Remembering Mala.

Subrata Chowdhury pays

tribute to a beauty from the hills

OLD Bollywood movie buffs will perhaps still recall heroines like Mala Sinha and not without reason. With her fine-cut nose, dark, fascinating eyes and full lips, she represented a particular era in the Indian film industry known as the Golden Age.

Born to Albert Sinha, a Nepali official posted in Kashmir, on 11 November 1936, Mala was christened Alda. She also used to be called Dalda, after the vegetable brand of oil widely used in those days, because of her plump looks. She spent her early years in Darjeeling too, the Sinhas native place, before she was sent off to a school in Kolkata. Alda took no …