Agencies :
Bollywood actress Parveen Babi was a glamour, talent and fashion icon in the 1970s and early 1980s.
Her performances opposite A-list stars including Amitabh Bachchan were loved by the audience.
But behind this glittering career was a deep loneliness and the tragic consequences of a mental health struggle called ‘paranoid schizophrenia’.
Even so many years after his death, discussions about his life and last days have not stopped.
Recently, actress Pooja Bedi has revealed the turbulent times of Parveen Babi in a personal memoir. Parveen Babi once had a deep relationship with Pooja Bedi’s father Kabir Bedi.
In a conversation with Siddharth Kannan, Pooja spoke about the time when Parveen Babi believed that the American intelligence agency FBI was conspiring against her.
Pooja Bedi said that when Parveen Babi returned to India after many years, she almost became isolated from the film industry due to physical and mental changes.
The scene she saw when she went to see her at her house was a complete contrast to the glamorous image of the past.
Pooja recalls, “She opened the door, she looked very different. She had gained a lot of weight, and her hair was messy.”
Although Parveen was very excited to see Pooja, she hugged her, but in the middle of the conversation, the panic inside her suddenly came out.
When Pooja noticed that Parveen Babi was not serving her any food, she asked the reason. Parveen Babi told Pooja, “I’m sorry that I cannot give you anything to eat because I only eat eggs.”
When asked why she was only eating eggs, Parveen Babi said, “This is something they (the Secret Service or FBI) cannot adulterate.”
Hearing this, Pooja understood that Parveen Babi was going through deep mental anguish. Pooja Bedi further said that Parveen Babi was so deeply worried that she believed that everyone outside was out to harm her.
Pooja recalls, “She told me not to buy makeup from the market because someone would adulterate or poison it.
I asked her, ‘Who knows when you are going to buy what?’ She replied, ‘They know everything. This terrible distrust gradually pushed her life towards loneliness.’”
Parveen Babi was known to suffer from paranoid schizophrenia towards the end of her life. Her personal life was also a subject of discussion.
She had relationships with stars like Danny Denzongpa, Kabir Bedi and Mahesh Bhatt. However, she never married.
Last year, Kabir Bedi had said in an interview that Parveen Babi had distanced herself from Kabir Bedi out of fear of mental health treatment. Because she thought that Kabir might pressure her to seek treatment.
The life of this once-bright Bollywood star ended in extreme loneliness. She died on January 20, 2005 due to multiple organ failure.
She was so lonely in the last three days of her life that when the secretary of the flat told the police that she had not done any shopping or taken any newspaper for three days, the police recovered her body exactly two days later, on January 22.
