THE CURE OF ALL THE SORROWS OF THE WORLD
Jerry Pinto
Helen first danced on the Indian silver screen in 1951. She continued to do this for the next thirty years. Her logevity isn’t the only astonishing thing about her. More improbable is the fact that a ‘vamp’ and ‘cabaret dancer’, she became a hugely popular and respected icon in a society as conservative as ours.
Sharaab nahin hoon magar ek nasha hoon
Main saare zamaane ke gham ki dawaa hoon.(Alcohol I am not, but I am an intoxication
I am the cure of all the sorrows of the world.)
—Lyrics from Helen’s song in
Adhikaar (1971)I must have danced my way through more than a thousand films
in various languages, including Marwari and Bhojpuri.—Helen, to Filmfare, on receiving a
Lifetime Achievement Award in 1998
With the exception of a few very silly films (Aap Beeti, Maya, Khoon Khoon, Jab Andhera Hota Hai), Helen’s name on the marquee meant that she was going to dance, which in turn generally meant a song. Not always, again, for there were some dances without songs as well (Hulchul, The Great Gambler). These sequences were primarily intended as eye candy but that was not the only function they performed.
The song in Hindi cinema has been paid much attention, most of it dismissive. It is regarded as a holdover from older art forms such as folk theatre and the Raas Leela and thus excused on the basis of its antiquity. It is scorned for its lack of realism, decried even by its exponents as ‘running around trees’. However, a more reasonable way of looking at the song would be to see it as unreal in the rational sense—no hundred-piece orchestra plays when two people fall in love, nor can a woman walking through a cemetery be audible to everyone simultaneously in a huge mansion—but certainly not meaningless in its symbolic reality.
Helen’s songs generally are described as cabarets. Historians of dance and other forms of public entertainment might cavil at the use of this term. For cabaret was born on 18 November 1881, when Rudolphe Salis opened his ‘Chat Noir’, a cabaret artistique, on Montmartre, Paris. His intention: ‘We will satirize political events, enlighten mankind, confront it with its stupidity, cure those creeps of their ill-temper …’ The original purpose of cabaret, therefore, was to shock the middle class (epater les bourgeois). It was more than a bunch of ladies showing off their frilly pantalettes or lack thereof. Skits were performed that lampooned authority; there were also other ‘acts’, from contortionists to sword-swallowers to magicians. It was vaudeville with its underwear showing, a variety programme that teetered on the verge of being explicit, while never actually getting there. The frisson arose out of that unfulfilled promise.
Helen understood that. In The Britannica Encyclopaedia of Hindi Cinema, she says, ‘ … cabaret doesn’t mean just wriggling your body as people think—it’s narration in dance. Paris nightclubs like Foley’s and the Crazy Horse had these great cabarets.’ Indeed, this was what she did in her best cabarets—Aa jaan-e-jaan from Intequam, Piya tu ab to aa ja from Caravan or Aaj ki raat koi aane ko hai from Anamika—where a narrative is contained within the ambit of the song.
However, the word cabaret in the context of Indian cinema has come to mean a sexually suggestive dance performed by a woman for an audience that is either actually shown or is evident in the film. It is in this sense that the word will be used hereafter.
The usual codicils apply. This is not an exhaustive list and analysis, nor is it a defence. It is an attempt at rescuing the songs in which Helen featured from the charge that they were only about titillation. Some categories are based on the content of the lyrics and others on the role the song played in the story. It might seem that one should play into the other but this is not always so.
Often, categories spill into each other. The song of misdirection is sometimes also a song of seduction, as in negligee-clad Vera’s number in Shikar (1968). Helen’s song in Kaala Baazaar (1960) has elements of both the song of forgetfulness and the song of selfadulation.
And there are anomalies, too. For instance, how to categorize Helen’s Holi song in Biraadari (1966)? It serves no purpose in the story, which is about an old lady (Lalita Pawar) with a sharp tongue and a heart of gold who can never collect the rent from her impoverished tenants, thus denying her daughter Seema (Faryal) the finer things of life. When the old lady decides to renounce the world and go on a pilgrimage, Seema prepares to get some goodies and sell the property. So we have Helen dancing as a Koli tribal, which is easy enough to understand; she’s the Mumbai fantasy we crafted out of the aboriginal fisherfolk while squeezing them out of their homes. But why does she have a blonde wig?
Later, when Seema does sell the property, there’s another celebratory dance, a mujra, again performed by Helen minus the kiss-curls. She isn’t just a replacement for the heroine. Faryal could dance; not as well as Helen could, to be sure, but she too made a career out of vamping. Perhaps Helen was called upon to add firepower to the cast. Perhaps it could be that for this—and many other inscrutable, irrelevant songs—we have to thank the modus operandi of Hindi film directors until recently. In many films, she suddenly turned up, danced and disappeared. In Parasmani (1963) her song is an add-on, nothing more than a divertissement, before the action of the film. On the occasion of the Raksha Bandhan festival (yes, that is odd), she sings: Oui maa, oui maa, yeh kya ho gaya/ Unki gali mein dil kho gaya/ Bindiya ho to dhoond bhi loon main/ Dil na dhoonda jaaye (Oh dear, oh dear, what have I done?/ I’ve gone and lost my heart/ If it were a bindi, I could have found it/ Hearts aren’t easy to find). Once that is over, no more Helen. More’s the pity.
Amitabh Bachchan once remarked that he had never received a bound script until 2003. Thus when there is no script but only the skeleton of an idea, when the dialogues are being written as the shot is being readied, when producers impose their suspect commercial wisdom on ‘the talent’, you might have a song or two that has no function, no relevance at all. In all the ‘celebration’ that attends commercial cinema these days, this fact tends to be glossed over but it can’t be ignored: most of Hindi commercial cinema is B-grade trash.
What follows, then, is my sitting duck. It is a taxonomy that has been created to be shot down. It has been created as much to suggest that Helen’s songs were important within their context as to generate some discussion about the function of Hindi film songs. If it also manages to suggest that the songs did play some role in both determining the moral universe of the film and the trajectory of the story, that would be a pleasant side effect.
Song of Seduction
In some sense, all of Helen’s songs are songs of seduction. Their underlying theme was erotic, regardless of the other functions they performed. Almost all her songs in her role as ‘Teacher’ and ‘The White Goddess’ can be seen as songs of seduction, for instance. And even in later aspects, the seduction of the audience was implicit in her dancing, since the underlying morality of the script would not allow the hero to be seduced and every plot point would involve him in songs. Thus this subset contains only those songs which have an explicit function of seduction within the storyline, the seduction of a male member of the cast.
How good a job did Helen make of seduction? A great one for the viewers—her fan base hasn’t diminished much in close to fifty years. But within the framework of the Hindi film? That’s a different story.
In the costume drama Halaku (1956), Parvez (Ajit) and his revolutionary friends seek to send dancers who have been primed to poison the evil Halaku (Pran). Aji chale aao, aji chale aao, sings Helen with Minoo Mumtaz for support, Tumhen aankhon ne dil mein bulaaya (Come to me sir, come to me/ My eyes invite you into my heart). As we expect, they fail at their task, since it would be ludicrous for the villain to be removed so easily. As in all popular culture, the villain can only be conquered by the hero; personifications of evil can only be defeated by the personification of good.
In Harishchandra Taramati (1963), Helen plays an apsara who has been sent to beguile the pious king Harishchandra into parting with his kingdom. She succeeds, but only because the king appreciates her art, not her—a subtle difference to be sure, but a difference nonetheless.
In the game of one-upmanship Ek Se Badhkar Ek (1976), she tries to vamp the jewel thief Shankar (Raj Kumar) with Ek se badhkar ek/ Main laayi hoon tohfe anek/ Zulfon ki shaam laayi/ Dil tere naam laayi/ Mazaa aayega mulaaqaat ka/ Kya programme hai aaj raat ka? (One better than the next/ My gifts exceed each other/ There’s a night of dark tresses/ A heart marked for you/ This meeting promises to be fun/ What’s your programme tonight?). She has disguised herself as the rather overwhelming Baroness Carolina, but he sees through her, and she fails to divest him of the prized diamond that is in his possession.
As Sonia in Don, Helen attempts to slow down Don (Amitabh Bachchan) with Yeh mera dil yaar ka deewaana so that the police can arrive and arrest him. She succeeds only because he seems to have an inordinate amount of packing to do and the police move with remarkable alacrity. She fails because Don eludes the police again.
She almost always failed, which was perhaps the secret of her success. In failing she kept the moral universe intact.
Song of Reflection
Often, lesser characters would be called upon to define plot moments, to reiterate in song what had transpired already in dialogue and action. This is a way of heightening the emotional content of the moment, a way of indicating a turning point.
In Aag aur Daag (1970), Raja (Joy Mukherjee) loses his parents when they commit suicide after his father loses everything in a crooked game. Raja is brought up by another gambler (Madan Puri) who urges him to take revenge. As a renaissance criminal (thief, gambler, safe-cracker) Raja is in a good position to do so. But he falls in love with Renu (Komal), the daughter of the man who cheated his father. It is when he discovers this that he arrives at the hotel that his father-in-law owns, and Helen underlines the turning point in his life with her song: Aaj ki raat faisle ki hai/ Aaj ki raat ka jawaab nahin/ Chaahe jitna gunah kar daalo/ Aaj uska hisaab nahin (Tonight will be decisive/ Tonight will be unique/ Break all the rules/ Tonight no one’s keeping score).
When Helen sings Chale ladkhadaake, kadam dagmagaake/ Nahin hosh humko kisi baat ka (I stumble, my steps falter/ I’m not in my senses) in Parwaana (1971), she is not just suggesting the erotic intoxication of love, although that is the ostensible intent of these lyrics sung by a dancer who does not know any of the protagonists. We can tell that she is actually underscoring Kumar’s (Amitabh Bachchan) mental state. Asha (Yogeeta Bali), the woman he loves, has just told him that she loves Rajesh (Navin Nishchol) whom she met on holiday. He has tried everything up to that point: emotional blackmail, self-inflicted violence, physical threats. He has begged her and begged her uncle (Om Prakash). Now in the bar, the song reflects his moral disintegration, for he is planning a murder that will implicate Rajesh. The presence of Helen, a symbol of immorality, also underscores his drift from the moral world he has inhabited so far.
It also often fell to those lower in status to declare the love between the principals. Constrained by social obligations, duty or whatever the plot had in store for them in terms of obstacles, the hero and heroine were often unable to express so socially anarchic an emotion as love. It would take a tribal, a gypsy or some common or market entertainer to articulate their feelings for the audience. When the Brahmin son of the village priest (Bharat Bhushan) falls in love with the princess (Nimmi) in Angulimala (1960), they cannot give vent to their feelings. They make much use of the lip quiver to indicate repressed love but if this is not enough, Helen, bedecked in peacock feathers, swathed in a leopardskin print, wiggles and sings: Bade aaye shikaari shikaar karne … (He thinks of himself as a great hunter). It is evident from the way she is dressed and the attendant musician who dances with her that she is meant to be a tribal. This is another layer of distancing from the upper-caste lovers.
Their uncertain position on the fringes of society is supposed to give the ‘outsiders’ more licence to love and to follow the dictates of their hearts. If this is an accurate reading, their presence constitutes a critique of middle-class values in which duty, family, status and all the other reasons not to love are given primacy over the heart. So this sort of song is generally Romantic, putting love over everything, thus expressing the philosophy of Hindi films, which put an idealized form of love at the top of the pyramid.
Another reading could be that the outsider is seen as farther away from civilization (and its somewhat daunting restraints and social encumbrances) and so is closer to an earthy, sensual nature. If you look at these songs, it is generally the woman who is sexually desirable while the man is fat, comic, balding, graceless. The same outsider status was conferred—until the time of the blockbusters in which stars took over all the leading roles—on the comedian and his love interest, usually the ‘supporting actress’. This second heroine was generally Helen.
However, the vicarious declaration was not always required only in so obviously hierarchical a setting. In the madcap Bombay Ka Chor (1962), it was deemed necessary that Kishore (Kishore Kumar) and Mala (Mala Sinha) should use the good offices of the dancer at a wedding in their bustee to reflect their love for each other. Kishore has come to the city in search of funds for an orphanage. Mala’s father is the nasty heir who is closing it down. She, on the other hand, dances for charity (under the auspices of the indicatively named Indo-Western Women’s Association). A rift between father and daughter means she moves into the tenement where Kishore is living.
At a wedding in the bustee, Helen arrives to reflect the amour growing between the principals. Dekha kisine kuchh aise, hoy aise, she sings, Hum to ghabraake pyaar kar baithe (He looked at me in such a manner/ I fell in love out of fear). At the end, Mala smiles and Kishore’s cap levitates.
Song of Forgetfulness
Right up to the Selfish Seventies, the underlying moral of Hindi cinema was that the Self came last. First came the nation, then society, next the family, and the caste unit after that. It was therefore meet that the vamp should offer forgetfulness. Jeenewale muskurake pee/ Khushi ke jaam, muskura, aur pee (Drink up/ Forget your sorrows) sings Sophie in Chhote Nawaab. Gham chhod ke manaao rangreli (Forget your worries and make merry), sings Kitty Kelly in Gumnaam. Jeenewaale jhoomke mastaana ho ke jee/ Aanewaali subah se begaana ho ke pee (If you’re alive at all, you might as live it up/ Drink up and let tomorrow take care of itself), sings Helen (unnamed) in Vaasna (1968). Main saare zamaane ke gham ki dawaa hoon (I am the cure for all the sorrows of the world) sings Rubiya (if that is her name, for this song is her only appearance and the name is hummed by a couple of knock-down Beatles as the chorus) in Adhikaar.
This oblivion to which Helen’s song lured the hero or the protagonists was often personal. The songs came at a point when the hero was at his nadir: misunderstood, abandoned, cast out. However, underlying this call to forget was a larger message—that a life lived without responsibilities was the easier life. In this sense, the song of forgetfulness could also be read as anti-social, anti-State.
Each of these songs underscored the vamp’s outsider status. Lest some mistranslation occur, lest the audience suspect that this was a lesson that was being offered, the song of forgetfulness always took place in suspect territory, such as a bar or a den. The tunes were generally Western and the dancer was also dressed to establish that she was from the fringes. In Chhote Nawaab, Sophie wears a white shirt with Cossack sleeves, becomingly unbuttoned to show some cleavage, and a dark skirt, while the heroine wears saris throughout the film. In Gumnaam, Kitty Kelly wears a swimsuit while Asha is in a cream kurta and churidar. In Vaasna, Helen’s Arabian outfit gets some help from Mexican sidekicks and a pink woman puffing on a cigarette, all placed there to emphasize that this is firmly outside the ambit of Indian culture. In Adhikaar, she is wearing a backless black dress with a blaze of silver and purple sequins on it as Shyam (Biswajeet) downs alcohol to forget the grief occasioned by what he thinks is Radha’s (Nazima) betrayal.
What the vamp describes as pain—gham, bekhudi—is the real world. Her solace is illusory and temporary and she admits it, but also points to the illusory nature of the world, to the fleeting pleasures of existence. The equation in the vamp’s world is clear: the nation, society, family, all demand that we suffer to maintain the social fabric; Western culture offers the impermanence of pleasure and the cult of the Self. We must choose between the two. Popular cinema in India has never left us in any doubt about what we must choose. Helen was the reward, in advance, for that choice.
Song of Mockery
The lust object knows that she is lusted after. She knows that the men who have gathered to watch her are stripping her with their eyes. This means that she has power over them and this translates into a certain kind of mockery. Nowhere is this clearer than in Tina’s (Helen) first cabaret in Tum Haseen, Main Jawaan.
The song has Tina, dressed in a silver gown and silver shoes, walking into a fountain. She emerges shivering, and bends over one of the patrons near the ramp and sneezes, Aaachee. She dances over to another patron, grabs his handkerchief, sneezes into it and returns it to him. Then the song begins: Chhee meri jaan, chheee (Yuck, my love, yuck).
Mockery was also often directed at the institution of love. In Kathputhli, Helen as Roma sings of a variety of lovers, none of whom are willing to do much more than make extravagant promises. Although the song begins with the usual paean to the power of love—Jeena kaisa? Oh pyaar bina jeena kaisa? (What is life without love?)—the narrative between the verses talks of the bank manager who has fallen in love with her bank balance, the metaphoric Majnun who is willing to die for love of her but will not risk getting wet in the rain.
In Anamika, the Aaj ki raat koi aane ko hai number offers a story within a story in which Miss Ruby awaits her lover in a European square, an echo of the Piya tu ab to aa ja song in Caravan. She is wearing a mackintosh and a hat and a pink dress over pink panties (which we see when she twirls excitedly). She is stalked by an enthusiastic hood who tries whipping her with his mac. She is rescued by the police, but then it starts raining. Wet, she splashes water and sings: Aisa na ho loot jaaye re tera pyaar (Beware, you might lose your love). The hood returns and forces her into a telephone booth. The camera cuts away but when it returns, Miss Ruby is lying inside the booth, post-coital, drunk, a little battered but satisfied. And when her love arrives, they dance together again, as if she is suggesting that a little rough use does her no harm, and she is willing to return to the arms of the lover she was waiting for before the hoodlum had his way with her.
A more direct song of mockery occurs in Dus Lakh, where Helen as Kitty Williams mocks the ageing Om Prakash for his choice of wife in Agre ke lala. However, this kind of song was comparatively rare because it meant that the Helen figure would have to ally herself with the beliefs and values of bourgeois society. In this case, the song presages the conversion of Kitty Williams into a nurse who rejects all that is bad about her Anglo-Indian roots (which is just about everything) and serves humanity.
Song of Self-Adulation
If no one else would praise the attractions of the vamp, either in words or in verse, either by giving in to her charms or noticing them, it obviously fell to her to call attention to them. Since this type of song was also a reflection of the vamp in the eyes of the world, it also fell to her to execute the motions of an admiring male audience. Hence most of these dances use a certain repertoire of sexual gestures, from coyness (her hands splayed and folded over the crotch) to self-appreciation (stroking arms or hips) to simulated stimulation (hands in hair, at lips, near breasts).
In the costume drama Insaaf (1956), Helen entertains a band of revolutionaries who have turned against their rulers. Her song extols her own virtues: Jab se aayi jawaani/ Hui duniya deewaani/ Mera ghar se nikalna mushqil hua (Ever since I grew up/ The world has been in love with me/ Now leaving the house has become difficult). In Faisla (1965), she performs a dance while the hero (Jugal Kishore) is being initiated into the rites of manhood (smoking and drinking) by an enemy (Jeevan). He is also in the process of falling in love—not with Helen, of course, though she’ll have him know that nothing compares to her: dancing to an allfemale orchestra, she sings, Ee-aa-ee-aa-oh/ Ee-aa-ee-aa-oh/ Mein hoon madam baawri/ Surat meri saawri/ Sabse haseen sabse judaa (Ee-aa-ee-aa-oh/ I am carefree, I’m unique/ I am more beautiful than anyone else). And in the Aur mera naam hai Jameela number from Night in London, she is even less modest: … main jis gali se bhi guzree qayamat hui/ Log nazren bichhane lage (I caused a sensation in every street that I walked/ The world had eyes only for me).
Right up to Jhootha Kahin Ka (1979) she was still at it. Ajay (Rishi Kapoor) is a poor mechanic. He pretends to be a millionaire when he meets Sheetal (Neetu Singh) who is extremely wealthy. He takes her to see a cabaret and here, among bodybuilders lifting weights and flexing muscles in strobe lights, Helen comes sliding down a ramp, her knees crossed like a Varga girl. She sings: Dekho mera jaadu/ Pal mein kar doon bekaabu/ Aankhen do paimaane/ In mein doobe deewaane (Watch me work my magic/In seconds, I’ll make them lose control/ My eyes are wine glasses/ Men drown in my eyes). Through the song, she strolls among the bodybuilders, her eyes full of admiration. The refrain strays into double-entendre territory: Bade bade loot gaye/ Khade khade loot gaye (The big have been defeated/ The erect have been deflated).
Song of Misdirection
These are songs generally sung when the moll wants to distract the hero from his purpose, which is generally to find out something about the gang for which she works.
Her misdirections never did work sufficiently. Certainly not at the club in Night Club (1958), a front for gold smuggling. A young police officer planted there by Kishore (Ashok Kumar) has been murdered and his sister, Bindu (Kamini Kaushal), decides to try and work her way into the gang so that she can destroy it. Kishore disapproves but cannot stop her and so decides to go and investigate himself and finds Helen dancing: Kahaan phir hum, kaahan phir tum/ Kahaan yeh raatein/ Dhadakte dil se ho jaayen zara do baatein (Who knows where we’ll be tomorrow/ Where such nights again/ Let our hearts converse tonight). She has hardly any effect on him.
In Shikar (1968), as Vera, Helen tries to seduce the policeman (Sanjeev Kumar) who has come to her home to search for incriminating evidence of her involvement in the murder of her boss. She strips off her pink negligee (so suitable for a single girl at home), and reveals a glittery blue dress (so suitable for distracting a policeman). The song is overtly seductive—Mere paas aa, kidhar khayaal hai/ Aankh se aankh to mila, kidhar khayaal hai (Come to me, why do your thoughts wander?/ Let your eyes meet mine, why do your thoughts wander?)—but it fails.
In Deewangee (1976), she has an even more evil purpose. Shekhar (Shashi Kapoor) has got hold of a stash of diamonds from a gang. The gang kidnaps his wife Kanchan (Zeenat Aman) and his son. He has left the diamonds with his friend Harry (Ranjit) who is in love with Kitty (Helen). Kitty has always rejected Harry because he is poor. When she discovers that he has the diamonds in his possession, she subverts him, throwing herself into his arms, telling him that he and his diamonds have won her. Shekhar is waiting for the bag when Kitty sashays in, telling him that Harry has gone for the keys of the locker and that he (Harry) has told her to entertain him (Shekhar) in the interim. Meri jawaani kare ishaare/ Tujhe bulaaye, tujhe pukaare (My youth beckons you, calls out to you) she sings. This is a classic song of misdirection, a distraction while Harry gets away with the diamonds. Not for long, of course.
The only exception to this rule happens in Ram Balram (1980), in which Helen, who had by then been dancing for thirty years, matched steps with someone at least thirty years her junior. She is only the mother of one of the heroines, but when push comes to shove and three of the principals have been locked in the hold of a ship by a deranged criminal on crutches—Jagatpal (Ajit)—she gamely tucks her pallu in and begins to dance. The song? Balram ne bahut samjhaaya/ Ram ne dhokha khaaya/ Ab Ram hi jaan bachaaye/ Beda paar lagaaye (Balram advised caution/ But Ram was deceived/ Now Ram alone can rescue us). Through a crack in the ceiling we see that it is the reformed kothewaali Tara (Helen) who offers the men the glad eye and then a big deliberate wink. Madhu (Zeenat Aman) offers a flying kiss but it is Tara’s cleavage we see through the portholes, a tribute to her agelessness. The intention of the song is made explicit with Jab tak Ram ki seh na aaye, gaate raho yeh gaana (Until Ram brings help, keep singing). This is one of the odd times when Helen is exclusively on the side of right, but then, it was already the beginning of her iconization— she is even given grey hair.
The Climactic Song
In Jaali Note (1960), a feast of Helen songs despite the presence of Madhubala, Miss Lily makes her last appearance framed in a doorway. She switches off the lights to announce her presence, thus also symbolically announcing the comeuppance of the gang of counterfeiters. She sings: Nigaahon ne pheka hai/ Panje pe chakka/ Balam tera mera/ Pyaar hua pakka (My eyes have trumped you; my love, you and I are now an item), though we can’t be sure to whom this is addressed. The song serves only to introduce the final battle between good and evil.
The climactic song was more than a punctuation mark announcing the end of the film. Often it was used to emphasize the evil of the villain who would bring on the dancing girls at the point at which the hero was suspended between life and death, thus providing an interesting contrast between Eros and Thanatos and underlining his sadism. Besides that, it filled out the contours of the climax, allowed time for ropes to be gnawed through, police to be called or diversions to be organized.
Khel Khilari Ka (1977) has two brothers separated after a village fair, although they have matching Shiva tattoos. Their father is killed and their sister raped as they watch. They grow up into Raja (Dharmendra) and Dhruv (Uday Chandra). United by their common quest for revenge, they arrive at the rapist’s den. They are both captured. Dhruv is dangled over burning coals and Raja has to keep the pressure on the pulley or he dies. The doors of the den open and Helen comes dancing in, asking: Pyaar bada hai ya jaan badi hai/ Baazi ab dono ki ladi hai (Which is greater, love or life?/ Today, the two must compete).
Towards the end of Besharam (1978), all the villains who have conspired to rid Ramu (Amitabh Bachchan) of his father, his sister and his mother are having a meeting. Ramu has infiltrated the gang as a South African millionaire interested in smuggling diamonds. The police need the meeting to go on past two a.m., for reasons unknown. One might assume that Ramu would do the honours here but for some reason this is where Helen, assisted by another dancer, makes her appearance: Tum kitne bhi chehere badlo yahaan/ Tum ban jaao beherupiye/ Hum ko dhoka nahin de sakoge magar/ Arre humne khud jaane kitnon ko dhokhe diye (However many faces you change, however much you try to hide/ You won’t be able to fool us/ We’ve lost track of how many we’ve fooled). Strangely, the obvious inference of this song—that he has been unmasked—escapes Ramu. Perhaps this is in unconscious tribute to Helen, who has stopped smiling but is in superb physical shape under the black and silver outfit.
The Replacement Heroine
This may only be guesswork but it is often possible to spot Helen dancing where the heroine was unable to. In Karwa Chouth, as we’ve seen, Helen extols the virtues of the fast for husbands when by every logic the heroine should have done this. In Jalan (1978), the story revolves around Ambika’s (Ambika Johar) relationship with her father Seth Deendayal (I.S. Johar), who has just abandoned her mother for a life of glamour. He even runs a magazine called Glamour, staffed entirely by his women. At the end, Ambika has to shock him by turning herself, suitably masked, into one of the women he lusts after. When she dances Mere hothon ka jaam (The wine of my lips) in a nightclub where he has brought his bevy of beauties, it becomes painfully clear that she cannot dance, and Helen does most of the moving and shaking.
In Awaara Abdulla (1963)—a film that can only be called a costume drama if you account for the fact that costumes ranging from Zorro to Ancient Rome are involved—the heroine Shahnaz (Parveen Chowdhury) was once again unable to dance. The film centres round Shera (Dara Singh) who is a prince in exile. When he learns that he has the right to the throne, he dresses up like The Lone Ranger and heads into town to wrestle with John de Silva (Wrestling Champion of Europe) and Ad Rod Goa (Wrestling Champion of the West Indies). He is arrested and made to support a huge circular platform on which Zarina (Helen) dances for the younger prince (Chandrashekhar): Kahaan se laayega yeh husn yeh shabaab koi/ Zamaane bhar mein nahin aapka jawaab koi (Where will we find such beauty/ There is none to match you in this world). This is fairly standard. But it is odd that when Shahnaz is asked to dance to save the life of her beloved, Shera, she needs support from Helen.
In Noor Jehan (1967), Helen, as Dilruba, gets to sing two songs that reflect the love between Mehr-un-nissa (Meena Kumari) and Salim (Pradeep Kumar). In the first, she has introduced the idea of love to the Prince in Mohabbat ho gayi mere meherbaan ko/ Kisi na-meherbaan se (My patron is in love with someone who doesn’t care). She engineers further meetings with Mehr-un-nissa and when the palace turns against them, she also sings their defiance: Aa gaya lab pe afsana-e-aashiqui/ Ab kisise fasaane ki parvaah nahin/ Hum unse mohabbat kiye jaayenge/ Ab is zamaane ki parvaah nahin (I will tell you a story of love/ I will tell it with no thought of the consequences/ I will love him with not a care for what the world thinks). It is likely that Meena Kumari was unable or unwilling to dance at that stage in her career, so dance directors P.L. Raj, Sohanlal and Satyanarayan had to make do with Helen, who also dances when Mehr-un-nissa recites at the spring festival: Sharaabi, sharaabi yeh saawan ka mausam/ Khuda ki kasam, khubsoorat na hota/ Agar is me rang-e-mohabhat na hota (This intoxicating summer would be without beauty, were there no love in the air).
Extracted from Helen: The Life and Times of an H-Bomb.