My sister Prabha Anand’s poem book was released by Sharmila Tagore

 My sister Prabha Anand’s poem book was released by Sharmila Tagore

I had a very nice interaction with eminent actress Sharmila Tagore for about one hour on January 5, 2023, at Gurugram. The occasion was the launching of a program to make contract-blindness-free Gurgaon under the Prime Minister’s National Blindness and Vision Defect Control Program at the premises of Arunodaya Desert Eye Hospital, Gurgaon where famous actress and goodwill Ambassador for UNESCO, Sharmila Tagore, was the chief guest, in the august presence of Gurugram Commissioner R.C. Bidan and Prof. Dinesh Singh, a renowned academician and former Vice-Chancellor of Delhi University, besides others. Besides, Sharmila Tagore released a book ‘Jeevan Jharokha’ a compilation of Poems by 85 years old my sister, Prabha Anand, on the occasion.

Sharmila’s husband ‘Tiger’ Mohamad Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi was remembered and his outstanding contributions to Indian Cricket were highlighted as it happened to be his birth anniversary.

During the informal talk before the launching of the campaign. Prof. Dinesh Singh recalled how young ‘Tiger’ Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi revamped the Indian team in the early 60s as the youngest ever captain of a team in the world at the age of 21. In the absence of a fast bowler, he used the strength of Indian spinners and his victories included India's first-ever Test match series win overseas against New Zealand in 1968, where in one of the matches Indian spinners opened the bowling with a new ball.  

Discussing various challenges being faced by the Hindi movie industry she said that besides challenges from south Indian movies, the Hindi movie industry faces challenges from regional movies.  She said that the cost of Hindi movies has gone very high with good actors asking for Rs. 75 crores and more for one movie. Besides, the lack of availability of good stories is also adversely affecting Hindi cinema. Regional movies especially dubbed ones with much less financial cost are giving challenges to Hindi movies through digitization.

Sighting the difference between her time and the current phase of filmmaking, the actress said that the film industry has become more systematic and the public craze towards movie actors has declined in view of various programmes in the electronic media.

Everything is organised now. Actors work in one film at a time. We used to do four or five films at a time and were not able to experiment with too many things. But the heart was in the right place, and everybody worked passionately. We had wonderful directors like Bimal Roy, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, and Raj Kapoor," she said.

Sharmila, who started her career with Satyajit Ray's Bengali film Apur Sansar, made a switch to Bollywood with hits like Aradhana, An Evening in Paris, and Mausam, but the actress never lost touch with regional cinema.

Sharmila Tagore appreciated the work done by the Arunodaya Desert Eye hospital trust (being run by my niece an eminent eye surgeon Dr. Reena and her husband Dr. Arun Sethi along with their all doctor children) in eradicating the cataract-blindness in the rural areas of Gurugram.