A heavyweight charmer

It’s scary. Going by the way two overweight women are becoming the butt of ridicule and — entertainment — on the TV dance show Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa, we have regressed to the era when obesity and multi-tyred hips were used to evoke guffaws and hoots.

Fat meant being freaky and derisively funny. Alas, today the spirited theatre-and-TV actress Jayati Bhatia is apologising (or feeling bashful) for her kilos, and stand-up comic Bharti Singh is making much song and dance about how her obesity doesn’t prevent her from being a disco dudette.
To each her own perhaps. It’s strange though that fat males aren’t ever employed to amuse the viewership. That’s been a tradition, though, in the Bollywood scheme of things from yore. Heavy-duty Gope was more of a heavy-duty villain rather than a laugh-raiser, and the absolutely-forgotten Pinchoo Kapoor carried his weight principally in the roles of the scoundrel smuggler or the heroine’s pipe-puffing “oh-deddy!” Now, unwittingly Jayati Bhatia and Bharti Singh have stepped into the anklets of yesteryear’s comedienne Tun Tun.
Add on flab. And still in most circles, squelcher goes, “What! Are you trying to become Tun Tun?” never mind if the now generation knows precious little about her track record. Born Uma Devi Khatri, she was a bouncy character artiste of as many 200 films, who had kickstarted her career as a playback singer. Nostalgiaphiles, of course, can instantly recall her repertoire of memorable songs, topped by the imperishable Afsana likh rahi hoon, an epistle to a beloved who is being achingly missed. A strong voice which could hit the high notes was her calling card, till she was ousted towards the twist of the 1950s, by the phenomenon of Lata Mangeshkar, and then Asha Bhosle.
Tun Tun was mentored by composer Naushad Ali and then piloted towards film acting, it is said, by Dilip Kumar. Lore has it that the under-contract songstress had landed herself in a stew by singing for Gemini studio’s Chandralekha, evoking the wrath of the powerful producer-director-studio-baron A.R. Kardar. Dilip Kumar ensured that Uma Devi wasn’t blacklisted, recommended her for supporting parts and coined her screen name as a joke. It stuck. Her early roles of the likeable bumbler, appeared to be inspired by Hollywood’s Oliver Hardy. Like Hardy to Stan Laurel, she would spar with partners half her size. The lean-framed Johnny Walker was her ideal co-funster.
Rolling her eyes, puffing up her cheeks and pursing her lips tetchily, she perfected the art of brandishing the rolling pin to beat up her opponents. The bad guys, of course, would be her lily-livered onscreen husbands. Her defiant spirit was any housewife’s fantasy come true. Inevitably, Tun Tun was typecast.
In private life, the mother of four children — she had married a fan captivated by her voice — she seemed to wallow in her stereotyped image. Once on alighting from a cab at Bandra on a rain-splashed afternoon, I was suddenly faced with Tun Tun right before my eyes. She wanted to jump into the cab, saw me gaping at her girth, and rolled those eyes to shout, “Yes I am Tun Tun. Now let me get inside… or I’ll hit you with my umbrella.” Next, she thumped the cabby on his head, telling him with a straight face, “I won’t pay you luggage charges. I am not a suitcase.”
Quite unarguably, Tun Tun’s natural-born candour was best employed by Guru Dutt who cast her in Aar Paar, Mr & Mrs 55, Pyaasa and Kagaz ke Phool. Dutt assigned her the ha-ha stuff but with far more credible dialogue and script situations than she was saddled with ordinarily. Dilip Kumar’s Gunga Jamuna placed her in a termagant mode. Yet she was impossible to dislike simply because she was one of a kind: zany and natural. She passed away at the age of 80 in 2003.
It would be pure conjecture to say that Tun Tun would have been as endearing even if she was papyrus-thin. Her imitators or weight-alikes Indira Bansal, accompanied by her rotund brother Polson, and Guddi Maruti, could never ever recreate the Tun Tun magic. So why are Jayati Bhatia and Bharti Singh even trying? Enough of their Tun Tun Dikhhla Jaa please.