Smita and Shabanaji were long rumored to be professional rivals, kind of a Juhi-Madhuri thing.  No personal component, I never heard about them fighting over the same man or anything like that.  But some semi-nasty remarks passed in the press.  And now, the feud continues, long after death!  I am posting about Smitaji on Shabana’s birthday.

Smita Patil started as a news reader, after graduating from IIFT (interestingly, she was a local Pune girl, so she could commute to classes), but her unusual look and the way she caught the camera attracted film directors, and soon she was being offered roles in the top art films of the 70s and 80s.

Her performances and the great films she was a part of would be enough to make her revered, but then her tragic personal story was added onto it.  After falling in love with a married man and insisting on carrying his child, she died shortly after giving birth at age 31.

She is still so revered that decades after her death, the film industry was willing to give her son a good launch in her memory, until Ekk Deewana Tha and Issaq effectively killed his career.  So when the news came out that Katrina Kaif was being given the “Smita Patil Memorial Award”, the twitterati and the media started beating the war drums.

(Obviously, the movie isn’t as good as the original, but this one song almost is!)

Now, none of that is really news.  At least, not the kind of news I find interesting to discuss.  But what is news, is that Swara Bhaskar wrote a really good and thoughtful piece on why she really doesn’t much care about this.  Swara was the sister in Prem Ratan Dhan Payo and Prithviraj’s wife in Aurangzeb, and she’s going to be in Veere Di Wedding, if that ever comes out.  She is an excellent actress, in the Smita mode, very strong onscreen presence and taking challenging roles.  And she apparently heard about the uproar through people asking her reaction as someone who “should” get this award.

I already liked Swara just for her performances, but after reading her reaction, I really really like her.  You should just read it yourself, go here to see it.

She starts by giving the basic background about the award that no media source seemed to care to bother to track down.  It’s given by a random local society, with no connection to film or the Patil family.  They always give it to some big name local actress, it is a clear attempt to get donations for their annual awards banquet, nothing else.  No big deal, every not for profit does this, gives an award to some random famous person to garner donations.  Why should we care just because they have chosen to put Smita’s name on it?

Secondly, she asks, what’s the matter with Katrina?  Why do people get so upset about her?  She works hard, her movies do well, why all this hate?  She seems like a fine person!

So, essentially, the news story I am choosing to report, instead of “Katrina Kaif insults the memory of Smita Patil!”, is “Swara Bhaskar is even cooler a person than you thought she was!”