Among her co-actors, Parveen’s most frequent collaborators were Amitabh Bachchan, Shashi Kapoor

and Hema Malini. The first film Hema and Parveen were signed on for was Kamal Amrohi’s passion
project Razia Sultan. By the time the opus hit theatres in 1982, it had been in the making for about a
decade, of which seven years had been devoted to its shooting. The film had ‘Dream Girl’ Hema in
the role of a lifetime – playing the thirteenth-century queen Razia Sultan. Dharmendra played her
Abyssinian slave general Yakut and Parveen essayed the part of Khakun, the queen’s ravishing lady-
in-waiting.

The film is remembered for N.B. Kulkarni’s lavish sets and Bhanu Athaiya’s costumes and, of course,
for being the colossal failure that it was at the box office. What still provides fodder for discussion,
even now, is an unlikely moment of homoeroticism between Razia and Khakun during the song
‘Khwab ban kar koi aayega’. Sailing in an opulent swan-shaped boat that serves as a bed, Khakun is
singing a sexually charged lullaby to Razia. As the queen’s eyes glaze over and her toes tingle while
she dreams of the dashing Yakut galloping on a horse, Khakun leans over to caress her face. An
oversized white plume covers their faces, suggesting a kiss and the women steering the boat go
wide-eyed and giggle.

In the book Hema Malini: Beyond the Dream Girl by Ram Kamal Mukherjee, actor Vijayendra Ghatge,
who played one of Razia’s suitors, Malik Ikhtiar-ud-din Altunia, says, ‘Well, there was a scene
between Hemaji and Parveen Babi, which had a hint of [homosexuality]. After the film was released,
the press and public did talk about this scene and I still remember that. Years later, when the film
was shown on Doordarshan, this particular scene, followed by a solo song sequence by Parveen
Babi, was cropped. I really don’t know whether Razia was a lesbian or not. I guess Kamal Saab would
have been the right person to answer this question. But I would also like to say that both Hemaji and
Parveen did a fantastic job. It was aesthetically done. In a way, Hema-ji deserves kudos for having
the guts to do that scene.’

Hema smiles at the memory of shooting the sequence for the lilting ‘Khwab ban kar koi aayega’. ‘I
thought it was a very sweet song,’ she observes, ‘but Dharamji [Dharmendra, her husband]would
always say, “What is this rubbish song?” Parveen would laugh and say that Dharamji was being
jealous. What Kamal Amrohi had told us about the song was that these girls lived in a harem, so this
kind of a relationship between two girls was very natural. Obviously, he didn’t want to show much,
so he put that big feather there. When we were shooting that scene, I had no clue what it would
look like on screen. We were just told that I would be lying down and Parveen comes close to me
and covers our faces with the feather. It was only later when I saw the scene on screen that I
realized what it looked like. Though I think Parveen was a lot smarter about things like this. She must
have figured it out much before me.’

Among her contemporaries, Hema was known to be quiet and aloof, but not around Parveen.

‘She was much younger than me, but I never felt uncomfortable around her. It was easy to talk to
her. I remember, other heroines wouldn’t interact much and I wasn’t very outgoing either. I was very
friendly with Parveen. If we had Shashi [Kapoor] and Amitabh [Bachchan] on the set, it meant that
we were all laughing all the time. Those two fellows were complete jokers,’ she adds.

Their friendship grew from the shared experience of shooting one film for seven years. ‘We used to
joke about how long it was taking to make Razia Sultan,’ says Hema. ‘After shooting the last scene of
a schedule, we’d say, “See you after a year to shoot the next scene.”’ Their future interactions might
have been limited to the sets of the six films they would eventually shoot together, but Hema still
has fond memories of sharing her homemade lunch with Parveen and talking about skincare
routines.

‘We never really talked about her personal problems,’ Hema says. ‘Though Parveen would ask me
for advice on how to deal with pushy producers. She’d tell me that they were demanding too much
and she didn’t know how to deal with them.’ There was one incident, though, on the sets of Kranti in
late 1978 that cemented Hema’s bond with Parveen. A fight sequence between the Anglophile
Rajkumari Meenakshi (played by Hema) and Surili (with Parveen in the role) from Bharat’s (Manoj
Kumar’s) army of freedom fighters was being filmed in Rajkamal Studios.

‘We were fighting with swords and the fight master in the background was shouting, “Hit her with
force.” I don’t know what happened, but both Parveen and I messed up our timing and I hit Parveen
with my sword,’ Hema remembers. ‘Parveen’s finger started bleeding. I was so upset, I started
crying.’

She was, in fact, so distraught that eventually Parveen had to try and calm her down by saying,
‘Don’t worry, Hemaji, it was my fault.’