She has just about managed a paragraph or two of an obituary at most. Sheila Ramani, who passed away uncrooned and unmissed at the age of 83 in the hilltown of Mhow, has been criminally ignored. Never mind if she featured in films directed by V. Shantaram, Bimal Roy, Chetan Anand and Ramesh Saigal, besides toplining Abana, lored to be the first film in the Sindhi language.
Few of those born post the 1950s can recall her. As for the now generation, forget it. Perhaps I have a special regard for Sheila Ramani — she of a face as sharp as a dagger, smoky voice of the Marlene Dietrich kind, hair a fluffy crown and lips painted ebony black during the black-and-white era — because she was my school buddy’s aunt. She would sashay in and out of Gulu Waney’s Churchgate home, leaving behind a cloud of Craven A cigarette smoke and a whiff of strong musk perfume. “She has always been like that, she does her own number,” Gulu’s staid mother would say enviously, “ever since she was crowned Miss Simla. She’s so independent, she listens to no one but herself.”
Gulu and I, both being movie nuts, would gape at Sheila Ramani with saucer eyes. Hey, she has acted opposite Dev Anand (Taxi Driver, Funtoosh), Sunil Dutt (Railway Platform), and, believe this, Karan Dewan (Teen Batti Char Raasta). Karan Dewan, the most unhero-like of heroes of wispy moustache fame on an uncle-like face, happened to be our grannies’ favourite. They adored him, simply because he was immaculately suited-booted and as gallant as Sir Walter Raleigh.
The classic gentleman.
Grannies didn’t have much to say about Sheila Ramani though, since she wasn’t the Dresden-doll type and could be footloose, a character who could have been described in the argot of those days as a “brazen hussy”. After all, she was Sylvie the slithering club dancer of Taxi Driver who was hated by the prissy heroine. Or Sheila Ramani could be a Marie Antoinette in Shantaram’s Surang, turning a blind eye, before reforming, towards the plight of quarry workers.
Incidentally, there’s a personal backstory here: my mother Zubeida had been signed up for Surang (I have preserved the contract for no explicable reason). Zubeida’s orthodox father leapt out of his skin, threatened to shoot Shantaram (with a buckshot rifle!). That ended Zubeida’s dreams of stardom. My granny and I, therefore, could never bring ourselves to see Surang. When I mentioned this to Sheila Ramani, she laughed cryptically, “Just as well. The film wasn’t Shantaram’s best! I was quite a nasty chick in that one.”
Not that she didn’t essay the goody-goody sort, standing stalwartly by the side of a graduate in desperate search of employment. The jobless one was portrayed by Kishore Kumar in Bimal Roy’s Naukri, which surely merits re-assessment. Also, the many self-proclaimed film preservationists could do something out-of-the-box once: Do Sheila Ramani’s obscure works, like her last films — Jungle King (1959) and The Return of Superman (1960) — survive in any format? Yes, Superman! And my wild guess is that she was playing the B-town version of Lois Lane.
Back in time, some Sindhi families would abbreviate their surnames. Sheila Kewalramani became Sheila Ramani for the screen. She could have played a longer innings if she hadn’t chucked it all up to marry industrialist Jal Cowasji, a courteous Karan Dewan-sort who would fawn over her, fetching her refills of gin and tonic. There’s scant information about Jal Cowasji, except that he passed away decades ago. Their two sons, Rahul and Zai, have chosen to keep a distance from Bollywood. In the autumn of her life, all I’ve gleaned is that she was confined to a wheelchair.
During the late ’60s and ’70s, her trips to Bombay were brief but she missed those flashes of the limelight. “Hey you,” she had husked, “You’re a journalist now. Recommend me to your friends in Bollywood. I would love to play a wicked mother-in-law. Such fun! But mind you, I don’t want to be paid a pittance.” She chose not to speak about her hero Dev Anand except to say, “He lives in his own world. I do meet up with Kalpana (Kartik) but we girls just have a beer or two and cackle away. No point in wallowing in the past.”
Right. But, still, if Sheila Ramani had at least talked at some point about her stardom, today her obits wouldn’t have been so short and bittersweet.
The writer is a journalist, film critic and film director
