SONG:RUK JAA RAAT THEHR JAA RE CHANDAMUSIC:SHANKAR JAIKISHANLYRICS:SHAILENDRASINGER:LATA MANGESHKARMOVIE:DIL EK MANDIR 1963Dil Ek Mandir is a 1963 Hindi movie directed by C. V. Sridhar. The film stars Rajendra Kumar, Meena Kumari, Raaj Kumar and Mehmood. The films music is by Shankar Jaikishan.Meena Kumari or Mahjabeen Bano (August 1, 1932 - March 31, 1972), was a prominent Indian movie actress.Mahjabeen Bano was the third daughter of Ali Baksh and Iqbal Begum; Khursheed and Madhu were her two elder sisters. At the time of her birth, her parents were unable to pay the feesof Dr. Gadre, who had delivered her, so her father left her at a Muslim orphanage, however, he picked her up after a few hours.Her father, a Sunni Muslim, was a veteran of Parsi theater,Her mother, Prabhwati Devi, was the second wife of Ali Baksh.As Mahjabeen embarked on her acting career at the age of 7, she was renamed Baby Meena. Farzand-e-Watan or Leatherface (1939) was her first movie, which was directed for Prakash Studios by Vijay Bhatt. She became practically the sole breadwinner of her family during the 1940s. Her early adult acting, under the name Meena Kumari, was mainly in mythological movies like Veer Ghatotkach (1949), Shri Ganesh Mahima (1950), and fantasy movies like Alladin and The Wonderful Lamp (1952).Meena Kumari gained fame with her role as a heroine in Vijay Bhatt's Baiju Bawra (1952). This heroine always negated herself for the material and spiritual advancement of the man she loved and was even willing to annihilate herself to provide him the experience of pain so that his music would be enriched. She became the first actress to win the Filmfare Best Actress Award in 1953 for this performance.Meena Kumari highly successfully played the roles of a suffering woman in Parineeta (1953), Daera (1953), Ek Hi Raasta (1956), Sharda (1957), and Dil Apna Aur Preet Parayi (1960). Though she cultivated the image of a tragedienne, she also performed commendably in a few light-hearted movies like Azaad (1955), Miss Mary (1957), Shararat (1959), and Kohinoor (1960).One of her best known performance was of an alcoholic wife in Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam (1962), which was produced by Guru Dutt. In one memorable scene, the heroine, Choti Bahu, dresses for her husband, providing a poignant presentation of a woman's expectations and sexual desire.At that time, Meena Kumari herself was on a road to gradual ruin in her own personal life. Like her character, Choti Bahu, she began to drink heavily, though she carried on. In fact, in 1962, she made history by being nominated for three Filmfare Best Actress Awards for her roles in Aarti, Main Chup Rahungi, and Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam. She won the award for her role in Aarti.For four more years, Meena Kumari performed admirably in Dil Ek Mandir (1963), Kaajal (1965), and Phool Aur Patthar (1966). However, she relied more and more on intimate relationships with younger men like Dharmendra, and often dulled her senses with liquor. She spent the last years of her life playing the doomed woman.Because of heavy drinking, she increasingly lost her good looks, and began playing character roles in B grade movies like Jawab (1970) and Dushmun (1972).She developed an attachment to writer-lyricist Gulzar and acted in his directorial debut, Mere Apne (1971), Meena Kumari presented a strong portrayal of an elderly woman who got caught between two street gangs of frustrated, unemployed youth and got killed, her death making the youth realize the futility of violence.In 1972, she recognized that she had a limited time left on this earth, and so she went out of her way to complete at the earliest the cult classic, Pakeezah (1972). Initially, after its release in February 1972, Pakeezah opened to a lukewarm response from the public; however, after Meena Kumari's death less than two months later, people flocked to see it.Throughout her life, Meena Kumari had a love-hate relationship with movies.Besides being a top-notch actress, she was a talented poetess, and recorded a disc of her Urdu poems, I write, I recite with music by Khayyam.Three weeks after the release of Pakeezah, Meena Kumari became seriously ill, and passed away on March 31, 1972 of cirrhosis of the liver. At her death, she was in more or less the same financial circumstance as her parents at the time of her birth: It is said that when she died in a nursing home, there was no money to pay her hospital bills.
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