Prateek Tanmay
2 min readMumbaiJul 8, 2026 08:18 AM IST
Soni Razdan was among a long list of talented and accomplished women actors in the 1970s and 1980s who barely got the chance to play the lead in a film directed by late legendary filmmaker Shyam Benegal, who died a couple of years ago. Others included Deepti Naval, Ratna Pathak, Supriya Pathak, and Neena Gupta, who despite being key members of India’s parallel cinema movement, didn’t get to do enough work with Benegal, the leader of that movement.
The filmmaker was largely fixated on Shabana Azmi and Smita Patil as his choice of the leading lady. Soni admits that given she was the daughter of a German mother, her chances were slim to begin with. “The way I looked, especially in those days, was a complete anomaly to the Smita-Shabana prototype. I guess that was what he wanted,” she tells SCREEN.
But that doesn’t mean she never tried. “I remember I dyed my hair black so that I could look more like that, but he didn’t think so. I used to wear cotton saris and silver jewellery. I did everything I could, but he didn’t look at me the same way. So, what could I do? I tried. It was my bad,” recalls the actor, laughing.
However, Soni did work with Benegal in two seminal films — Mandi (1983) and Trikal (1985). While the latter was headlined by Leela Naidu, the former was a huge ensemble, led by Shabana and Smita. “We got very little attention because he had too many people to give attention to. And I don’t blame him at all,” says Soni.
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Mandi, set in a brothel, boasted of a huge ensemble of women actors beyond Shabana and Smita, including Ratna, Neena, Sreela Majumdar, Anita Kanwar, and Ila Arun among others. “We’d just wait with bated breath before he’d decide where to place which actor because there are so many of us. It was a wonderful experience,” recounts Soni.
