How Bollywood Failed Parveen Babi – The Juggernaut

On January 29, 1984, The Illustrated Weekly of India revealed a now notorious eight-page cowl story: “The Confessions of Parveen Babi.” It was a tell-all that the actor had written herself, over a decade after docs had identified her with paranoid schizophrenia, and simply months after she had skilled a breakdown that spun her psychological sickness right into a mere headline. 

“Slowly, one after the other, I misplaced belief in everyone and all the pieces round me,” Babi wrote. “Have you ever ever questioned what it’s prefer to perform in life, distrusting all the pieces and everyone? We belief many of the issues and folks round us with out questioning. We belief the meals we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe…It’s unimaginable to perform in life with out trusting. And that’s exactly what occurred to me.”

Though Babi continues to be recognized for changing into the primary Bollywood star to make the duvet of TIME, it was the Illustrated Weekly story that supplied true perception into who she was, what she’d been by, and the way the business seen her. Or slightly, chewed her up and spit her out. For a lot of her profession, the Indian movie business lauded the actor for her “glamour lady” aesthetic and high-profile relationships, however as soon as her psychological sickness turned public, Bollywood wrote her off as nothing greater than a legal responsibility. Ultimately, Babi would turn into a cautionary story, dying alone in her Mumbai condo. However how did it come to that?