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Actress-singer Sulakshana Pandit passed away after a cardiac arrest on November 6. She was 71.
Coming from the illustrious Pandit family of musicians, which includes Pandit Jasraj, she started singing at the age of 9 with Mohammed Rafi and Kishore Kumar in stage shows. Sulakshana made her debut in films as child-singer with the hit Saat samandar paar se (also known as Pappa jaldi aa jana with Lata Mangeshkar, Meena Patki and Ila Desai) in (Taqdeer) composed by Laxmikant-Pyarelal in 1967. Her first hit as an adult was the popular Beqaraar dil tu gaaye jaa (Door Ka Rahi) with—and under the baton of—Kishore Kumar, in which she was Tanuja’s voice. She was 17 when the film released.
Sulakshana attained fame with her Khayyam-composed devotional, Tu hi sagar hai tu hi kinara from Sankalp(1975), in which she appeared in a cameo. This led to an acting career, with her debut opposite Sanjeev Kumar in the hit, Uljhan (1975). However, as a singer, she barely got to sing for herself, as the composers preferred Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle and even Anuradha Paudwal (in Amar Shakti) to sing her songs as an actress,
Among her successes and hits were Hera Pheri, Shankar Shambhu, Sankoch, Salakhen, Apnapan, Phaansi, Khandaan, Garam Khoon and Waqt Ki Deewar. Her last release was the delayed Do Waqt Ki Roti, which was released in 1988 only in some circuits.
Her eminent list of co-stars included Sanjeev Kumar, Shashi Kapoor and Jeetendra mainly, but she also co-starred with Vinod Khanna, Rishi Kapoor, Rajesh Khanna, Raj Babbar, Navin Nischol, Vinod Mehra, Shatrughan Sinha and Feroz Khan, and non-romantically with Amitabh Bachchan in Hera Pheri. She had once signed a film named Dev Dharam Dhanraj as one of Dev Anand’s three heroines, which never took off. Sulakshana even acted in a Hindi-Bengali bilingual, Bandie, in which she was paired opposite Uttam Kumar. She also did four films with Reena Roy and her list of top directors included Prakash Mehra, J. Om Prakash, Ravi Tandon, Anil Ganguly and actor Shammi Kapoor (Bundalbaaz).
Sister to composers Jatin Pandit, Lalit Pandit and their brother Mandhir as well as actress-singer Vijayta and cousin to singer Hemlata, Sulakshana did not succeed in becoming a star-singer but continued singing in outside films such as Ahista Ahista (Maana teri nazar mein for Nanda), Thodi Si Bewafaii (Mausam Mausam for Padmini Kolhpaure), Ek Baap Chhe Bete (Ghadi milan ki aayi for Moushumi Chatterjee), Saajan Ki Saheli (Jiske liye sabko chhoda for Rekha) and Chalte Chalte (Jaana kahaan hai for Nazneen).
Among songs filmed on her, she sang hits in Aaj pyaare pyaare se lagte hain aap (Uljhan), Somvar ko hum mile (Apnapan), Jab aati hogi yaad teri (Phaansi), Aaj socha hai khayalon mein (Chehre Peh Chehra) and Pardesiya tere des mein (Garam Khoon), a song interestingly written by singer Sharda under the name ‘Singhaar’.
Naushad, N. Dutta, Shankar(-Jaikishan), Kalyanji-Anandji, Laxmikant-Pyarelal, Ravindra Jain, Rajesh Roshan, Bappi Lahiri, Usha Khanna, Kanu Roy, Rajkamal and Mandhir-Jatin were among her composers. She was one of 10 Hindi actors who sang for Star Ten, a commercial project Nadeem-Shravan composed in 1995 in their struggling days.
Her co-singers ranged from Mohammed Rafi and Kishore Kumar to Bappi Lahiri, Anwar, Shailendra Singh, Yesudas, Mahendra Kapoor, Suresh Wadkar and Mohammed Aziz besides Vijayta Pandit and Hemlata. Her last song was Saagar kinare bhi do dil hain pyaase in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Khamoshi—The Musical(1996), which, however, went missing from the film.
The actress-singer won the Filmfare Best Female Playback award and the Miyan Tansen award in 1975 for the song Tu hi sagar hai tu hi kinara for Sankalp.
Unmarried after she could not marry Sanjeev Kumar, with whom she was in love, Sulakshana eerily passed away 40 years after the (bachelor) actor’s demise on the same date—November 6.
