Yesteryear heroine Kum Kum passes away

NEW DELHI: Kum Kum, who acted in a bunch of blockbusters like Mother India, Kohinoor and Ankhen, and who glittered as the top star of Bhojpuri cinema in the 1960s, passed away at her Bandra residence on Tuesday.
“She was unwell for some time and undergoing treatment at home. In the past 2-3 days, her conditioned worsened,” her husband Sajjad Khan told TOI on phone.She was 82, he said.
Born and brought up in Bihar’s Hussainabad town as Zaibunnisa (Zeba), Kum Kum (also spelt Kumkum in several films) first attracted notice in Guru Dutt’s Aar Paar (1954). It was a fleeting part of a construction worker who croons, ‘Kabhi aar kabhi paar,’ while the lead pair act out the courting game.
“The song became so popular that I was flooded with offers from producers and directors. My career took off from there,” she told this reporter years ago.
With comic Johnny Walker, with whom she paired in several films, Kum Kum also lipsynced, ‘Ae dil hai mushqil’, the breezy duet in CID (1956) that became an anthem for Bombay and became Binaca Geetmala’s song No 1 in 1956. In several other Guru Dutt films such as Mr & Mrs 55 (1955) and Pyaasa (1957), she played eye-catching cameos.
Mehboob Khan, another Hindi cinema colossus, also played a pivotal role in her early career casting her opposite Rajendra Kumar in the iconic Mother India (1957). Her proficiency as a dancer, who could enliven and elevate songs with her precise movements and perfect mudras, was evident in numbers such as Ghunghat nahin kholoon (film: Mother India) and, more so, in the outstanding classical track, Madhuban mein Radhika naache re (film: Kohinoor). “I learnt kathak from Shambhu Maharaj-ji when I was only nine years old,” she said in the same interview.
Kum Kum played the lead in Khan’s grand and expansive, Son of India (1962). The movie’s box-office fiasco hurt her career. During the film’s shooting character-actor Nazir Hussain approached her to act in Ganga Maiyya Tohe Piyari Chadhaibo (1962), the first Bhojpuri film ever made. “He convinced Mehboob saab to allow me to do the film,” she once said. Hussain had penned the film’s story.
Ganga Maiyya… became a raging success and a cultural phenomenon in Bihar and east UP. In the 1960s, music director Chitragupta and Kum Kum became the two most in-demand artistes in Bhojpuri films. She formed a hit pair with Ganga Maiya’s hero Ashim Kumar (Laagi Nahi Chhute Ram, 1963) and also produced her own film, Ganga (1965).
In the 1960s and early 70s, Kum Kum starred in several Ramanand Sagar productions such as spy thriller Ankhen (1968), Geet, Lalkar and Jalte Badan. In Ankhen, partly shot in Beirut, Kum Kum was fitting in the role of Dharmendra’s sister.
She often teamed with Kishore Kumar – Mr X Bombay in Bombay, Shreeman Funtoosh and Ganga Ki Lehren – in frisky romantic comedies. In a career spanning nearly 120 films, she also the played the female lead alongside the early Sanjeev Kumar (Gunehgaar, Gunaah aur Kanoon, Bombay By Nite) and Vinod Khanna (Dhamkee) films.
After her marriage in 1975, Kum Kum quit films and left for Middle East. “We came back in 1995,” Sajjad said. Now she is gone. But her work, especially in Bhojpuri cinema, will be remembered forever.
Box:
Super tracks Kum Kum sang on celluloid
1. Film: CID (1956): Ae dil hai mushqil
2. Film: Ujala (1959): Tera jalwa jisne dekha
3. Film: Kali Topi Lal Rumal (1959): Daga daga vai vai vai
4. Film: Son of India (1962): Dil todne wale tujhe dil dhoond raha hai
5. Film: Ganga Maiyya Tohe Piyari Chadhaibo (1962): Kahe bansuriya bajaole
6. Film: Ganga Ki Lehren (1964): Chhedon na meri zulfein