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October 1940
FILM INDIA
own India that which she could do with impunity in a foreign land?
These are questions the elders of the community might well pause to consider.
SHE WOULD RATHER STARVE THAN ...
And when they sit down to consider these controversial issues they will have, no doubt, to consider the other tremendously important aspect of the problem .... AND THAT IS THE ECONOMIC ASPECT.
Not long ago, a well-known local film director was with me in my office when a Parsee lady visitor was shown in. She was a widow, although she could not have been more than 25 years old, and exceedingly handsome. She was in utterly destitute circumstances and had a mother to support. She told me — and begged of me some small job on my staff.
As she did not know either typing or short-hand she was useless to me; so I took the opportunity of recommending her to my friend the Film director. Apparently the latter had already discovered screen possibilities in her voice and per
This is Prabha, modest and beautiful, as she is in Ranjit's "Ummid."
sonality, for he immediately offered her a beginner's job in his studio. Imagine his consternation, therefore, when she declared she could not possibly do such a thing. It would shock her community, kill her mother, make of her an outcast shunned by all.
My friend was flabbergasted, although I, of course, knew it had to be so. There existed a very weighty section of orthodox opinion in the Parsee community which would a thousand times rather have her beg from house to house and in the streets or preferably starve than take to film-acting. Those who subscribe to this view do not seem to appreciate that by banging in her face the doors of a legitimate profession, they might be indirectly causing her moral collapse by forcing her to seek a living out of the wages of sin.
THE PRESENT PLIGHT OF THE PARSEES
I am not exaggerating matters. The Parsees are shivering to-day in the throes of a stern economic crisis. Prohibition, losses in the share market, growing unemployment owing to lack of enterprise as well as severe competition from sister communities, and the depletion or mismanagement of Parsee charities have brought penury to the doors of many a Parsee home.
Imitation of — and in many a case improvement upon, extravagant Western standards of living have enormously swelled the expenditure
It seems to be a gossip evening for these old girls — Ameer. Sunalini Devi and Wahidan in "Sanskar" a National
picture
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