Those forgotten B-grade movie divas of yesteryear: Khalid Mohamed recalls Indira ‘Billi’, Chitra and Naqi Jehan, just three of  the cavalierly sIde-lined B-grade divas of yesteryear. 

This article revisits the forgotten women actors of Hindi cinema from the 1950s to the 1970s, including Indira ‘Billi’, Chitra, and Naqi Jehan. These B-grade divas, overshadowed by mainstream stars, brought unique charm and talent to Indian cinema. Through their struggles, short-lived fame, and eventual obscurity, their stories reflect the lost legacy of Bollywood’s golden era. By chronicling their journeys, this piece seeks to preserve cultural memory, reintroduce these remarkable women to younger generations, and highlight the urgent need to honour unsung artists who shaped Indian film history.

Infallibly, they were treated as indifferently as a fleeting common cold. Yet, there is so much to be chronicled about yesteryear’s women actors -- perhaps not high-profile or magazine cover girls -- who had chalked up either prolific or scant filmographies from the 1950s to the fringes of the 1970s.

A Vanishing Legacy of Hindi Cinema

That’s a vast void to be filled, especially since the Z-generation is clueless even about Hindi cinema’s greats. To reconfirm this, I asked a 20-something medical student about whether she knew who Dilip Kumar, Balraj Sahni and Guru Dutt were. “Who?” she responded as if I had uttered some gobbledygook, adding, “I know of Amitabh Bachchan, Hema Malini, Rekha and Rajesh Khanna a bit. I’ve seen some of their movies on TV with my parents,” she added apologetically.

Quite understandably, news editors of widely-read newspapers and websites have nixed my requests to work on belated salaams to the once uber sophisticated Sheila Ramani who had featured in the Dev Anand films (Taxi Driver, Funtoosh Nau Do Gyarah), or a tribute to the prolific songstress-turned-laugh-riot comedienne Tun Tun, and more recently this month a farewell piece to Nazima, the quintessential ever-sacrificial lamb – the ‘didi’ or sister – of the domineering hero. The editors’ retorts were that such ‘forgotten names’ would not arouse the curiosity of their demographic. Fair enough.

And I was once offended by a job offer from a top website, which also intended to initiate a Sunday newspaper – it was for a few weeks, then packed up. Anyway, the offensive aspect was that the editor of the website had drawled, “We don’t want any yearning and churning for anyone’s who’s dead and gone.” I looked at him as if he had landed from another planet.

Remembering Indira ‘Billi’

Snag is that so many of such gone-with-the-bygone-era female actors refuse to leave my cussed memory store room. Here then is recalling at least three of them – in Hollywood they would be called B-grade divas – whose sheer screen presence and acting grace are still fresh in the heart and mind. Permit me then to revive the stories of the three absolutely unalike Indira ‘Billi’, Chitra and Naqi Jehan, picked randomly I must admit.

The parents of Indira ‘Billi’ (1936-2025), born Indira Kaur in Gurdaspur, Punjab province of British India, after moving to Kanpur had settled in Bombay, where her brother ran a small business company. She was talent scouted by a Punjabi film producer, who attached ‘Billi’ to her name since her blue eyes looked light in the black-and-white movies.

After featuring in 16 Punjabi films, she was noticed by Bhagwan Dada who recommended her to Hindi film producers. Ergo, her break in Bombay’s cinema came with three unheard-of films, Kiklee, Yamla Jatt and Do Lachhian. It was only in an inconsequential part that she was seen as a rich man’s spoilt daughter in Raj Kapoor’s Shree 420. Followed ensemble roles in Raja Nawathe’s Basant Bahar, Sohrab Modi’s Yahudi, and Nasir Husain’s Dil Deke Dekho.

What had hooked me on to Indira ‘Billi’, however, was her appearance in the low-budget film noir thriller Black Cat (1959), headlining Balraj Sahni as a police officer hunting for a criminal who’s as elusive as the Scarlet Pimpernel. Released at the Lamington Theatre, Grant Road, the Badshah of B-grade directors N.A. Ansari may have focused inevitably on the official leading lady, Minoo Mumtaz but it was ‘Billi’ exuding brazen sex appeal, who stole the thunder in the undervalued whodunit.

In sum, she featured in 25 Hindi films, and was disenchanted that she could never make it as a heroine in projects which mattered. Circa 1968, she had said in an interview to Picturpost that in a career spanning 1950-’68, every day had been a day of toil, struggle and tears, wondering if she had made the right career choice; she could have led “a normal domesticated life as a housemaker instead.”

In her farewell film, the lavishly-mounted Muslim social Mere Huzoor (an extinct genre now) directed by Vinod Kumar, in 1968 she did leave a lasting impact as the devious mistress of a nawab portrayed by Raaj Kumar, snatching him away till the end, from his tear-shedding wife enacted by Mala Sinha. The game was over, she moved to be in Delhi with her husband Shiv Kumar Mehra, owner of Jubilee Talkies in Chandni Chowk. She passed away in Noida-Delhi on June 16 this year at the age of 88, survived by her daughter Mala and grandchildren. Tragically, she couldn’t ever realise her dream of shedding the image of the catty B-grader, who used to be such a relief from yesteryear’s pure-as-driven snow and hopelessly servile women stereotypes.

The Jungle Girl Chitra 

Cut to the Minerva cinema, then an old-worldly cottage-like structure with a small garden, a water fountain and a row of trees -- a pebble’s throw away from Grant Road station. There the mammoth hoardings of the Wadia Brother’s Zimbo (1958), an Indian avatar of Tarzan, were hypnotic for a junior school kid. I’d stand there fixated gaping at the Jungleman (portrayed by Azad), his Jane clinging on to him for dear life, accompanied by a rather bemused chimpanzee Pedro.

Directed by Homi Wadia and written by his brother JBH Wadia, owners of Basant Pictures, they had earlier made Toofani Tarzan in 1937. Enhanced by Gevacolour and lush production values, Zimbo was a kid’s fantasy come true, but I was in a minority of one. For the first time, I snuck into the cinema alone with a front stalls ticket, and came out entranced by Chitra -- no longer Jane but given the demure name of Leela Devi, warbling the still remembered Chitragupta-composed song Yeh Kiya Kaise Tune Jadoo.

And then the moon-faced Chitra vanished from my life till Pritish Nandy, editor of The Illustrated Weekly of India assigned me an article titled Sunset Boulevard, on yesteryear actors who could narrate their hard luck stories.

My homework yielded the information that she was born on 17 May, 1937 in Hyderabad. It’s unclear who changed her name from Afsar Unissa to the terse Chitra, that’s merely the way it was. It seems Kamal Amrohi wanted to cast her after seeing her debut in Mann, but while he was procrastinating she was at the studios, for P.N. Arora’s Chor Bazaar. It didn’t click and as fables go in show business, she was relegated to a hundred miserly-budgeted films. Her dreams of becoming the next Nargis or Meena Kumari went up in smoke. She retired and became a recluse in her house somewhere at Juhu or Khar.

I had dialled her phone number, acquired from a Bollywood phone directory. A husky voice picked up the line and grumbled, “I’m no Chitra-Vitra…who are you?”

After incessant persuasion, she agreed she was Chitra but refused to meet me personally. I kept badgering her with questions. The synopsis of her answers was, ”Look, I’m from a nawabi family of Hyderabad. I’d come to Bombay for holidays, I was fond of movies. So I told myself, why don’t I become a heroine? The mirror agreed with me. I became a heroine opposite Ajit in Mann. But I became really popular with Chor Bazaar with Shammi Kapoor as the hero. I’ve done all sorts of films like historical, social, action pictures, you name it. I’ve acted opposite Rajendra Kumar, Balraj Sahni, Pradeep Kumar, Mahipal and Feroz Khan. I lived in a bungalow-type of a house, I changed seven cars as I became more and more popular. I’ve done 111 films, I’ve counted them actually. I was in India’s first jungle colour film - Zimbo and in AVM studio’s Baap Bete. But then there was an ajeeb si tragedy. I became too choosy. By dilly dallying whether I should do this film or that film I lost a lot of time. Enough.”

She cut the line. But I needed her photograph. After half a dozen calls, she agreed, “Allah ke vaaste, dubara kabhi phone nahin kariyega. Send your camera person but you don’t come. And tell him to click my left profile only.”

The enthusiastic photographer, Palashranjan Bhaumick, returned to the office with several clicks but in all of them, she had covered her face completely under a black veil. Nandy was thrilled, “Now that’s an unusual image, we’ll go with it.” Palashranjan kept apologising that there was a tall, young man at the one-room apartment, who would have punched him black and blue if he had requested him to back off.

There ended my childhood crush. I do keep recalling flashes of her as a dancing-prancing, gorgeous Leela Devi of the tinsel jungles of Zimbo. After what was described as a prolonged illness, she passed away on 11 January, 2006. Believe me, there has never been another feisty jungle girl as her. For the Minerva hoarding-obsessed kid, even the gorgeous Kimi Katkar the eye candy of Hemant Birje in B.Subhash’s 1985 Adventures of Tarzan was no patch on my Leela Devi, as unforgettable as anyone’s first love.

Naqi Jehan: Beauty Beyond Cinema

And there was Naqi Jehan crowned Miss India (1968), who would remind me of Saira Banu -- statuesque, a killer smile and a voice that was always kept at a medium volume. She was the daughter of Pramila, a Baghdadi Jew by birth, a popular actor, the first film producer and a Miss India (1948) herself. Pramila married M. Kumar, born Syed Hassan Ali Zaidi, whom you might remember as the hot-eyed, rebel ‘shilpkar’ of Mughal-e-Azam. According to numerous reports, he crossed over to Pakistan, never to return.
If Naqi Jehan’s acting stint is listed at all it includes, Chetan Anand’s Aakhri Khat (1966), Samaj ko Badal Dalo (1970) and Ek Khilari Bawan Pattey (1972).

It would seem her heart wasn’t into acting at all; she married one Vikram kamdar converted to Hinduism, altered her name to Nandini. And full stop.
Now, how come she’s stuck on like glue to my spree of recollections?

Admittedly it’s very hazily that I can vouch for her presence in N.A.Ansari’s pulp fiction-like Mr Murder (1969), seen at a re-run at Edward cinema, Dhobi Talao. Film scholar Karan Bali may well berate me for this but though Chand Usmani was this B-grader’s heroine, Naqi Jehan was around in it too. Truly, only deep research or Mr Bali could clarify this to stop my recurring shadows of doubt.

Charismatic women actors of yesteryear who had their 15 minutes of fame but quit either because of marriage or were weary of their done and dusted acts, can’t be comprehensively covered by just an ordinary fan Uncle like me. Hopefully, someday my beloved B-grade divas will be scoured and given their deserved credit. A hopeless dream, I know. But I find myself unable to finish this sentence.