“The Indian aunty is everywhere, and she doesn’t even have to be related to you”. This observant statement was made recently by none other than one of the most famous superstars of Indian cinema. She is known variously as Zeenat Aman, Zeenie baby, Babusha, Babs, ZA, Zee or simply Z Aunty, depending on how close one is to her.
Five decades ago, she exploded on the Indian film scene, with a movie called ‘Hare Rama Hare Krishna’, where she did not have a pivotal role, as in, she did not play the hero’s love interest but was cast as his sister.
This gamble was a tricky one because her career could have sunk completely before taking off but, to everyone’s surprise, including her own, the film became a blockbuster hit, and she was catapulted to fame and fortune, almost instantly.
Zeenat Aman brought a certain urban polish and sophistication to her on-screen characters, which was unseen in India before, and soon scripts were being tailor made with her in mind. She reigned supreme in the Indian film industry for close to 15 years before matrimony beckoned and she gave up all the glitz and glamour to settle into a quiet life of domesticity.
One learnt about her in bits and pieces after that, but most of the news filtering out from her domestic cocoon was not very favourable. However, time passed, and her two sons grew up to be remarkable young men who coaxed their mother to join Instagram, the social media platform that allows users to share photos and videos with their friends and followers.
Zeenat Aman logged on to Instagram on February 11 last year and became a rage within weeks. I say weeks because it took that much time for her fans to join the dots, and connect the new avatar of a suave, silver-haired elderly lady with that of the seductive diva, who lived in their memory.
Curiously, a more interesting side of her was revealed, when she added anecdotes about her personal and professional life (snippets in a very conversational style) to go with her photographs. These extracts, penned in faultless, fluent English and embellished with witty asides, took the entire of social media by storm. Her following multiplied tenfold and, at 72 years of age, one more accolade was added to her already popular name. She was now ‘The Zeenat Aman’!
“Which genius decided that ‘aunty’ is a derogatory term? It certainly wasn’t me,” she wrote in one of her new Instagram posts. “Where would we be without those ubiquitous older women who make our lives comfortable and warm and secure. They provide a shoulder to lean on, an ear to your problems, a hot meal, a silly joke, a welcoming home, a righteous scolding, a pearl of wisdom. When you hear the word ‘aunty’, you can imagine a frumpy nag, or you can truly think about the older woman in your life and see what I see,” she concluded.
With such concise and crystal-clear definition of the term, she forced the most wilfully blind of us also to open our eyes wide and, well, see.
“Thank you, Aunty”, my friend’s daughter told me on the phone recently.
I had spent close to an hour simply listening to her.
“What did I do?” I asked.
“You heard me out”, she said.
“Feeling better now?” I questioned.
“Absolutely! You are my Wonder Aunt”, she laughed.
By Nickunj Malik
|| features@portugalresident.com
Nickunj Malik’s journalistic career began when she walked into the office of Khaleej Times newspaper in Dubai thirty-one years ago and got the job. Since then, her articles have appeared in various newspapers all over the world. She now resides in Portugal and is married to a banker who loves numbers more than words.
