The Rajnigandha-Kissed Woman

Hindi cinema’s girl next door Vidya Sinha left for her heavenly abode in August after suffering a respiratory failure in a Mumbai hospital. The actress who was the epitome of the real Indian woman of the 1970’s will always be remembered for the whiff of fresh air she brought to cinema at a time when the industry was ruled by glamorous heroines. She was the delicate balance between mainstream and art-house cinema actresses. We remember the late actress by reliving some of her best known moments in cinema.

- Disney Brar

She was a beautiful, innocent and a coy woman on screen. She had all the ingredients of a quintessential Indian woman. Most of the times, Sinha was seen draped in lovely, floral nine yards sporting a long plait with a purse caressing her slender waistline. What haunts us the most when we think about Sinha are her kohl-lined and expressive eyes. Well, she did most of her talking with her eyes.

She was mostly seen as a working, middle-class woman who travelled by buses, trains and taxis. There was a distinctive quality of assertiveness about Sinha which made women in the India of the 1970’s relate to the characters she lived on screen. Sinha will always be fondly remembered for her films- Rajnigandha (1974), Choti Si Baat (1975) and Patni Patni Aur Woh (1978). Be it Rajnigandha’s Deepa Kapoor or Prabha Narayan of Choti Si Baat, Sinha essayed her character of a woman dealing with the complexities of love and life with conviction making these two films classics in their own light. In her career she starred in around 30 Hindi films over a period of 10 years.