Maa of a 1000 sons

Nirupa Roy has epitomized the Hindi film mother more than any other heroine before or since.

She was the mother of a thousand Bollywood sons, so strongly etched is her portrayal of the mater in the 280 odd Hindi films that she did. In other words, Nirupa Roy has epitomized the Hindi film mother more than any other heroine before or since. And she was ably supported by her onscreen sons - particularly so a son called Vijay, played more often than not by Amitabh Bachchan.

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Roy who passed away after a cardiac arrest on October 13, 2004 was born on January 4, 1931 in Valsad, India and christened Kokila Kishorechandra Balsara. She was still a teenager (15-year-old) when she made her screen debut in Gujarati-language films. Largely associated with mythologicals since they were the order of the day, Roy's serene beauty was employed successfully in films such as Satyavan Savitri, Gauri Pooja, Alakh Niranjan, Badrinath Yatra, Har Har Mahadev, Ishwar Bhakti, Bhakta Dhruv Kumar, and Patal Bharavi among several others. In fact, she played the role of Divinity so often that she was often referred to as Parvati (Shiva's consort) by her friends!

But there was another side to Roy's onscreen persona as well. Before she came to be the sole representative to an entire generation of heroes as the perfect, ideal mother, Roy went beyond being just a pretty face. Her stellar performances in films like Rani Roopmati with Bharat Bhushan, Amar Kumar's Garam Coat, Bimal Roy's Do Bigha Zameen and Yash Chopra's Dharamputra and Mohan Sehgal's Aulad are undoubtedly some of her best. With the exception of the first which was a historical, the others represented the 'social film' that filmmakers of the time were attempting.

Nirupa Roy won Filmfare Best Supporting Actress trophy thrice

While

Garam Coat

(based on a short story by Rajender Singh Bedi, one of the writers of the Progressive Movement of the 1940s) shows the devastating effect that the loss of a hundred rupee note can have on the life of a postal clerk and his family,

Aulad

was an indepth study of the frustration of a woman longing for a child and the ridicule that she is subjected to by the society. Its maker was Mohan Sehgal who had spent long years with Uday Shankar at his dance academy and subsequently worked with IPTA for a living. Roy was invariably the suffering half of a couple going through the day-to-day struggle and

Do Bigha Zameen

was no exception. In fact, she became so good at these roles that portraying the morally upright mother in her subsequent films seemed a natural move.

In fact, her performances in Chanakya's Ram Aur Shyam (which starred Dilip Kumar, Waheeda Rehman, Mumtaz and Pran) turned out to be a precursor of things to come. As Sulakshana she played a protective, older sister to Dilip Kumar's Ram and Shyam whom she loves to distraction. Her graph moves from the suffering sister who helplessly watches her brother being beaten up by her husband (Pran) to one who stands up to him in the final scenes to prevent her brother from coming to any more harm. Her character would always stand up for the honest, the ethical and the upright not once deviating from the truth - no matter the compulsions.