Eulogy

In the family-values mores of Indian popular film, maternal love is the emotional constant: the hearth that warms the hero. And the Mother of all Mothers was Leela Chitnis, who died last week at 91. Born in Karnataka, she was already a young mother of four when she began her film career in 1935. In her first bloom of beauty, she brought a natural dignity and a naturalist acting style to love stories with Master Vinayak and Ashok Kumar. Chitnis had the art of suffering radiantly: under arched eyebrows, her large, luminous eyes could hold glistening tears seemingly for hours on end, to cascade down her face with joy or agony in the final reel. In Raj Kapoor's Awaara, she was required to age 24 years in the role of a loving wife who is unjustly accused of infidelity. After that, she played mum to the top male stars of Bombay's Golden Age: Dilip Kumar in Ganga Jumna, Dev Anand in Guide, Dharmendra in Aap Ki Parchhaiyan. Women on pedestals are expected to behave like statuary: the heavenward glance, the beseeching gesture, a grandeur silent and stoic. Not Chitnis. Hers was a robust femininity; it humanized the saints she played. She retired in the '80s and moved to the U.S.—alas, without the happy ending. She died alone in a Danbury, Conn., nursing home. But in a sense, all lovers of classic Indian cinema are her grateful children, nurtured by the women she embodied.