From screen temptress to yogini, Mamta Kulkarni’s life has come full circle. Why did Mamta Kulkarni become untouchable for the film industry? At one time, she had the best banners (N. Chandra, Salim Khan, Keshu Ramsay, Rakesh Roshan, Harmesh Malhotra, Shakti Samanta). But alas, she didn’t have the manners to match the banners. A certain crassness was noticed in her behavior. The industry clung to the crudity and disregarded the girl’s obvious confidence before the camera.
In one of his press interviews, Bharat Shah was once quoted as saying, “Mamta Kulkarni is a loose woman.” I do believe the polite and soft-spoken producer-tycoon was misquoted. How can any individual of such stature and power bring himself to talk so “loosely” about a lady?
Mamta had it all. Then she went and lost it to who knows what—perhaps her ego? Or was it the desire to reach the moon without getting her feet snarled in the craters?
Each time Mamta Kulkarni opened her mouth, she would put her foot in it. She fought media battles with Manisha Koirala, Urmila Matondkar, and other actresses who generally stayed away from mudslinging. She took compliments too seriously and didn’t know how to react to them.
When Govinda made a rare reconciliatory gesture towards the isolated, self-crowned queen, she turned around to tell the friendly star that she didn’t much care for his publicly declared compliments. What’s more, she went public with her declaration that she didn’t want Govinda to compliment her in public.
Naturally, the Hero No. 1 withdrew in embarrassment, thinking, Mujhe kya padi hai? Who wants to go out of their way to be nice when the person at the receiving end is hell-bent on creating issues out of non-issues?
The word “embarrassment” often popped up in discussions regarding Ms. Kulkarni. Not that she was discussed too often in those days when she was a leading lady—unless the conversation at a social gathering ran out of humor. Then the name “Mamta” would be brought up to denote cheesy provocativeness—the kind Mama’s boys NEVER bring home unless they want Papa to disinherit them.
How did Mamta burn her bridges? Her career in Hindi films started with a slap. The director S.A. Chandrasekhar, in her first film Mera Dil Tere Liye, planted a thundering thappad on her face when she couldn’t get a shot right. Mamta never forgot that slap. And I’m sure Mr. Chandrasekhar hasn’t forgotten it either, though I’m not too sure he proudly tells his friends that he’s the director who slapped Ms. Kulkarni’s way to success.
The late director Kidar Sharma was rightly proud of the fact that he once chastised the erring Raj Kapoor on the sets of Neel Kamal.
Long ago, Mamta Kulkarni ceased to be taken seriously. While she laughed at the world for not taking her volcanic talents seriously, showbiz moved on to brighter, younger, and more career-focused actresses who didn’t raise a hue and cry about every slight, imagined or otherwise.
The biggest mistake Mamta made was shooting her mouth off arbitrarily. Of course, random frankness takes its toll on a film star’s career. We have the examples of wannabe wonder women like Sheetal and Moon Moon Sen, who claimed the whole show world was busy propositioning them—and they were probably not lying (pun intended).
Girls in all working places, and not just showbiz, get sleazy offers from potbellied perverts. Perhaps this phenomenon is more prevalent in the world of movies. The reason is quite simple: good-looking men and women are often thrown together, physically and emotionally, at outdoor and indoor locations.
Now, filmmakers don’t often fall into the exclusive club of good-looking souls. So, they use the power they hold as star-making filmmakers to trap heroines into saying “yes” when they mean “no.” I knew of one movie mogul who has an unwritten clause in his agreements about his below-the-belt needs with the new faces he frequently introduces. If a new girl works with this randy mogul, she knows what she’s getting into.
Sensible, decent heroines from well-adjusted homes—and that practically covers the whole film industry—know how to handle such advances. They needn’t despair just because men’s basic instincts come to the fore.
The minute Mamta Kulkarni squealed against Raj Kumar Santoshi’s amorous intentions, she sealed her career’s fate. No one in the film industry wants to touch a troublemaker with a barge pole. Remember the case of old-time actress Ameeta’s daughter, Sabia? Mother and daughter went to the press accusing a very prominent and successful star, Rajesh Khanna, of sexual harassment. The star’s reputation suffered no dents at all (probably because his career was on the decline anyway).
But Sabia lost everything. Industry know-alls wondered what she was fussing about anyway.
“There’s an unbelievable amount of sexual promiscuousness in showbiz,” a young director avers. And he’s probably right. I have personally seen wannabe heroines hovering suggestively on the sets of successful directors, with nothing to offer except the obvious. But no one forces them into succumbing to sexual advances. No one forces himself on a reluctant starlet.
So, Mr. Santoshi might or might not have tried to get Mamta Kulkarni to part with more than just her histrionic abilities during China Gate. What was the big deal anyway? That a director propositioned her? Or that he propositioned and chopped her role to smithereens when she said no?
In any case, why bring the press into the matter? When two consenting adults discuss sexual matters, it is strictly between them. Mr. Santoshi allegedly made an offer. Ms. Kulkarni refused. The matter should have ended there. But the press naively played into her hands.
They first printed the faxed press handouts she sent out against her director. They then quoted her retraction, where she did a volte-face and exonerated Mr. Santoshi of unbecoming conduct. Later, when her role was supposedly chopped off, Ms. Kulkarni’s pearls of wisdom were again scattered in every magazine in town.
Here was a woman who was clearly not too sure about what she wanted from her life or her career. The way Mamta Kulkarni incessantly attacked her colleagues and directors, and the manner in which she conducted herself in the press—posing with little on except the music and the perfume, and so on—we didn’t have to be psychoanalysts to see how psychologically disturbed this girl was.
Rather than curb her delusions of grandeur (“I’d rather be a Lata Mangeshkar than an Anuradha Paudwal”), the press encouraged Ms. Kulkarni to talk nonsense. Highlighting her most outrageous quotes, printing her most daring pictures, and presenting her to the public as some kind of twisted Mae West and Madonna combined, the media got its flavor of “dement.”
We have Urvashi Rautela going down the same route in current times. No one is stopping her. No one stopped Mamta Kulkarni. Did anyone stop to think that this sweet girl, making monstrous mistakes in her career, actually needed help, support, and solid advice?
It’s better to have love than to have lust. Because when you incessantly doubt the intentions of your professional colleagues, you put them all on the defensive and drive them away. So you played chess with Aamir Khan on the sets of Baazi, and he would drop in at your home for lunch or tea. That’s okay. Aamir is a friendly, no-hassles kind of guy. He often socializes with his co-stars. Why make a song and dance about a perfectly normal and healthy occurrence, making it sound cheap, sleazy, and suggestive in the process?
Friendships lose their wazan—their substance—when they are talked about at length. I understood what Mamta meant when she said she wanted a husband like Aamir. Unfortunately, such candid confessions embarrass the harmless intent of the person one adores. Mamta lost a friend called Aamir Khan because she didn’t know how to contain her feelings.
She similarly isolated herself from all her friends and colleagues, from Bobby Deol to Salman Khan, by either claiming that they were “interested” in her or that she was not “interested” in them. All this bilge belonged in the trashcan. Instead, it made its way between magazine covers. Sure, male stars like to have their little flings. It’s up to the actress to handle such sticky situations with tact and discretion. Mamta lacked both qualities. This absence took its toll on her career. She was branded a big-mouthed troublemaker.
More serious was the matter pertaining to Mamta’s, shall we say, cultural inclinations. Nowadays, it’s become socially acceptable for stars to cavort at private and public functions. But two years ago, when Ms. Kulkarni danced for the then-chief minister of Bihar and his selected guests, all hell broke loose. As was the case with the notorious Stardust cover, the lady panicked and backtracked. That was a strategic blunder.
Instead of saying, “Yes, I did dance for Mr. Laloo Yadav and his friends. What’s wrong with that? Aren’t all my colleagues dancing at wedding, marriage, and engagement ceremonies of the high and mighty? At least I’m not doing so at a certain Mr. Dawood’s private do. I am only giving a bunch of political fogies their share of cheap thrills,” she denied it.
Instead of owning it, Ms. Kulkarni claimed she was never in Bihar, even when everyone in the state and outside knew otherwise. Later, when the situation escalated, Ms. Kulkarni admitted that she had indeed performed for Rabri Devi’s husband.
She had it all. But she threw it away. And the press did nothing to stem the tide. Instead, they sat back to watch the circus show, humoring Ms. Kulkarni where firm guidance and a verbal reprimand could have saved her career. Instead of debating with her on the hugely irrelevant question of whether she secretly married an action director or not, we should have told her to keep it to herself and concentrate on her career.
When she claimed she was turning down prestigious assignments because her role wasn’t substantial enough, we should have turned around and reminded her that she isn’t Meryl Streep, Sridevi, or Shabana Azmi. Why should she be offered substantial roles, for crying out loud?!
Why does the press humor and pamper stars into believing their own, sometimes self-written, mythology? This is what happened in Mamta Kulkarni’s case. Because every outrageous statement she made against everyone—from Rekha to Tinu Verma—was dutifully regurgitated in the press, Mamta Kulkarni actually started to believe she made sense, when all the while the press was celebrating nonsense.
There is a lesson in Mamta Kulkarni’s swift rise (didn’t she star in hits like Sabse Bada Khiladi and Karan Arjun?) and languorous decline. The sharks control the film industry. They are going to get bigger and more powerful in this century. To survive in the rat race, a star aspirant needs a thick skin and long, fluttering eyelashes. The former so that she can ignore the lewd passes and crude propositions. The latter so that she can act the wide-eyed babe-in-the-woods when confronted by a pass-master in moviedom.
