...was just a schoolgirl named Fatima when she began acting with
TAQDEER, made in 1943. On her last film, MOTHER
INDIA, she met her future husband and decided to sacrifice her
career, for social work and her homelife. She remained high-profile
in politics until her death in 1981, only a year after being elected to
India's Upper House of Parliament, called the Rajya Sabha. She even
preferred her son to be a doctor or engineer, though he followed in
her footsteps anyway; and she bewailed the stigma her daughters
would feel being known only as Nargis' girls. Her position on the
frenetic pace of Indian pop culture in general was softer: After all,
she would say, the West churns out Bond film after Bond film. The
"leading lady" stereotypes of her day made MOTHER INDIA a
breakthrough role, since she ages decades; the way Dustin Hoffman
does in Little Big Man or Cicely Tyson in The
Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. (She counted her role in
SHREE 420 as a lark, though, not a heavy role.)
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