What came into your mind when you got the news about her demise?

It was very disturbing. I had just come off the plane from Hyderabad, where I was invited to speak at the Police Academy on the public impact of cinematic images. While I was tending to my luggage, I got a message from Tanuja Chandra stating, “Parveen Babi is dead.” I was still pondering over the fact, so my phone beeped again, and I received another message questioning if she was dead yesterday or rather at this moment?

He had claimed her body even when she died a very miserable death.

It was extremely lonely. Laawaris had claimed her body and she was lying at the cooper hospital. The young lady who was once a cover story on Time Magazine had no one in. There is something very horrifying in this. There was a star, and now there is a body in a morgue at Juhu, forgotten and incessantly abandoned.

Is this the point where you came into the picture?

This is where I came forward. He was the first to state, “I will bury her,” and before my eyes, people who claimed to be relatives started crawling from every corner to society. So with every ounce of respect I let them have their way. She had an extreme life, one that was ellipsoidal.

Parveen’s story was not solely hers. This phenomenon was Icarus — scaling the heights too closely towards the sun with wings made of wax and then plummeting into the bottomless pit. Her demise turned out to be my resurrection. It was through her sorrow, during those overwhelming late 1970s and early 1980s, that I came to discover the autobiographical language of my cinema. They would not have succeeded if she did not exist. And today, the day of her death, I pay my respect by bowing my head. Thank you, Parveen. Your influence in my life is like no other. Without you, what would my life amount to?