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The Story of an Imp called Tanuja

Tanuja

She is effervescent—like the fizz on her favourite drink, lemonade! Indeed, during the making of “Hamari Beti,” in which her- famous sister made her debut, the six-year-old Tanuja had only to be promised, a lemonade to make her say her lines.

When she is not bouncing around, laughing, or making others laugh, she is to be found with her feet in the north and her head down south. That is because she loves to read—anything I can lay my hands on; even scraps of paper from the roadside—and usually does so with her feet in the air.

She can never pass a bookstall without stopping to scan its contents. Given three rupees to go and see a picture, she will buy a book with the money. She has often thought how wonderful it would be to marry a great, big bookshop and, perhaps, accept the husband as dowry! (“She is daft,” smiles her mother Sho­bhana Samarth, indulgently).

Where her career is concerned, she is burn­ing with ambition, but not for the usual reasons. “Can you imagine,” she says, her eyes dancing with delight, “with all that money, what a huge library I can have!”

With this penchant for the written word, it is not surprising that Tanuja is an extremely well-informed young girl. Her general knowledge is astonishing and she can talk on-almost any subject.

But, this bookworm isn’t a plain body with spectacles perched on the end of her nose. She is pert, pretty and has a whistle-bait figure. She is crazy about ballet, but not stark crazy as with books.

Her mother speaks of her tomboy daughter with pride and affection. “Tanuja never tells lies. She abhors people who lie. Once, pointing to the living-room carpet, I said to a friend: ‘That cost Rs. 800.’ ‘Oh, Mummy,’ piped Tanuja, you know it only cost Rs. 775!’”

She is also the most generous person alive, says her mother. In Switzerland, where she goes to school, Tanuja once gave her last 100 francs to a needy British friend, in spite of her own foreign exchange difficulties. Tender‑hearted, she always treats, rarely gets treated.
She is not very thrifty, either. Once, asked to take the small car to fetch her birthday cake from downtown, she took the big car and returned triumphantly bearing the cake. When her mother reprimanded her for not being economical, she pouted, “So what, Mummy. Don’t we have enough?”

But she is also dreadfully independent and can take care of herself at all times. Once, visiting friends at Malabar Hill (the Samarth family then lived at Pedder Road), she found the car hadn’t come to fetch her. Beckoning her ayah, she walked home, tired but proud. She was then six years old.

Her family calls for “Granny”. She is very mature and discourses on fate, destiny, sex, politics, philosophy and life in general, as if she were sixty instead of sixteen.

She is often blunt to the point of rudeness and nothing her mother says can cure her of the habit of being too outspoken. Once, after a ballet performance, at her school in Switzerland, she turned to the founder of the school, who took her to be Italian, and said: “Madam, don’t insult me. I am Indian.” She is fiercely patriotic and will not stand for snobbishness or colour differentiation.

Tanuja speaks French and German fluently, has lots of European friends, but is homesick even before the plane reaches Switzerland. She adores Indian food. Thinks European food is horrible.

She is terribly, achingly proud of her sister, Nutan, whose exact opposite she is. When shown a picture of Nutan in a foreign magazine at school, she burst with pride, as she cried excitedly, “That’s my sister!” Later, she wrote: “Oh, Mummy, you don’t know how wonderful it feels to tell people about my sister.”

This five feet two inches of solid mischief, tempered with amazing good sense, is a great philosopher. “If a man cheats you, so what? He won’t have the opportunity to do it again,” she says. There isn’t a malicious bone in her body, say her sisters and friends. Always ready to acknowledge her mistakes, she, nevertheless, stands for her rights.

Although not a dedicated actress, she is sincere enough to work hard and-then criticize herself severely after the “rushes”. She is always busy reading on the sets and one gets the impression that she doesn’t know what’s hap­pening around her. But she does—and more. Not only does she know her own lines but also of the other players.

She isn’t—she can never be—camera-con­scious. But she has given an ultimatum to her mother: “If any director asks me to overact, I shall walk out.”

Blunt–but so refreshing, this new charm­er, Tanuja. (Source – Filmfare Magazine, February 26th, 1960)

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