Celeb Columns
Mahesh Bhatt recalls relationship with Parveen Babi and her fight with Paranoid Schizophrenia in an exclusive column for CineBlitz
Mahesh Bhatt openly speaks about his love story with Parveen Babi, how she suffered from Paranoid Schizophrenia and how he had to let her go in an exclusive column ‘Without Make Up’ for CineBlitz!

Published
6 years agoon

What are man’s truths ultimately? Merely his irrefutable errors – Nietzsche. I’m standing outside the morgue where the body of a woman I loved lies unclaimed – Parveen Babi. I have a vision of the bed we shared, and her dressing table crowded with bottles of perfume. Then the smell of putrefying corpses invades me. Her body was found three days after she died. Outside the morgue, I decide that I will claim her body if her family does not, and give her a decent burial. At least in death, she would have the dignity life had denied her for so long. What, after all, would I be without this woman? She made me. I rose from her ashes.
Parveen and I were two lost souls who found each other. We were both in our late twenties, she already a star, I, a nobody. Her relationship with Kabir Bedi had just ended. She looked hunted. But I didn’t recognise the signs of schizophrenia yet. My career as a filmmaker was going nowhere. I was also drinking heavily, having LSD and looking for solace in the madness of Bhagwan Rajneesh. There was a dark pleasure in sinking. I was already a married man then. I had married, at 21, the girl I fell in love with at 16 – Lorraine Bright, a beautiful orphan who I had wanted to protect.
Though utterly lost myself, I liked playing the role of a protector. It had started with my mother, a woman damaged by the man she loved. I had tried to shield her from pain and failed. And I failed with Lorraine. Despite all the promises of undying love that I made, when another beautiful, lonely and vulnerable woman came along, I betrayed Lorraine. Fear and insecurity had no place in our lives in the early days of our relationship. Parveen was a very generous person, never shy of a grand gesture. One day she said to me, ‘I want to buy you what you love most, as a token of my love. What do you want?’ ‘Books,’ I said. That afternoon, we drove to Thacker’s Bookshop in her car and returned with a boot full of books.
I was known as Parveen Babi’s boyfriend. We didn’t care, but the paparazzi did. When it became impossible to ignore them, we went away to Gstaad in Switzerland to be with U. G. Krishnamurti, who I had met the previous year. UG was an extraordinary man, brutally honest, but also strangely compassionate. Parveen took to him immediately. I have a vivid memory of her pushing her hand towards UG and asking, ‘What is my future?’ ‘I see a sudden break in your lifeline,’ UG said hesitantly. Her face changed, she froze with fear. I wondered why, until one day madness claimed Parveen.
I remember the day I found her hiding in a corner of her bedroom, cowering like an animal before a butcher’s blade. ‘They’re trying to kill me, Mahesh,’ she whispered. She had make-up and costume on, having run away from the set of Prakash Mehra’s Jwalamukhi. The doctors diagnosed her condition as paranoid schizophrenia. She was genetically predisposed to the illness, having inherited it from her father. It would take her at least six months to limp back to normalcy. But the might of the film industry who had invested in Parveen wanted her back. I tried hard to keep Parveen away from Bombay. I argued with her, telling her that the hyper-competitive environment of the movies would cause a relapse. ‘I can’t let you commit suicide,’ I said. But I could not reach her anymore.
‘Let her go, Mahesh. You are part of the problem,’ UG told me. ‘You will always be in that world and she needs to get out. Nothing can save her.’ It was raining the night it ended. We were in her bedroom. We undressed and got into bed, and as I moved to kiss her, she said, ‘It’s either UG or me.’ I froze. She was trembling again. After a while, she said, ‘I love you.’ I didn’t say ‘I love you, too.’ In the dim light, I saw tears in her eyes. She was silent and did not stir as I put my clothes on. I began to walk away. She said, ‘Put off the AC, it’s very cold.’ I did, and walked on to the main door.
When I opened it I heard her call: ‘Baba!’ That was what she called me in our intimate moments. Baba. I did not answer or look back. My steps quickened as I approached the old lift, and as I pressed the button, I heard footsteps behind me. I took the stairs and heard Parveen running after me. I could smell her. At the landing I turned around briefly. She was coming towards me, stark naked, with her hair loose. She stopped a few steps above me. I turned and walked down and out into the damp night. Somehow, I was certain that she wouldn’t follow me. She didn’t. I never went back.
I told the world our story in my autobiographical film Arth, and shot to prominence after years of failure. Parveen had stopped caring about everything by then – herself, Mahesh Bhatt, the world. ‘She’s drowning,’ UG had said. Leave her, or she’ll take you with her.’ I don’t think that was why Parveen and I separated. I had lost her before that. I feel no guilt. But the fact remains that I survived, she went under. The deepest wound we suffer is our inability to protect those we love. Sometimes, life is like a river in spate: nothing you do can change its course.
– Mahesh Bhatt

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