DIVAS OF DESIRE: (From top) Silk Smitha, Lakshmi Rai and Jayamalini

The scene in a detective television serial required her to be stark naked in a bath tub. The diva of oomph, Silk Smitha, jumped into the tub without a stitch on her body and without batting an eye.

It was this complete lack of inhibition on screen that made the actress not just a legend in the south but quite a phenomenon in the rest of the country too. Now, 15 years after her death, her short event-packed life is the subject of the Ekta Kapoor biopic The Dirty Picture.

Silk, as she was referred to, was a seductress nonpareil. Her ability to gyrate in dance numbers exuding a raw and unabashed sexuality made a Silk dance number a must in the south Indian films of the 1980s. Her talent lay in her extreme agility. In one scene in a film, she reportedly removed her underwear with her toes while seducing the hero, says film historian Randor Guy.

But the vacuum created by her death — she is believed to have committed suicide when she was 36 — has never been filled. Cinema has bid its last goodbye to the woman whose large, droopy and soulful eyes — a look she had ostensibly practised hard on — and pouting lips prodded an extremely reluctant and upright hero to conjure up a world of unimaginable pleasures.

“Silk was the sexiest woman I had ever seen,” stresses the avant garde film director of his time, Balu Mahendra, who gave her femme fatale image a respectable shine when she effectively portrayed the sexually frustrated wife of an old schoolmaster in his Hindi film Sadma. “She oozed sexuality, I needed that quality to show how an otherwise fairly rational schoolmaster falls into her trap. God doesn’t make duplicates, so a Silk Smitha can never be replaced,” he says.

Of course, vamps are not new to south Indian cinema. Back in 1948, the famous close-up of yesteryear voluptuous actress T.R. Rajakumari’s blouse in Chandralekha as she crosses a river to escape the villain made men break into a sweat, says Guy. In the classic Parashakti (1952), a courtesan played by Kamala lures a confused Sivaji Ganesan with her dance number — a scene still recalled by film buffs.

But the times, film experts point out, have changed. The current crop of “neo-realistic” south Indian films has no space for a vamp oozing sex — like the role of a seductive tea shop owner that Silk marked her arrival with in the 1979 Tamil film Vandi Chakram.

“Today’s films are in a village milieu where the traditional south Indian girl is an object of puppy love and not sex,” says Uma Vangal, professor, LV Prasad Film and TV Academy, Chennai.

As for the other masala films, heroines themselves are adroitly stepping into Silk Smitha’s shoes, making the role of the vamp redundant. “Today’s heroines have all become Silk Smithas. They don’t stop to expose their bodies in an instant, dance in the rain or jump into a pool in two piece bathing suits,” says director Bhagyaraj, who acted as Silk’s husband in Avasara Police 100.

But the roles the vamps played in the 1980s were distinctive. Film scripts called for buxomy sex sirens to scorch the screens — so much so that Silk Smitha had to use sponge to artificially enhance her front and back.

Among the many voluptuous cabaret queens who sizzled on screen were Jayamalini, Jyothilaksmi, Anuradha, Shakira and Jyothi. Anuradha also tried to introduce her plump daughter Jyothimeena as a sex symbol. Sona, Nirosha and many others — and more recently, Namitha — have all tried treading the Silk route but failed to last.

The failure of the traditional siren led to the coming out of the heroine as part pure, part sexy. Vangal believes among those who ushered the change were Nagma and Khushboo. “They were willing to do what a vamp would do and titillate the audience,” she adds.

Old-timers recall a song in which Prabhu Deva serenades Khushboo in a marketplace with the words “Maanga maanga irandu maanga (mango mango two mangoes)” as the camera lingers on her breasts. Film veterans point out that leading actress Sridevi also did her bit to ramp up the sex quotient of heroines.

The trend continues, as glam queen Shriya Saran in Sivaji or the current hottie Anushka in the recent hit Vaanam light up the screens with their dances and skimpy attire. “The heroine and the sex symbol have blurred,” stresses Vangal.

But while today’s heroines have the world at their feet, the going wasn’t that easy for Silk Smitha. The ultimate object of desire bordering on the semi-porn always craved good roles to prove herself an actress of mettle. But she was always the vamp — the opposite of the venerated mother and the pristine heroine —who invariably met a bad end after serving her purpose of teasing the audience.

For this reason, she was often treated with disrespect in the industry which rankled and hurt her, recalls Hema Malini, a veteran dubbing artiste responsible for that husky, come hither, babyish voice that added to the allure of the smouldering image of Silk. The actress, who was from Andhra Pradesh, always had her voice dubbed in her Tamil films.

“She was highly ambitious and wanted to do comedy or action roles but nobody was interested in giving her that. If she asked for a favour, they wanted her to visit them,” says Malini, who remembers Silk as “a warm and good woman” who was exploited by men. Her co-star Bhagyaraj praises her “grace, powerful eyes and stunning figure”.

Malayalam director Bhadran, who cast Silk as a labourer in his highly acclaimed film Spadikam with Mohanlal, candidly admits that he chose her because he needed a “sexy, earthy woman”, who enters into a negative relationship with Mohanlal.

“I did not think she was a great actress but I knew her from her days as a junior side artiste. Back then, too, I used to look at her thinking that she had a peculiar face, and her eyes and expressions set her apart from the others,” he recalls.

Silk’s role has also been made redundant by item numbers — a sexy song-and-dance interlude in many recent films, says the new generation film director Vasanth, who had an item number by Ramya Krishnan — another actress with loads of oomph — in his gentle metro-based love story Rhythm.

Richard Nathan, cinematographer of the recent runaway hit KO, believes item numbers are unnecessary, but admits that audiences that have never seen a fair-skinned girl in shorts dancing with voluptuous intent might enjoy the display of skin.

Clearly, Silk Smitha’s absence is not being felt. Roles played by actresses such as Lakshmi Rai in Tamil films, Radhika Pandit in Kannada, or Kaveri Jha in Telugu films (whose frolics in the sea with her hero are the stuff of male fantasies) keep the steam levels high.

Silk Smitha did that too. But in the end, at her death — at a time when she was not getting any roles and drinking heavily — a romantic and tragic aura was created around her and her life. She became a legend in the history of south Indian cinema. And though there has not been another Silk Smitha, the vamp in the heroine continues to thrill.

Silk is dead. Long live Silk.