Leela A Patchwork Life

by Leela Naidu, Jerry Pinto

Leela Naidu was listed as one of the five most beautiful women in the world by Vogue magazine. But she was much more than that. She was the fine-boned, haunting face in Hrishikesh Mukherjee s Anuradha, in Merchant-Ivory s The Householder and in Shyam Benegal s Trikaal. She was the woman who refused to sign Raj Kapoor s films four times, and the actor who asked for a script long before the phrase bound script became Bollywood cliché. Jean Renoir taught her acting and Salvador Dali used her as a model for a Madonna. Leela was married, the mother of twins and divorced before she was twenty. Later, she was Dom Moraes s muse, his unpaid secretary, his best friend and, when he was interviewing Indira Gandhi, his translator (interpreting his mumbling questions ). Through this time she also edited magazines and dubbed Hong Kong action movies, was Kumar Shahani s first producer, and when JRD Tata wanted a film on how to use the washroom on a plane, she made it for him. A Patchwork Life is a memoir that is charming, idiosyncratic and a window to a world of Chopin, red elephants, lampshades made of human skin, moss gardens and much a world where a naked Russian count turns up in a French garden, plush hotels offer porcupine quills as toothpicks and an assistant director sends his female lead an inflatable rubber bra. Leela s life was about staying in the moment . Everyone who met her has a Leela Naidu story. This is her version.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction

200 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Leela Naidu was an Indian actress who starred in a small number of Hindi and English films.

Born in British India to Indian nuclear physicist father and a Swiss-French journalist mother, she grew up in Europe, went to an elite school in Geneva, Switzerland, and studied acting with Jean Renoir. She was Femina Miss India in 1954. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s she was listed among "The World's Most Beautiful Women" in prominent fashion magazines, such as Vogue.

Reviews

[Khush · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leela Naidu could have written this book herself, but Jerry Pinto wrote this book on her behalf. It is a very well written book.

It gave great glimpses of Leela's life. Although she had worked with some of the best Indian film-makers, she was not really drawn to the Bombay film industry. For instance, there were many actresses who dreamt to work with the great Raj Kapoor, but not Leela. He repeatedly offered her to work in his films but she declined his offers. Unlike many Indian actresses, she got married early in life and left the Bombay film industry. Unfortunately, her marriage did not last long. At a later point in her life, she married the poet, Dom Moraes.

They were one of the most sought-after couples in India. Leela was beautiful and talented, and Dom a fiercely gifted poet. Leela, for instance, worked only in few films, and yet she was known for her work and beauty; one can say the same for Dom, as a poet he was not prolific, but he wrote some of his best poetry before he turned thirty, and made a mark. For instance, someone like W .H Auden praised his work and supported him in his literary enterprise. I suppose what is truly unique about their success is their intelligence and passion they have shown in their respective fields. It would have been a very interesting book had she shared more about her life with Dom.

After living on several continents, Leela and Dom returned to Bombay where they lived until the very end. These last years must be taxing for her because of her health and problems with Dom (I read Dom's memoirs and saw how (un-Indian) he was, and how completely he was cut off from an ordinary Indian life. It was also very clear that when he left India as a young boy, he left it for good. But life brought him back to the city that he left so decisively a couple of decades earlier. I reviewed him here https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...).

Even though Leela loved Dom, he was not an easy man and had a complicated history. One day he told Leela that he was going to the Taj to buy meat, he never came back. That must have been painful to Leela. Many years later Leela got to know from Dom's ex-girlfriend that he left her in the same manner. Towards the last years of her life, Leela was alone, and her fragile health made her even more vulnerable.

It is a good book to read. Very neat (here I mean it as a compliment). It gives a glimpse into the lives of two very fascinating people. The book, in some ways, is a reminder that at the end it is not the success or the fame that makes one happy; it is the love that matters. What matter is the lives one has touched. On this count, they both failed each-other.

[Sridhar Reddy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Upon reading the description of the book, I have to admit that I was very interested in the fragile dynamics of failed relationships - Leela Naidu, labeled as one of the world's most beautiful women, fiercely intelligent and independent, having to deal with a failed high-profile marriage with twins in tow, all before she turned twenty. How would a young woman deal with this? What did society think? Did she care?

I'll never know.

When I finished this book I got very little of Leela Naidu's personal struggle, instead I got an exceptionally well-written account of the fabulous life of Leela Naidu, her achievements, her fabulous friends, and her charismatic pluck. While I enjoyed the anecdotes of a rarefied lifestyle, I wanted to see the other side of Leela. A woman who projected such perfection and physical beauty must have some darkness and ugliness inside, something which Naidu was unwilling to share.

That is her own right, and one has to respect it. But I do find the most compelling autobiographies to be the ones that admit flaws and faults, that portray life as pure joy that is peppered with authentic moments of gray. Challenges. Hurdles. Failures. Regrets. After reading this book I only got about ten percent of what Leela Naidu really felt and thought. Which is a shame, because she is an eminently interesting human being.

Leela Naidu is frank and open in some regards, but her lack of desire to share her life in its entirety makes for an autobiographical failure. As a reader I don't require schadenfreude to appreciate Leela's life, but to share in her challenges as a mother and wife would have lent an air of humility and accessibility to a woman of such grandiose poise and beauty. An opportunity missed.

[Barkha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anecdotes from the life of Leela Naidu. She seems to have her heart in the right place, although she received most of the opportunities due to her family. There was much to appreciate beyond her beauty - she was an intelligent woman with good moral values. She had quite a tragic personal life, but you wouldn't know that from this book as she steers quite clear of talking too much about her family. The contempt for Dom is clearly visible though.
It was a window into a different world, how the India's rich might have lived in the 1960-80 phase. I was just amazed at the amount of connections her father had and maintains.

[Anu Warrier · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had bought Leela - A Patchwork Life in 2012, after reading excerpts from it on rediff.com, but like many a book gathering dust on my bookshelf, had never got around to reading it until a year later, when an after-dinner conversation with our friends made my husband pick the book up, and he said he found it interesting. So, when he finished with it, and I found my insomnia attacking a couple of days ago, I began reading the book and didn't put it down until I finished, sleep notwithstanding.

What I remember of Leela Naidu, the actress, is her portrayal of Anuradha, a talented singer who gives up her career to become the wife of an idealistic village doctor. The film explored her increasing frustrations at giving up an essential part of herself, as well as the neglect she faces as her husband becomes more and more engrossed in his work. I remember thinking the first time I saw the movie that the film would have had a much better impact with a heroine who could actually act.

Neither did other films (Ye Raaste Hain Pyaar Ke, Trikaal, The Householder) make me change my opinion about her acting skills. So imagine my surprise when I read her reminiscences and learn that no less a personage than new-wave director Jean Renoir taught her to act!

By all accounts, Leela Naidu led an eventful life. Born of an Indian father who was a noted physicist and a French mother who was a journalist of repute, young Leela grew up in India, Paris and Switzerland. She was multi-lingual, and exposed to a wide variety of experiences and people. Roberto Rossellini, Ingrid Bergman, Rosenthal, Jean Renoir, Indira Gandhi, Balasaraswati, Salvador Dali, Mahatma Gandhi - these are names that appear in the book; yet, it is not name-dropping so much as sharing a connection that she has with these diverse set of people with us, her readers.

What makes the A Patchwork Life interesting are the anecdotes: how Sarojini Naidu (her paternal aunt) asked a young Leela to offer chocolates to 'Mickey Mouse', and how Leela discovered later who Mickey Mouse was, and how Mickey Mouse delved into the chocolates like a little boy; how Dom Moraes decided to ask her father for her hand, and how her father told her that it was good to be loyal, 'but it's no good trying to defend the indefensible.'

Then there are the anecdotes about the film industry. Leela was already married and a mother when Hrishikesh Mukherjee signed her to act in Anuradha. Incidentally, much before this happened, Hrishida's friend Raj Kapoor had offered her a four-film contract. (RK's note was addressed 'To a peeping face in a moving car'.) One that she had rejected because she was set on going to Oxford. But Hrishikesh Mukherjee persisted, even offering her a complete script. There are some humorous asides about being offered inflatable bras and two caterpillars (false eyelashes) as well as being told to wear three satin petticoats so she would less like 'a TB patient'.

Yet, she had a good experience working with Hrishikesh Mukherjee who she says 'never directed; he just offered comments.' There is also a sly rap on the knuckles for Balraj Sahni, who, though he was a gentleman, was not above trying his luck, while Ashok Kumar, who was a phenomenally busy actor then, never knew the name of the film, or that of his character, or that of his co-stars'.

The anecdote that made me laugh out loud, though, was the one she shares about Shashi Kapoor when they were shooting The Householder. Jennifer (Kendall) once told Shashi (in Leela's hearing), 'Why don't you act?' 'I'm acting, Jennifer,' he protested. Jennifer's reaction was dry (and classic): 'No, you were not. You were fluttering your lashes.'

There is a very interesting story about Ye Raaste Hain Pyaar Ke that would interest anyone who is curious about the backstory of films. Commonly accepted as based on the Nanavati murder case, the film's heroine even called a press conference to set the record straight.

She is blunt about the lack of organisation in the film industry, and what she saw as its callousness towards anybody but the stars. She mentions how she was called a 'communist' for standing up for the plight of the extras (a term she abhorred) on the sets, even locking horns with Arundhati Roy on the sets of Electric Moon. (She is quite caustic about Roy's present concern for displaced people, considering Roy didn't have much sympathy for the workers on her husband's film sets earlier.)

There was much more to Leela Naidu than being an actress. As she says herself, 'The film industry and I never understood each other.' She had worked as editor for a couple of magazines, including Society, where she took over from Shobha De; she was also a well-known producer whose documentaries on socially relevant subjects made waves. She had directed documentaries and short films, some of which had won awards. She had written scripts for films, done radio shows, translated Ionescu and Gunter Grass, and been a dubbing artiste. She had learnt Bharatanatyam from Balasaraswati herself, and was an accomplished pianist.

Salvador Dali painted her. Vogue listed her as one of the 'Five Most Beautiful Women' in the world. While that did not go to her head, her meeting with Alfred Hitchcock was classic - while shooting for A Face in the Sun, they needed a steam engine to shoot the scene where Anna gets down at a small university town. After they finished shooting at Universal Studios, she heard someone clapping. 'Beautiful', he sighed. Leela looked around. A fat man with a face like a bulldog (as Leela describes him) was introduced to her; he greeted her and then pointed to the engine - 'She's beautiful, isn't she?'

There are several mentions of racism/classicism and her attempts to level the playing field. The patting-self-on-the-back does get a bit much, though I'm sure it did happen as she said it did. After all, her body of work stands evidence to her sensibilities. It's perhaps because there is not much else to balance the self-kudos. It is also perhaps because she is so restrained in her telling that the narrative is stilted in a few places. While the latter part of the book has many references to Dom Moraes, for instance, her narrative is very clinical, reflecting more on her unpaid duties as his secretary, transcribing his unreadable handwriting and taking down notes as he interviewed famous personalities across the world than on any personal woes.

Yet, there is a untold sense of poignancy - for what she had lost, for what she had never attained, for her untold 'trials and tribulations'. Perhaps it comes from an inherent distaste at washing dirty linen in public. She skims over her failed marriages, first to Tiki Oberoi, the scion of the Oberoi hoteliers, and then to famed novelist Dom Moraes, her childhood friend. That both marriages were unhappy was a well-known fact, yet there is very little expression of her grief at the end of those relationships, or her suffering at losing custody of her daughters. Her distaste for exposing her private life to the public eye is evident in her prologue: “I would willingly bare the scabs on my soul were I to suspect that there would be some value in so doing.” Yet, what remains untold is just as interesting as what is revealed.

Her autobiography is not so much an autobiography as it is a montage of 'scenes' from her rich and varied life, anecdotes about people she had met and encounters she cherished. She also knew that any story that is told is only a narrative of a certain period in one's life, not the whole truth about that person. And so, in her words, this was the story of 'the Leela I know'. She also enters a caveat - the Leela she was may have had a different view of her life from the Leela who is now narrating this story, and the perspective of her life may change yet again.

At 180 pages, you are in no danger of tiring of the book before you finish it. Co-author Jerry Pinto, to whom she narrated her story orally, does a yeoman job in keeping his voice out of her narrative (the book underwent 17 drafts before it attained its present form). That is fortunate because Leela Naidu has a very interesting 'voice'. As interesting as the narrative is when she is talking about her brush with the film industry both here and abroad, it is the little vignettes of her life as a child and a teen that make for riveting reading. So, if you want to know about a naked Russian count who came to tea, or the story of a lampshade made out of human skin, or her debates on theology, or the story of how she became the Princess of Kuch-Nahin, do dip into this charming and idiosyncratic memoir.

It's a fascinating account of an age long gone, much like unexpectedly coming across sepia photographs from your great-grandmother's trunk. There is a sense of déjà vu, of seeing something that you have seen once and forgotten, but that is still not erased from the deepest recesses of your memory. It brings both smiles and tears, and just like those faded photographs leave you with many unanswered questions, so does this narrative. Reading this book, however, and realising that she died not soon after the book was published does leave, in Jerry Pinto's words, 'A Leela-shaped hole in my heart.'

[Parvathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is that feeling you get seeing an old black and white photograph, that sense of a life, once lived in full colour with all attendant joys, sorrows, loves, beliefs, wisdom, foolishness. It's the exact feeling you get reading this one, anecdotes from the life of a once great beauty; an actress wooed by the likes of Raj Kapoor, David Lean and Merchant-Ivory, yet who never hit the big time; an obviously intelligent daughter of acccomplished parents who never fulfilled her potential. These snippets of her life tell of a distant time when possibilities were still alive - when Dali painted her, when Vogue featured her on its cover, when Jean Renoir trained her in acting, even when Shyam Benegal cast her in Trikaal. She proves an engaging raconteur, even if she pats herself on the back a bit too much - for her acting, for her concern for the underprivileged, for her quick thinking that saves the day many a time. I especially enjoyed her story of the naked count, her takedown of Arundhati Roy (her meanness to set workers during the shoot of Electric Moon totally at odds with her saviour-of-the-oppressed image), her constant pricking of the Dom Moraes' pomposity bubble. She tells these lightly, with humour and grace. At the end though, there is a sadness you cannot miss - perhaps of regrets, old griefs, a sense of what could have been. It’s truly the story of that life in a black and white photograph.

[Kathryn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Summary: Leela Naidu led an enchanted life, changing the world through beauty and acting.

Review: I have no doubt that this is what Naidu believed that her life was like. But is a big crock. You can tell that she's a little bit deluded about what she believed her life was like and her influence was like. Much of the book's contents are probably true, but a lot of it probably isn't. Unfortunately, you don't know which is which.

[Saral · Rating 3 out of 5]

The elegant wife in Anuradha, the ever sacrificing wife to the village doctor. She remains etched in mind as the delicate angelic Anuradha.
How is the 'real' Leela? Very similar, and yet very steely. Renowned as one of the most beautiful women of all times.

[Vikas Datta · Rating 5 out of 5]

A most entrancing story of the woman who lived life to the full, was a graceful born actress and possibly one of the first cosmopolitan Indians... offers quite an incisively, irreverent view of many 'illustrious' personages, societies and institutions (and quite a lot of hypocrisy)

[Nitya · Rating 3 out of 5]

This short article = way more interesting!

http://fountainink.in/?p=2257&all=1

[Sharad Sakorkar · Rating 5 out of 5]

A moving experience over, I am back to read Jerry Pinto’s alluringly penned foreword of the book Leela - A Patchwork Life. It's not very natural that I lap up books about people I have been with remotely - authors, actors, leaders - as my companions when I am going through with my life. A close buddy left Leela with me years back and kept checking dutifully with me if I had read it. A time came when I could not endure my own voice promising him that I would...very shortly. I did just that immediately on completion of the one that I was reading. I have seen three films of Leela Naidu - The Householder, Anuradha, and Yeh Raaste Hain Pyaar Ke, none of them because I liked Leela Naidu particularly as an actor. The first because Shashi Kapoor was my favourite hero and the other two for some idyllic songs. But believe you me, now that I have read the book, I plan to watch them for Leela Naidu, the incredibly soulful person!

The book is akin to embarking on a cruise that takes you to visit several islands. the islands are anecdotal sharing by Leela of her life's journey. It's an outcome of seven years' labour by both Leela and Jerry Pinto. An earthily sophisticated and intuitive Leela chose Jerry Pinto to write the book with her, and not on behalf of her. The extraordinary tuning that must have happened between the two of them is evident from the book. A multilingual Leela recounts some funny incidents in her life. There is a hilarious account of her meeting with Dom Moraes in which she agreed to marry him. Leela comes across as a person who never said no to any challenge, overcame difficulties, and delivered on the outcomes, be it working in Hongkong government TV, getting funding from the Indian government for her documentaries, editing magazines, or searching or searching for Naxalites for a BBC Documentary! A sensitive person who braved the ups and downs of life with a resolute attitude. Jerry Pinto writes appealingly "....but she never let you think you are a devotee, even if you are looking at her with your heart in your eyes. She turned her attention on you and she made you feel that her beauty was a special gift to you, she was only the steward of its ability to make you think of chocolate and jazz, of the inside of a shell and morning monsoon sky...." This is the first encounter I had with his writing. I am now poised to read some other stuff too.

Leela, I wish I were fortunate enough to meet you in person...

[Yashovardhan Sinha · Rating 1 out of 5]

The adjective that regularly came to mind while reading this autobiography was "pompous".

Like so many Indians, she thrives on trashing her country. Even when she describes legendry figures like Balraj Sahni or Ashok Kumar as "gentlemen", it's not without a sting in the tail. She, of course, is the cat's whiskers in every situation.

On the other hand her tone is totally different when she talks of Europe or America or whites.

Much has been made of Leela Naidu as someone who was once described by Vogue as one of the five most beautiful women in the world. Of course she was very beautiful. That's why I bought her biography. And now regret wasting good money.

[Kandachamy Vijayakumaran · Rating 4 out of 5]

An article by T J S George about Leela made me curious about the legendary actor. It was now that I got an opportunity to learn more about her, thanks to Jerry Pinto. It is indeed an extraordinary life. An upright character with unique beauty and more than usual brains, Leela should be a role model for modern women. The book is something like an overview from the fourth dimension. Very absorbing.

[Isha · Rating 3 out of 5]

I absolutely admire this woman! But kinda disappointed with the book. Would love to know more about her!

[Sandhya · Rating 3 out of 5]

The faintest memory one has of Leela Naidu is that of Anuradha, the haunting, virginal beauty in Hrishikesh Mukherjee's 1960s film with Balraj Sahni. There were a few more fleeting appearances from her on the screen, but by and large, she remained a figure known only to a close circle of friends in Mumbai, where she stayed till her death earlier this year.

Leela - A Patchwork Life is an autobiographical book, that captures some of highlights of her life - and there were many. She died before the book was published a few months back. She was 69. The multi-lingual, multi-cultural Leela was one of the most well-traveled, well-read people of her times, and French in particular was ingrained into her system.

Born to an physicist Indian father and a French-journalist mother, Leela was thrown in the company of illustrious men and women very early on. Hindi films were incidental to her life. She acted in a few films, got married into a rich industrial family (Oberois), delivered twins, got divorced, married poet/writer Dom Moreas and stayed together for 25 years, until they separated. However, none of the personal tragedies in her life find a place in the book. In her prologue, she enumerates it in one sentence that unmistakably carries the poignant heaviness of memory. 'I do not see what use it would be to recount my 'trials and tribulations', except to add to yet another narrative of feminine pain to the ones that are already extant."

For the rest, http://sandyi.blogspot.com/2010/12/le...

[Praj · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is a dry, unsatisfactory and jaded memoir which callously fails to decipher one of the most reclusive and inscrutable beauty of Indian cinematic history. Personally, I deem that a biography is very much like an onion. To reach to its core, one must peel the outermost layers revealing every aspect of the bulbous infrastructure. Conversely, Jerry Pinto pictures this memoir more like a bunch of grapes; sugary and uncomplicated without much to divulge about.

The laissez-faire and audaciously personified Leela, which the newspapers boasted about, seems to be lost behind a rosy sketch. I reckon that Pinto developed a sympathetic heart towards his subject, thus averting from illuminating the darker and tumultuous side of Leela’s life. A celebrity irrespective to their stature or era has always been a puzzle waiting to be solved, ultimately being a delight to lesser mortals. The aura of an icon concocts an illusion of perfection ready to be dissected with every given opportunity. Regrettably, the institution of such illusion is maintained with utmost care, mocking the very foundation of a candid biography.

What a waste! I would have rather utilized my time surfing Perez Hilton’s webpage.

[Yasha Jain · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is so soothing. Maybe its Jerry Pintos writing that makes it beautiful. It does not go deep into the character that was Leela. The few anecdotes are fun to read but doesn't really qualify as a biography.
Dont read it if you want to know about Leela naidu, it'll leave you disappointed,read it for the writing instead.

[Neha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just a couple of days back I stumbled upon this name-Leela Naidu.,after reading a random interesting as hell article and there is no looking back now. Totally fascinated with her. This memoir is written so well, full of amazing anecdotes laced with candour, nonchalance, humour and heartwarming observations. Excellent penmanship.

[Sahir D'souza.]

I have read only SOME part of this (I read about the naked count). But I have pored many, many times over the photographs. They're very nice ones. They make me want to read the whole book. I hope I will someday.

[Ankur Sharma · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lives upto its name - Pretty patchy.

[Moushumi Ghosh · Rating 3 out of 5]

http://southwestsun.wordpress.com/201...

[Whe Go · Rating 4 out of 5]

I actually really loved this book. it wasn't anything like sensational or anything but it was a cute, beautiful book about a beautiful person. and i loved her. and i loved the pictures.