A Look Back At Her Stellar Career
Baby Neetu grew up to be one of India’s most vivacious actresses. The transition from the adorable little gamine in Do Kaliyan to the exuberant heart stealer in Khel Khel Mein was almost seamless. Very few child stars have graduated to adult roles so effortlessly.
One day, Baby Neetu was doing a desi version of Walt Disney’s The Parent Trap. The next day, she was all grown up, dressed up in leather skirts and boots to play Randhir Kapoor’s costar in Rickshawalla. That’s the story of Neetu’s life. She just went with the flow. As a child, she was taken from one magazine office to another by her ambitious mother, desiring that her overgrown baby be cast in an adult role at the earliest.
Baby Neetu had impressive credentials. She was the only child star in Hindi films to have played a double role in a film that revolved completely around her. That film was Do Kaliyan. Some years later, when Baby Neetu became Neetu Singh, she seemed to embody all the mischief, spontaneity and warmth of a child woman.
Producers in Mumbai repeatedly cast her as the wide-eyed but brainy bimbo, forced to behave petulantly because that was the demand of the time. Neetu’s career as a heroine had hardly started when something decisive happened. She fell head over heels in love with Rishi Kapoor during the making of their first film together Zehreela Insaan. After that, there was no looking back–or looking ahead—in Neetu’s career. She became a woman completely swathed in love, willing to follow the love of her life to the end of the world. Very soon, she was doing film after film (after film…) with Rishi Kapoor. Some of them, like Ravi Tandon’s Khel Khel Mein, Manmohan Desai’s Amar Akbar Anthony and Yash Chopra’s Kabhi Kabhie were hits. Others were not. But ask Neetu if she cared.
The happiest day of her life was her wedding day. After years of dilly-dallying when Rishi Kapoor finally tied the knot with her, Neetu Singh gladly bid her career adieu and devoted herself to playing the role of Mrs Rishi Kapoor. She’s not only the stabilising force in her husband’s life but also a favourite Bahu among the Kapoors.
Costars still remember Neetu very fondly as a non-competitive hassle-free, enthusiastic fireball who brought sunshine to the sets the minute she walked in. Most critics in Mumbai believe Neetu Singh never realised even part of her acting calibre. Her roles were either too short or too frivolous or both, to make an impact.
In fact, many Neetu fans believe her first film Do Kaliyan was her best. However, she did a handful of memorable roles subsequently like the one in Basu Chatterjee’s Priyatama, where she played a newly married housewife from a well-to-do background who cannot adjust to her husband’s middle-class standard of living. However, it was Asha Sachdev who walked away with all the acclaim in Priyatama.
Neetu Singh happily played second fiddle to other heroines, for instance Moushumi Chatterjee in Zehreela Insaan, Raakhee in Doosra Aadmi and Zeenat Aman in Dharam-veer. But whatever she played, she did so with great enjoyment. Her joie de vivre virtually leapt out of the screen and infected us as she picked pockets with Moushumi Chatterjee in Jyoti Bane Jwala or wooed Amitabh Bachchan with Shabana Azmi in tow in Parvarish.
She was a favourite of several directors like Manmohan Desai, who saw great potential in her but never cast her in substantial roles. Still, her repertoire of co-stars is impressive—Rajesh Khanna (Maha Chor), Amitabh Bachchan (Parvarish, Yaarana), Jeetendra (Dharam-Veer, Priyatama) and of course Rishi Kapoor with whom she did flips and flops like Kabhi Kabhie and Jhoota Kahin Ka. Neetu’s last film as a leading lady was a heroine-oriented disaster named Chorni, directed by the Padosan director Jyoti Swaroop. Alas, even he couldn’t tap her comic potential effectively.
Neetu Singh never gave herself a chance. And yet she has a staunch band of fans who love her even today for her individuality, exuberance and spontaneity. Neetu’s fans include the incomparable actor-filmmaker Kamal Haasan.
Her second innings started with Do Dooni Chaar where she played her husband Rishi Kapoor’s wife followed by the disastrous Besharam where she was cast as a police constable. Jug Jug Jeeyo was her last screen outing. And we leave her with that.