Mahesh Bhatt worked with the dancing diva Helen in Lahu Ke Do Rang. And she was not just the dancing queen in that film. She won the Filmfare award for her moving performance.
Mahesh Bhatt says Helen is much more than a dancer: “They stuffed her into a box”
Mahesh Bhatt vividly recalled an incident during the shooting that left him shaken. “It was one of those nights when the studio feels like a tomb, the air heavy with the smell of sweat and unrealized dreams. At Filmalaya. I had just finished shooting an emotional scene with Helen and Vinod Khanna. She wasn’t draped in glitter or moving to the rhythm of a drumbeat. She was still, heartbreak etched across her face. She was in character as a Chinese Indian woman, carrying the weight of love and loss, cast adrift by history. I stepped outside, the night pressing down on me, seeking solace in a cigarette.”
Bhatt added, “And there he was—a senior choreographer, with a sneer that could curdle milk. He said, ‘You’re wasting your time. Helen doing emotion? She’s a cabaret dancer. That’s all she is. That’s all she’ll ever be.’ I didn’t respond. What could I say? How do you explain to the blind the radiance of light? I had seen her—really seen her—transform in front of the camera, her pain raw and unguarded, more real than anything I’d directed before. But the world doesn’t like to see past the masks it makes for you. To them, Helen was sequins and sinuous grace, the dancer who set screens ablaze and left men weak.”
Mahesh Bhatt feels Helen, who turned 86 this week, was much more than a dancer. “They had stuffed her into a box marked entertainer and locked it tight,” he said. “And yet, here she was in my film, quietly breaking free, turning herself inside out in ways that left even the doubters breathless. Time, ever the slow judge, proved them wrong. Helen won the Filmfare Award for that performance, and I was the one who handed it to her. The room rose to its feet, not for a cabaret queen, but for a woman who had shattered every stereotype they’d laid on her.”
The veteran filmmaker added, “Even now, at 86, Helen is timeless. She reminds us that stardom built on spectacle fades, but stardom built on truth burns forever. Her story isn’t just about resilience—it’s about grace. About the way she carried herself, in every step, in every role, with a dignity that life itself could never tarnish. Helen doesn’t belong to an era or a generation. She belongs to anyone who believes in the quiet power of reinvention. Here’s to Helen, not just the icon we adored on screen, but the woman who showed us how to embrace life with courage and warmth, and whose glow still lights up the shadows.”
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