00:00She lived like cinema itself, larger than life, unpredictable, full of beautiful chaos.
00:04Linked with some of the biggest names of her time, Amitabh Bachchan, Danny Dinh Zonkpa,
00:07Kabir Bedi and later Mahesh Bhatt, her life was a string of glittering headlines and whispered
00:12heartbreaks. Mahesh Bhatt once described her as a candle that burnt at both sides. But love for her
00:17wasn't a safe space, it was a storm. Friends recall how she'd suddenly turn anxious, claiming
00:21someone was spying on her. She'd say that her house was bugged, the CIA was following her.
00:25Mahesh Bhatt has allegedly spoken about nights where she'd sit trembling in a corner,
00:29doctors allegedly diagnosed her with paranoid schizophrenia, a condition that traps you in
00:34your own fears. But this was an era when mental health was still a taboo. Her pain became gossip,
00:39her heart prick became dinner table talks and then one day she disappeared. No calls, no letters,
00:44nothing. Months later, somebody spotted her at an airport, frightened, unrecognizable,
00:48boarding a flight to the US. And when she finally returned to Mumbai, she was no longer the icon
00:53the world remembered. She kept her curtains drawn, her doors bolted and her phone disconnected.
00:57And then one morning in 2005, silence. For three days, nobody heard from her. When the police broke
01:02into her Jew apartment, the milk packets outside her door were soured, the newspapers were stacked
01:06and inside, they found her lying alone. The most glamorous woman of the 1970s, gone without a sound.
01:12The actress I'm talking about is the woman who brought sensuality to silver screen and modernity
01:17to Indian cinema, Parveen Babi, a superstar who lived like fire, which waded like smoke.
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