Uttam Mohanty, a veteran actor in Odia cinema, left an enduring legacy as Ollywood’s first superstar
Sambeet Dash
He was a prominent actor who delivered several hits to the Odia moviegoers of our generation. Ever since the man from the small, nondescript North Odisha township of Baripada made it big with his first hit in the 1977 Odia movie Abhiman, he never looked back. Uttam Mohanty, arguably the first-ever Odia superstar of the Ollywood Industry, died earlier today at the young age of 66.
I remember watching his first movie, ‘Abhiman,’ inside a cold, dingy theater named ‘Ravi Talkies’ on a winter night in 1977, hardly a mile from the BJB Flat where we lived in Bhubaneswar. Barely 9 years old then, and I mostly slept through this black-and-white movie. But I still remember a beautiful song by the leading Odia singer of the time, Akshay Mohanty, ‘BHASA MEGHA MUJE BHASI JAE DURE,’ from that movie.
When our family returned home that night after the evening show clinging to each other packed in a cycle rickshaw like sardines, the Ravi talkies Chhaka (Chowk) and Lewis Road now bustling with traffic looked like dark and dingy streets of a Ghost town. Now, it could take you 10-15 minutes to cross the same junction with current traffic on a lucky day.
Those were the days. After Abhiman, Uttam Mohanty continued to produce hits, several of them first with actress Maheswata Ray as his opposite, followed by Aparajita, whom he later married. This was when his contemporary challenger, the tall, handsome, smiling actor, the Rajesh Khanna of Odia movies, Sriram Panda’s life suddenly took a spiritual turn as he turned into some kind of a Baba (Mendicant). The other contender, Prashant Nanda, getting older with his rapidly receding hair and growing paunch, slowly became a misfit to be a hero when that generation preferred fitter, younger-looking lads.
In these changing times, the long-nosed, backbrush-hair-styled Uttam Mohanty fitted perfectly to the expectation of the audience in a milieu whose preference shifted to an angry young man image. Soon, he became the darling of the masses, catapulted into the superstardom of Ollywood, as the Odia Film Industry is commonly known. The popular couple of Uttam and Aparajita in reel and real life had a son named Babushan, presently an actor who was in the news not long ago with controversies surrounding his extramarital affair with another actress.
It is rumored that Uttam Mohanty’s wayward lifestyle and his alcohol ways led him to lead a reckless life, which probably was the cause of his early demise. 66 is too young an age to go. As Rajesh Khanna has said in the movie Anand – ‘ZINDAGI BADI HONI CHAHIYE, LAMBI NAHI’ (The life has to be lived big, not long). The man certainly carved in niche in Odia cinema, leaving his indelible mark.
(The author is an Odia technocrat living in the USA. Views expressed are personal.)
