Does anyone remember Vimi? She was the face to which Sunil Dutt dedicated his  Sahir Ludhianvi lyric, “ Kisi patthar  ke moorat se mohabbat ka iraada  hai”  in  BR Chopra’s Humraaz in 1968. Introduced  by  the great B R Chopra, Vimi was quite the  toast of  the town  after Humraaz. But  alas, her  stardom  could not go beyond her debut  film. Subsequent  attempts to consolidate her stardom in  films like  Aabroo  came to  a nought. And suddenly, Vimi found herself out in the  cold her career gone  completely kaput.

Actress Vimi with Mahendra Kapoor, Kishoreda, Hasrat and Shankar and others in a recording

Vimi, like many other instant successes, vanished from the scene. Many years later one  heard of her death in  penury. It is said there were no relatives, no  money for her last rites. She had to be  taken away  by the municipal  corporation  on  a makeshift vehicle. Whatever  happened to Vimi? Some say after the  heady success of Humraaz she got  into the  wrong company, ended  up marrying the wrong man  who splurged  all the money she made when success  first hit her. Vimi soon  became an alcoholic and ended  up drinking herself  to death.

Rumour has it that Vimi  was so hard  up for money  that she began to consume cheap country liquor which  killed her. But I beg  to  defer. What  actually killed Vimi was the ephemerality of the fame that  hit her after Humraaz. She  was launched in style with two stalwart leading men in Humraaz. But critics found her  wooden and  expressionless, as much as  the song that  Sunil Dutt  sang to her to describe her  beauty.

Many  stars  fall because  they can’t cope with their success.  Vimi  fell  because she  couldn’t cope with  her failure. The final straw was her mentor B R Chopra turning her back on Vimi. Rejection wiped out her self-esteem. The stoic beauty ended  up on the  curb, her career mowed down by many actress far more talented and  pretty.