Amala

Ignore the dog, and the "TotalTollywood.com" written at the bottom, and concentrate on the picture. You are now looking at Amala, an actress of yesteryear, my favourite for many years. If you think she's not spectacular enough, watch Shiva or Agni Nachatram. Last night, finding it tough to watch the brutal World Cup final, I started flipping channels, and on Siti Cable, Kamal Hassan was paying his tribute to silent comedy with Pushpak. But what keeps me interested me about Pushpak, given that I watch it on TV on an average of four times a year, is Amala.
Now, Amala did her last movie in 1995, and so, her career coincides almost exactly with Freud's latency period in my life. However, it was much later, on two consecutive afternoons, when I was around 13, that I watched Shiva and Gharshana (Agni Nachatram) on ETV, and found myself falling... in love. To this day, when I sing or play the first few notes of Ninnukori, I'm reminded of Amala in Ilayaraaja's audacious song in Agni Nachatram.
Amala, I found out much later (fifteen minutes ago, in fact, when I did a little google for her pictures) is half-Bengali and half-Irish. Women really don't come more exotic than that! She quit the movies, according to another biography because she had certain 'visions', and consequently, started working on animal rights. Yet another biography attributes her retirement to her marriage to Nagarjuna.
Whatever the reasons might be, because I never saw her in the movies too much, my love was directed later on towards other actresses. Aishwarya Rai was a standard phase in the lives of most guys in my school, (although the women preferred copying Kajol's hairstyle in the first half of Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. Why?!) and me being as mainstream as they come, fell for her. Recently, when I checked the desktop at home, I found that my vast collection of Aishwarya Rai photographs downloaded on patient afternoons still exists in the depths of the hard disk. And then, I discovered English movies - French Kiss, and You've got Mail made Meg Ryan my favourite, and that folder on my hard disk even chronicles this event!
One day, I watched Casablanca. And for the first time in my life since Shiva, I was in love again. Other actresses, like Shirley Maclaine (especially with that haircut in The Apartment) and Chitrangada Singh (of Hazaron Khwaishein Aisi fame) have come and gone. But these two women remain constant.
Last night, when I saw Pushpak on TV, I didn't even bother changing the channel back to the World Cup to check the score once in a while. When the movie got over, and I changed back to cricket, Jayawardene got out, and the rest of the final was a formality. Having supported the Lankans through the Super Eights till the end, I should've been disappointed, but I was not. I had this strange smile on my face as I switched off the TV and and cleared up my bed to go to sleep.