory into embodying Umrao as the pinnacle of seductive enigma.
I don’t think Rekha is aware of what she has achieved in Umrao Jaan. It is one of the most silently articulate portrayals of love’s pursuit ever seen. Its wordless lucidity is timeless. Fifty years hence Umrao Jaan would still remain the work of art that it is now.