"Something Special about Ghar"

So Ghar was being made by maneck chatterjee who suffered a serious accident. And that’s how Gulzar saab came to direct this one. The apocryphal story goes that on day one of shoot, Gulzar saab had set up the lights and ready for take. His heroine turned up on the sets and vanished. It’s said that she took off to see the matinee show of Aandhi to check out her “new” director’s work.

Ghar along with films like Do anjaane was really rekhaji’s second coming as an actor. Until then she was known as a bankable movie siren.

Based on a true life incident, Ghar was the story of the trauma a house wife goes through after being gang raped and the repercussions it had on her marriage. Gulzar’s sensitive direction, pancham’s astounding score and Rekhaji’s masterly performance had everyone stunned. The same year besides being nominated for best actress for Ghar she was also nominated for a Filmfare her role in Muqaddar ka Sikandar as supporting actor. she lost out to nutan for Main tulsi tere angan ki in the best actress category while Reena roy snagged the supporting actress role for Apnapan.

Rekhaji remembers being traumatised during the filming of the gruesome rape scene as one of junior artistes had pulled her hair really hard during the filming. And later going through the motions of the scene again while dubbing drained her.

Gulzar besides writing scores of film songs for Rekhaji in Musafir Khubsurat Baseraa worked with her briefly in Namkeen and then Ijaazat. He called her fondly kaalubaba while she calls him bhai. It’s an emotional relationship that has survived the vagaries of showbiz. Even when Rekhaji performed for the first time ever at Filmfare, it was Gulzar saab again who had done the voice over as a prelude. Here’s to more magical memories. Besides ofcourse newer endeavours.

By Jitesh Pillai (31st Jan 2019)