At the age of 91, the pixie-like actor of the 1950s – Smriti Biswas – who featured in the films of Guru Dutt, V Shantaram, Bimal Roy, Mrinal Sen, BR Chopra, and Raj Kapoor besides co-starring with Dev Anand, Kishore Kumar and Bhagwan Dada among others – is leading a hand-to-mouth existence in a one-room tenement in Nashik since nearly three years now.
The actor who started off as a child artiste and gamely took on lead and supporting roles, didn’t ever become a household name, even if she did appear as a cover girl on Filmfare magazine. Featuring in approximately 30 films, moreover the Bengal-born Smriti Biswas, retired prematurely on marrying the doctor-turned-film director SD Narang. She quit because on the day of the wedding itself, Narang had asserted, “I need a wife, not an actress.”
That she is…