Waheeda Rehman: From 'CID' to 'Skater Girl', Indian cinema's enduring star
New Delhi(PTI): She wanted to be a doctor but ended up on the silver screen instead, an actor who began with Telugu cinema and went on to rule the Hindi film industry, slipping in and out of arthouse and mainstream cinema and staying relevant as movies evolved from black-and-white to colour.
Waheeda Rehman, who was on Tuesday named recipient of the 2021 Dadasaheb Phalke award, the government's highest honour in cinema, acted in over 90 films over almost seven decades. In a career arc made for celluloid history, Rehman made her debut in Hindi films as a character artiste in the 1956 film "CID", moved on to lead roles and returned to cameos in her later years.
What has stood out over the years has been the apparent ease and the grace with which she did it all. She comfortably straddled the twin worlds of the brooding "Kaagaz ke Phool" and the entertaining "Ram aur Shyam". Rehman, now 85, was last seen just two years ago in the sports drama "Skater Girl".
Born in Chennai to a Deccani Muslim family, Rehman never aspired to be an actor but knew she wanted to make people "laugh and cry".
"I wanted to become a doctor, because in those days for Muslim families medicine was the only respectable profession," the actor recalled in a Tweak India interview two years ago.
Art, culture and dance interested her since she was a child. And with the support of her father, an IAS officer, she was able to pursue her dream of learning Bharatanatyam and then making a career in the movies.
"I used to make faces looking in the mirror. When my father asked why do I do this, I said 'I want to make people laugh and cry'," she said in the interview.
She was first seen in the movies in the 1955 Telugu films "Rojulu Maraayi" and "Jayasimha". A chance meeting with Guru Dutt in Hyderabad that same year changed the course of her career - and her life.
She moved to Mumbai, then Bombay, and was launched in Dutt's film "CID", alongside Dev Anand in 1956. Rehman played the role of the antagonist, a dancer.
It was the beginning of a memorable creative partnership with Dutt, their collaboration resulting in some of Indian cinema's finest films -- "Pyaasa", "Kaagaz Ke Phool", "Chaudhvin Ka Chand" and "Saheb Bibi Aur Ghulam".
The Dev Anand and Rehman collaboration was also special. Their most successful film was perhaps "Guide", remembered today for its forward looking portrayal of the protagonist Rosie, her modern-day relationship with the guide Raju and the songs by S D Burman.
"I'm very happy and doubly happy because it is Dev Anand's birthday. I think, 'taufa unko milna tha, mujhe mil gaya'," Rehman told PTI after getting news of the Dadasaheb Phalke award.
"It is very wonderful that his celebration is going on and I get this honour. I'm really happy and grateful to the government that they chose me for this honour. So it is a combination and celebration of this and Dev sahab's 100th birth anniversary," she said.
Rehman also ventured into Bengali cinema with Satyajit Ray's "Abhijan" and became one of the highest paid women actors in the 1950s and 1960s, starring in diverse roles in films such as "Kohraa", "Bees Saal Baad", "Khamoshi", and "Guide", all of which have stood the test of time.
"I never compromised with costumes. I need to feel comfortable when I'm performing. In my first Hindi movie 'CID' I had mentioned in the contract that if I don't like the costume I will not wear it," she told Tweak India.
"CID" director Raj Khosla had also suggested that the actor change her name as it was "too long", but she refused outright.
In the 1970s, she shifted gears and took up more character roles. For 1971's "Reshma Aur Shera", she received a National Film Award for best actress.
At the peak of her career, she married her "Son of India" co-star Shashi Rekhi.
Nobody saw this coming, not even perhaps Rehman.
"We had a common friend Yash Johar. He (Shashi) used to stay at their place and I was very close friends with Yash. So we used to meet often. One day, we were having coffee and suddenly out of the blue he said, 'I want to marry you. Will you marry me?'
"I said, 'It is too sudden and I will take some time to think.' After three-four days, Yash called and said 'Malik, give the answer quickly otherwise he will kill me and Hiroo (Johar).' He was a nice, decent and good-looking Punjabi man. I said okay... He was a easy man, no problem. I learned cooking from him mostly," she recalled.
They have two children -- daughter Kashvi and son Sohail.
The career continued, almost uninterrupted.
After marriage, came several roles, including opposite Amitabh Bachchan in "Kabhi Kabhie" in 1976. And just two years later, she played mother to Bachchan in "Trishul" and again in 1982 film "Namak Halaal".
But the variety was missing, prompting her to move to Bengaluru to lead a quieter life with family.
"I started doing character roles.. And in India characters roles are mostly of a mother or a sister. And even the dialogues are at times same. 'Beta tum mil gaye, acche bano'. There was a certain kind of staleness. It's not inspiring," she said in the Tweak India interview.
Filmmaker Yash Chopra remained in touch with Rehman during her time away from Mumbai, and cast her in pivotal roles in 1980-1990s hits such as "Mashaal", "Lamhe" and "Chandni".
In the 2000s, she appeared in "Om Jai Jagdish", "Rang De Basanti", "Delhi-6" and "The Song of Scorpions".
As she grows older, Rehman is also evidence that there is life beyond just the movies and the zest is what keeps you going.
She continues to go on vacation and dinners with her close friends -- Asha Parekh and Helen.
"We went to Turkey. We went on a cruise to Scandinavian countries. We understand and trust each other," Rehman told the online channel, adding that she would love to go for scuba diving someday.
"I'm a happy person, and I naturally see beautiful things first and be happy about it. I'm content," she said.
Rehman is also associated with bringing to life some of Hindi films most popular songs -- "Kahin pe nigahen, kahin pe nishana" ("CID"), "Aaj phir jeena ki tamanna hai" and "Piya tose naina lage re" ("Guide"), "Luka chhuppi" ("Rang De Basanti" and "Genda phool" ("Delhi-6").
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Trump faces his most difficult Iran war decision: Will he deploy US troops to seize uranium?
Washington (AP): President Donald Trump is facing perhaps the most daunting question of the war with Iran, one that could define his time in office: Will he put US troops on the ground in Iran to secure some 970 pounds of enriched uranium that Tehran could potentially use to build nuclear weapons?
Trump has offered shifting reasons for launching the war, but he has been consistent in articulating that a primary objective in joining Israel in the military action is ensuring that Iran will “never have a nuclear weapon”.
The president has been more circumspect about how far he's willing to go to follow through on his pledge to destroy Iran's weapons programme once and for all, including seizing or destroying the near-bomb-grade nuclear material that Iran possesses.
Much of it is believed to be buried under the rubble of a mountain facility pummelled in US bombings Trump ordered last June that he had claimed “obliterated” Tehran's nuclear programme.
It's a risky, complicated project that many nuclear experts say cannot be done without a sizable deployment of US troops into Iran, a dangerous and politically fraught operation for the Republican president, who has vowed not to entangle the US in the sort of extended and bloody Middle East conflicts that still loom large on America's psyche.
At the same time, lawmakers and experts remain concerned that if Iran hard-liners emerge from the fighting, they'll be more motivated than ever to build nuclear weapons as they look to deter the US and Israel from future military action, a dynamic that makes taking control of Iran's enriched uranium even more critical.
That stockpile could allow Iran to build as many as 10 nuclear bombs, should it decide to weaponise its programme.
Some lawmakers, like Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., say they remain deeply fearful that the president has put the nation on a path that will require putting troops inside Iran for what he called Trump's confused and chaotic objectives.
“Some of the objectives that he continues to espouse simply cannot be achieved without a physical presence there -- securing the uranium cannot be done without a physical presence," said Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Meanwhile, Republican allies of Trump stress that there are plans in place to deal with the enriched uranium. Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman James Risch, R-Idaho, on Wednesday cited “a number of plans that have been put on the table”. He declined to elaborate.
Others acknowledged the complications of deploying troops into Iran.
“No one has given me a briefing on how you would do it without boots on the ground,” said Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “It doesn't mean you can't. But no one's ever briefed me about it.”
Scott added it's not tenable to allow the stockpile to remain: “I think it would be helpful to get rid of it.”
Trump and his advisers are rigidly obtuse
Nearly three weeks into a conflict that's left hundreds of people dead, tested longtime alliances and brought pain to the global economy, Trump and his top advisers have been rigidly obtuse about their deliberations over Iran's uranium stockpile.
“I'm not going to talk about that,” Trump said last week when asked about the enriched uranium. “But we have hit them harder than virtually any country in history has been hit, and we're not finished yet.”
Later that day, during an appearance in Kentucky, Trump appeared to claim the strikes had already neutralised the threat. “They don't have nuclear potential," he said.
Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters earlier this week that the administration sees no point in telegraphing “what we're willing to do or how far we're willing to go" while asserting "we have options, for sure.”
Experts say it's doable but won't be easy
Richard Goldberg, who served as director for countering Iranian weapons of mass destruction for the National Security Council during Trump's first term, said that seizing or destroying the enriched uranium is certainly doable, if the president decides to go that route.
The US and Israeli forces have been making strides toward creating the conditions — namely, establishing total air superiority — that would allow for special operations forces operators, who are trained in blowing up centrifuges and dealing with nuclear material, to conduct such an operation if the president decides to go that route.
To be certain, a troops-on-the-ground effort is expected to be far more complicated than other recent high-profile, lightning-strike insertion operations, such as the January capture of Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro or the May 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden, Goldberg said. And the likely need to remove rubble to get to the canisters of enriched uranium adds another layer of complexity, because it would require heavy construction equipment.
"But if you actually own the airspace and you can have close air support and drones and everything else up in the sky for pretty wide perimeter, presumably you could do a lot,” said Goldberg, who is now a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hawkish Washington think tank.
International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi told reporters in Washington this week that the assumption is much of the enriched uranium remains in the trio of Iranian nuclear sites bombarded last year by the US.
“The impression we have … is that it hasn't been moved,” said Grossi, adding that a bulk of the material is beneath the rubble at Iran's Isfahan facility while lesser amounts are at the Natanz and Fordow facilities that were destroyed in last year's American strikes.
Testifying before a Senate committee on Wednesday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard in her prepared remarks said the US attacks on Iran had “obliterated” Iran's nuclear enrichment programme and buried underground facilities.
Gabbard said the US has been monitoring whether Iran's leaders will try to restart its nuclear programme but said that they have not tried to rebuild their nuclear enrichment capability. She added that the clerical authority overseeing Iranian government has been degraded in Israel's strikes on its leadership but remains intact.
Brandan Buck, a senior foreign policy fellow at the Cato Institute, said that an effort to extract or dilute the enriched material would likely take more than 1,000 troops at each Iranian site and would take time to complete.
On the other hand, not acting to secure the enriched uranium also comes with risk. Should Iran's hard-liners remain in power, and with enriched material, they will now have greater motivation to build a nuclear weapon.
“Trump has put himself between a rock and a hard place,” Buck said. “Throughout this, he has had maximalist aims, but he's wanted to maintain minimal effort in order to keep the costs low.”
