![]() ![]() The tide turned when she was down to her last Rs 4,000. The responsibility of looking after the family weighed heavily on me.” As I sat at home, the money I’d saved vanished. But not a single producer came for three years. We bought new crockery to serve them tea and snacks. Elated, I was confident producers would be queuing up to sign me. She recalls, “At one point, both films were running to packed theatres on opposite sides of Lamington Road and were silver jubilees. He liked my performance and from then on I was part of every film he made.”Ī spate of films later, her performance in Bombay To Goa and a pivotal role in Caravan made audiences and critics take notice. I got to play her part and as luck would have it, director Babubhai Mistri was in the audience. “One day Sarita Khatau was unwell and couldn’t perform. “That was my learning ground,” offers Aruna. Whenever an artiste failed to turn up, she would be the substitute. Since no more films were coming her way, her father took her for his drama troupe rehearsals and told her to memorise every female character’s dialogues. ![]() They made me say a line of dialogue and I was on,” she smiles.Ī dozen-odd films followed, including Anpadh and Parasmani, till she reached a two-year phase when she was neither an adult nor a child. He asked whether I would work in the film. When Dilip called out to me several times, I reluctantly went to him. “Ignoring the auditions, we ran towards the table. Sensing indifference, he pointed to a corner where wafers and bottles of Coca Cola had been stacked. He gathered all the children and said that Dilip Kumar was looking for a child artiste. A supplier had come to Soonawala colony in Tardeo where they lived. He was proud I’d made a name for myself.”Īruna’s first film was Dilip Kumar’s Gunga Jumna. He’d stand in the balcony and gaze at it for hours. Smiles Aruna, “One month before he passed away, I bought a Fiat car for Rs 9,000. With grit and hard work, his eldest daughter proved him wrong. Her father always regretted not having a son as his first born someone who could have looked after the family when he was no more. When someone said ‘butter’ I’d check the spelling and realise it was spelt butter and not ‘ butar’.”Īruna’s father, Faredun Irani, owned a drama troupe and her mother Saguna was an actress. It had English to Hindi and Hindi to English translations. I bought a small Oxford dictionary for Rs 3.75. If anyone asked me ‘What’s your name?’ I’d reply, ‘My name is Aruna.’ Then I heard people just reply with their name. She reveals her secret, “English was taught from the fourth standard and by the time I reached the sixth, I was out of school. People often asked Aruna how she managed to speak English since she stopped going to school at a young age. What would a boy have achieved without education? But there are no regrets I have deep respect for my parents.” It’s good I was a girl, naach gaa ke kama liya. But in our family there was little money for the boys too. ![]() Money was to be spent on educating the boys. Sixty years ago, it was enough if a girl knew how to sign her name. I couldn’t stand up to my parents, especially my father. ![]() She refused to give up her studies and managed to clear her matriculation. Aruna recalls, “My younger sister was stubborn, though. She was forced to stop studying after the sixth standard. A topper at school, she wanted to be a doctor. As a child, work was far from Aruna’s mind. The reality today is that even the hero and the heroine hardly have parents in films so where’s the question of a mama, chacha or tai? The story just revolves around four friends.”īorn on August 18, 1946, Aruna Irani is the eldest of eight siblings (five brothers, three sisters). None of my contemporaries are active and not because they don’t want to work. She reasons, “For actresses my age, there’s no work in films anymore. Today’s generation might know her as Hansuba from the tele-serial, Sanskaar-Dharohar Apno Ki but she’s the same lady who was one of Amitabh Bachchan’s first leading ladies in Bombay To Goa (1972), who swayed to the beat as Rishi Kapoor sang Main shair to nahin in Bobby (1973) and who played the stern matriarch in Beta (1992).Ī veteran of around 400 films, Aruna swerved towards the small screen when roles in films stopped coming her way. And while she was concentrating on wolfing down everything on her plate, Dilip Kumar’s eyes spotted her potential and he called out to her. For a nine-year-old from a poor family, these were luxuries. A bottle of coke and potato wafers did the trick. ![]()
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