Remembring Veteran Actress Shashikala on her Birth Anniversary... BY LT. ALI PETER JOHN

For the first ten years of my life, I believed that all women were like my mother. But, I gradually discovered how women could have so many different faces. And if there was one place where I saw the many faces of a woman, it was in Hindi films - Ali Peter John

One of the faces that fascinated me was the face of the woman as bad and even wicked women and if there were actresses who showed me this side of a woman, it was actresses like Lalita Pawar, Manorama, Bindu and Shashikala.

I had met and talked to all of them and found how they were so very good women in real life and how they portrayed the other side of a woman and if there was one actress who played the vamp to perfection and was an adorable and lovable woman in real life, it was undoubtedly Shashikala whose birthday it is today (August 3 ).

Shashikala who started off when she was very young belonged to a well-to-do Maharashtrian family found her metier when she played the roles of the woman who played havoc with both the female and male good characters in a film. A time came when she was considered to be the best bad woman.

However, with success also came a string of personal problems. She did not have a happy marriage and finally gave up films and went away to Australia.

She came back and without letting anyone know, she joined Mother Teresa's Home in Calcutta, "the city of joy", a name given to the city because of the powerful presence and most powerful work done by a diminutive nun from Albania who had dedicated her whole life to serve the sick, the suffering and the dying.

There was a new Shashikala working together with Mother Teresa and her nuns and she spent the next many years serving the inmates of the Mother's Home. She swept rooms, she cleaned the toilets of the lepers and others whose bodies were rotting and filled with maggots and insects. She found a strange kind of satisfaction and peace like she had never experienced before.......

But, like they say once an actress or actor or anyone in films can not really change and there is always the call and the temptation to come back. And that is what happened to Shashikala too. She wanted to be back before the camera and when she asked Mother Teresa for permission to leave her Home, the Mother who never wanted to stop anyone, gave Shashikala permission to leave .....

And Shashikala came back to be received very warmly by the film industry. She found the kind of roles that suited her age and her new image. She worked with good directors like Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Basu Chatterjee and Saawan Kumar Tak among others......

She now lived in her own house in a building called Queens Apartments and started living the life of a celebrity again. Her birthday parties on August 3 was an eagerly awaited occasion, especially for journalists, parties at which she served the best liquor, snacks and dinner ......

She had very big people who were still her admirers and her greatest fan was the Shiv Sena Supremo Balasaheb Thackeray ...

I had the privilege of being introduced to her by Mr.Mohan Wagh , the popular Marathi theatre personality who had started life as a junior photographer in "Screen"and who was to later be the father-in-law of Raj Thackeray . Attending her birthday parties had become a prestigious issue for many journalists which included me who she had given a new name and she always lovingly addressed me as "my three in one".....

She was not getting the right kind of roles and decided to quit films.She was not in a very good financial position and it was Mohan Wagh who helped her in getting a flat in a building called Saibaba Apartments in the suburb of Goregaon . She is said to be living the life of a recluse like some of her contemporaries like Mala Sinha, Shubha Khote, Aruna Irani and Kamini Kaushal

How some stories take different twists and turns and how they end ! Will actresses and actors find some ways of having a better and more peaceful life after they have lived a tumultuous life to bring light into millions of life ?