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When Mahesh Bhatt revealed how filmmakers wanted to give electric shocks to Parveen Babi: I ran away with her to Bangalore

When Mahesh Bhatt revealed how filmmakers wanted to give electric shocks to Parveen Babi: I ran away with her to Bangalore

| Jun 22, 2021, 09:46:57 PM | etimes.in

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She was the iconic Indian actress with unconventional western looks and a Bohemian spirit. Yes, we're talking about none other than the first sex symbol of Bollywood, Parveen Babi. Her career brought her runaway success. But her personal life was in shambles. She was mentally fragile and it is believed that Parveen suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. Rumour mills claim that Parveen’s mental disorder was due to her alcoholism which resulted from her failed relationships. In 2018, Parveen's then-boyfriend and filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt spoke in length about how their relationship changed and what all he did to make things work despite the actress suffering from mental illness. Parveen developed a genetic biochemical disorder, paranoid schizophrenia, where a person suffers from delusions of fear and persecution. For the same, the actress was receiving treatment and drugs but nothing worked. Once, she stayed away from the camera for many years and when she returned, the makers of her film wanted to give her electric shocks so that the shot could go smoothly. It was when she was shooting for 'Shaan' in 1980 and the makers and the doctors felt that shocks will make her 'fall into line.' Mahesh has revealed how he opposed that. In an interview with Filmfare, Mahesh said, 'I was opposed to ECT because it doesn’t treat the patient; it caters to society. When I told her producers that by drawing her into films they were pushing themselves and her towards doom, they dubbed me a ‘user’. Even the media, particularly tabloid journalism, wanted to give the villain a face. They looked for immediate demons citing drugs and a sexually permissive lifestyle as reasons and trivialised her condition.' He added, 'I had no legal status in her life or the authority to intervene and say, but I thought ‘I’ll not let her be given electric shocks and do irreversible damage to her’. So I ran away with Parveen to UG in Bangalore in September 1979.' For those unaware, when Mahesh and Parveen started dating, the filmmaker was already married and was a father of a daughter. But he left his first wife and daughter and started living with Parveen. Battling a lonely life, Parveen passed away in 2005 and the fact that her body was discovered only a few days after she died, left everyone pondering over how she actually died. Babi was found lying on the bed after the door of her terrace flat was broken open by a police team following a complaint from the manager of her housing society that newspaper and milk packets had been piling up at her door for three days.

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