Arth (1982)
One of the best films coming from the filmmaker Mahesh Bhat, ‘Arth’ was known to be based on his relationship with the late actress Parveen Babi. The film had two of the best actresses of Hindi cinema, Shabana Azmi and Smita Patil pitted against each other resulting in some super-volatile performances. The soulful songs rendered by Jagjit Singh and Chitra Singh were truly beautiful. The film is about the complexities of an extra-marital relationship from the points of view of the husband (Kulbhushan Kharbanda), the wife (Shabana Azmi) and the mistress (Smita Patil). Shabana excelled in the role of a wronged wife and gave the character a certain dignity hitherto absent in such roles despite the scene when in a drunken state she calls her husband’s mistress a whore publicly. But Smita walked away with the accolades as a guilt ridden, insecure ‘other woman’ and her final scene with Shabana when in a hallucination she picks up the imaginary mangalsutra beads of Shabana shakes you up completely.