From ‘Helen. The life and times of an H-Bomb’ by Jerry Pinto

Text from the book interspersed with videos from youtube


Ladies and Gentlemen: the ‘queen of the nautch girls’, the Bollywood sensation, the H-bomb – Helen Richardson, now Helen Khan, but always, Helen.




Piya tu, ab to aaja/ Shola-sa man deheke/ Aake bujha-ja/ Tan ki jwala thandi ho jaaye/ Aise gale laga ja/ Aa-aa-aa-aha (Come to me now, my love. Come, put out these fires. Come hold me, cool this volcano within me)






Although technically of Franco-Burmese descent, she was perceived as a white woman………….As a dancer she should have had a short shelf life. Younger women with firmer flesh and deeper cleavages should have usurped her position……….But from ‘Shabistan’ (1951) to Bulundi (1981), Helen was dancing. She was there while the studio mastodons were shivering in the Ice Age; she was there when the triumvirate of Raj Kapoor-Dev Anand-Dilip Kumar dominated the box office; she sashayed through much of the Bachchan era………..She vamped three generations of men………..when it should have been curtains………She resurfaced as a star mother and grandmother.




……….She added that her passion for dancing came out of the French and Spanish blood in her. ‘I have quite a mixed pedigree! Father was French and mother half Burmese and half Spanish. My great grandfather was a Spanish pirate!’




She had the mix of innocence and sensuality that separates the girls from the women.

The imitators were exciting too – Padma Khanna’s ‘Husn ke laakh rang’ (the myriad aspects of beauty) in ‘Johnny Mera Naam’ (1970)…….is still spoken of in hushed whispers among thirty and forty-somethings. But there was always something of the bazaar in them.






….the most important element was her joyousness, the exhilaration of her dancing……..the woman for whom dancing was as much about her enjoyment of her own body as it was about your enjoyment op it.




Helen Richardson was born on 14 July 1938 or 1939 (All these dates are uncertain………). Her mother was Marlene, a half-Spanish, half-Burmese woman and her father a Frenchman




……..as late as ‘Mayurpankh’ (1954), Helen was still not a featured dancer………It is here that Helen, playing a busker, sings ‘Mohabbat ki dastan aaj suno’ (Listen to a tale of love). Even before she has got to the ‘antara’, she has faded out of the scene………..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kgfVt8Sv0w




Helen’s real breakthrough cam in ‘Howrah Bridge’ (1958)……………’Mera Naam Chin-Chin-Choo/ Chin-Chin-Choo baba Chin-Chin-Choo/ Raat Chandni main mein aur tu/ Hullo Mister, how do you do?’ (My name is Chin-Chin-Choo/ Chin-Chin-Choo, sir, Chin-Chin-Choo/ On a moonlit night, just me and you - / Hullo Mister, how do you do?)






………….There are at least 15 films in which she was the female lead……………..None of these were hits………..’Hum Hindustani’ (1960), a film that brought her very close to playing the female lead, and not in B-grade trash……Joy Mukherjee…….is …..engaged to…….Helen………..the song they sing together – ‘Neeli Neeli ghata/ Bheegi bheegi hawaa/ Hai nashaa hi nashaa/ Kahin kho jaayen na’ (These blue clouds, these wet breezes, we might lose our senses to their intoxication) – is a romantic duet that takes them across South Bombay, almost as much a Mumbai darshan as it is a love song…………Helen seems out of her element………These are Romantic tropes and she was, it seems, at this remove, already a product of dim interiors.






It is true there were other dancers before Helen; Azoor……….Cuckoo. But in the Roman costume drama ‘Yahudi’ (1958) where Helen and Cuckoo share the song ‘Bechain dil, khoyi si nazar/ Tanhaaiyon mein sham-seher/ Tum yaad aate ho’ (My heart is restless, my gaze distracted; through the lonely nights and days, memories of you come back to haunt me), there is a fragility about Cuckoo. Helen was twenty or thereabouts while Cuckoo had been dancing for fourteen years. Against Helen’s puppy fat, Cuckoo’s face has a certain battered, gamine knowingness.






My contention is that Helen’s face was almost as important in her dancing as her body. Take, for example, that beautiful song of yearning, ‘Tumko piya dil diya’ (‘Shikari’, 1963), which she dances with Ragini, one of the Travancore sisters, renowned for their classical training in dance. Ragini’s execution is perfect, her body supple. But when you watch the two of them, it is Helen who holds you. Her face echoes the words……..more attuned to the lyrics. In the last sequence, which is the usual crescendo, Helen’s face has the abandon of the born dancer, while Ragini still looks like someone who is smiling because she is supposed to smile






When she was given silly stuff to do, she did it with huge panache………..Take ‘Sachaai’ (1969)……where Helen features in a bizarre song sequence…………..’Kab se bhari hai saaqi/ Botal sharaab ki/ Aa pee le isme bandh hain/ Raatein shabaab ki’ (The cupbearer has long since filled the bottle with wine, come drink of it, for trapped within are nights of passion)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKq7fRcB-Ks




One of the most commonly held ‘truths’ about Helen is that she was never vulgar…………In a collaborative enterprise like cinema, the blame for vulgarity is difficult to apportion………Consider ‘Night in London’ (1967)……she sings the rousing ‘Aur mera naam hai Jameela’ (And my name is Jameela)…….In one shot she throws her arms around two of her plump studs and raising her hips, jerks her pelvis at the camera while throwing her legs apart.



But vulgarity is not merely a function of what is done……..but also of how it is received…….We did not see Helen as vulgar and so nothing she did on-screen was vulgar.




In ‘Sholay’ (1975), Helen……..gives it her heart-stopping all






……..’Don’ (1978)………Helen………begins to sing one of her sultriest numbers, ‘Yeh mera dil pyaar ka diwaana’ (My heart is mad about love)






In ‘Inkaar’ (1976)…….a high-cut choli in black-and-yellow checks and a bright yellow sari in the Koli fisher-folk style…….an erotically charged outfit because it brings back the figures of fantasy of middle-class Mumbai: tribal, or aboriginal, fisherwomen…….’Mungda, oh mungda, main gud ki dali/ Mangta hai to aaja rasiya na hi to main ye chali’ (I am the jiggery, you are the ant/ Come get me, you rake, or I’ll be on my way)






In ‘Gumnaam’ (1965), Helen plays Kitty Kelly, one of the seven suspects in a murder…….Helen’s work in the film was rewarded with a ‘Filmfare’ award for Best Supporting Actress……….’Is duniya mein jeena ho to/ Sun lo meri baat/ Gham chhod ke manaao rangreli/ Aur maan lo jo kahe Kitty Kelly’ (If you must live in this world/ Listen to Kitty Kelly/ Forget your worries and make merry)






One of Helen’s most famous songs is the slow, smoky cabaret (sung, unusually by Lata Mangeshkar), ‘Aaa jaan-e-jaan, mera ye husn jawaan, jawaan, jawaan/ Tere liye hai aas lagaaye, oh zaalim aajaa na’ (Come, love of my life, my beauty and my youth long for you) from ‘Inteqaam’ (1969)






……Anamika (1973)…….is one of Helen’s most famous numbers……..’Aaj ki raat koi aane ko hai’ (Tonight, someone will come to me.)






…….showcased in RD Burman’s brilliant composition – and one of Helen’s best songs – Ai Haseena Zulfonwaali jaan-e-jahaan – O beauty of the dark tresses, the love of all the world……….







……..Mere Jeevan Saathi (1972)………..’Aao na gale lagaalo na’ (Come hold me)






……..Kishor Kumar…….totally, upstaging Helen………in ‘Half Ticket’ (1962)…………..’Woh ik nigaah kya mili/ Tabeeyatein machal gayin’ (Just a glance from you/ And my heart is running wild)






………….the 1970s as the time when Helen’s career began to decline……she was an old lady in cinematic terms



In some ways 1981 was the turning point. Helen married Salim Khan and settled down to the life of a second wife.………the year 1982 was her last fully ‘active’ year………….we remember only that Helen was a great dancer. We do not choose to remember that she was surrounded by second-rate dance directors, colour-blind art directors, and dress designers with pretty wild notions about what a dancer should wear. We choose not to remember the bad and the ugly moments, of which there were plenty.




………..Mohabbatein (2000)………..Raj plays a riff from ‘Ai haseena zulfonwaali jaan-e-jahan’ on his violin, and Helen lets down her hair and dances for a few moments.

This is how iconization works






The item numbers of the 00s take themselves very seriously. In the moue that is the standard sexualized challenge on every female dancer’s face, I do not find the laughing invitation to naughtiness that I remember in Helen’s……….none of these women would be able to wield a raincoat or a slipper or a handkerchief with the right degree of coquettishness and sensuality. They’re never out of step but they’re not having fun.

I miss Helen.

The industry does too.

And there can be no greater tribute than that.










And others

…Kaajal (1965)…….Yeh zulf agar khulke bikhar jaaye to achcha (Were your hair to be undone and spread out, how beautiful it would be)






…Gumnaam (1965)………’Hum kaale hai to kya hua dilwaale hai’ (What if I am black, I have a big heart)






……Sampoorna Ramayana…….’Baar Baar Bagiya Mein koyal na bole’ (the nightingale wont sing again and again in this garden)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tq7IiPgfhjs




Junglee (1961), Suku Suku







…..jaali note (1960)……………….’Nigaahon ne pheka hai/ Panje pe chakka/ Balam tera mera/ Pyaar hua pakka’ (My eyes have trumped you; my love, you and I are now an item)






…..Pagla Kahin Ka (1970)…………’Aashiq hoon ek mehjabeen ka/ Log kahen mujhe pagla kahin ka’ (I am in love with a beautiful woman/ So much in love that the world calls me mad).





Resources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_(actress)