Trisha 
Lights down, camera on- Panoti walks through the doorway, strikes a pose, and adjusts her large glasses, headline in hand. Today, we have a sad secret to reveal, straight from a dusty archive of Indian film history.Veteran journalist Bhawana Somaaya has recently divulged a haunting whisper. Smita had intuition that something was wrong warning flag that her body had begun to hijack her health. Cue shivers!
Now, just imagine: one of Bollywood’s brightest stars, shining on screen, yet grappling secretly and invisibly with real and serious discomfort. Smita-the brave queen of Parallel cinema-knew something was deteriorating about her health, even without the visible signs or physical evidence. Bhawana Somaaya who had traversed those dark moments, remembers Smita as “always in frail health,” with a sense that at a certain point, intuitively – it was slipping away.
Panoti leans in with emphasis. At the age of 31, Smita’s metaphysical star was snuffed out in an absurd twist: dying due to complications of childbirth-puerperal sepsis- on 13 December 1986. What makes this so painfully cinematic, is the foretelling-Smita knew.
“Imagine a limber silhouette on hospital gurneys with eyes heavy with unsaid thoughts. Bhawana’s memories narrate: “She seemed to know she was going to die”; the stillness that precedes the storm. Think of that burden of knowing on already fragile souls.
The Panoti detective doesn’t stop there. She pursues her work on Smita’s elsewhere-documented free-spiritedness, frankness, and big-heartedness—even here we see glimmers of that spark as her health recedes. This inner sense—knowing of impending doom—has an almost mystical quality, reminiscent of the tragic chorus of a Greek drama.
Extreme close-ups show Bhawana Somaaya’s trembling voice recalling those evenings; Smita, pale but unbroken, their conversation, weighed with intensity that fluctuated between animated and heavy fatigue. The others around her saw this too—the unstoppable star, slowing down, laying down, smelling the end of the act.
Panoti sighs: what heart-breaking fragility! Smita is no longer the distant invention of cinematic legend—she is made real, vulnerable, and astonishingly human through the revealing of these contradictions.
In this display of talent and tragedy, we find that even the heavy can feel their own fragility. Smita Patil, gifted actress, Padma-Shri awardee, belligerent spirit—knew the signal before the fall.”
for more updates visit panotinews.com
About The Author
