A TV star who became the voice of consumers
Kaveta Chaudhry, known for her role as Lalita ji in Surf ads, passed away at 67. She also starred in TV series Udaan and wrote the film Badhaai Ho Badhaai.
She was a commanding presence, whether she was playing a housewife or a police officer.
And yet, Kaveta Chaudhry — who died on Thursday, following a cardiac arrest, aged 67 — remains best known for a single character she played in a series of TV commercials: Lalita ji, of the Surf ads that aired from 1984 on.
Chaudhry would go on to star in and direct the TV series Udaan (1989-91); write, direct and act in the TV series Your Honour (2000-01); write the film Badhaai Ho Badhaai (2002) directed by Satish Kaushik. Yet, when news broke that she had died, it was Lalita ji that people thought of, tweeted about, and mourned.
The rather stern wife and mother was an unusual character for her time. For one thing, homemakers in TV commercials didn’t often venture forth to argue with male shopkeepers, alone. They didn’t stalk about, speaking sharply of maths; they tended to smile a lot instead.
Lalita ji was so unusual for her time that the idea was initially rejected by the team at Hindustan Lever, says advertising veteran Ambi Parameswaran, author of Nawabs, Nudes, Noodles: India through 50 Years of Advertising.
“They found the ‘Surf woman’ too assertive. They were concerned that she wasn’t accompanied by her husband; that she was making all the decisions. They were also concerned that all the evaluating of cost would hurt their image as the preferred detergent of the well-off middle-class family.”
The ad was eventually green-lit, of course, and was an instant hit. Little girls mimicked Lalita ji at play; women wanted to be seen the way she saw herself.
While the campaign didn’t immediately change the fate of the brand, it stopped the erosion of its market share, Parameswaran says.
Chaudhry would continue to inspire young girls and women, as Kalyani Singh, a woman Indian Police Service (IPS) officer, in Udaan. That Doordarshan series, incidentally, was based on Chaudhry’s elder sister, Kanchan Chaudhary Bhattacharya (1947-2019), India’s second woman IPS officer (after Kiran Bedi).
“Over the years, I have spoken to a lot of women in very senior positions in the police, the government and even businesses and they would tell me how much of an impact Udaan had on their lives,” says filmmaker Shekhar Kapur, who acted alongside Chaudhry in Udaan.
When he was making his 1994 film Bandit Queen, villagers in remote areas would turn up hoping to see him, asking if “Udaan’s DM saab” was really there. “I was just one of the characters on the show, so imagine the kind of fan following she must have had,” he says.
“She was such a charming and easy director to work with,” Kapur adds. “She was also very hard-working. She would write all night, then come to the set, put on make-up to act as well as direct.”
Years later, she wrote, directed and acted in Your Honour, a Doordarshan series about a group of aspiring lawyers. “Her writing was so real; it was unlike anything on Indian television at the time or maybe even now,” says Sachin Khedekar, who played a policeman on the show. “We even shot in real police stations because a set didn’t have the same feel, and she would often give real policemen a line or two of dialogue.”
Chaudhry would continue to shoot ad films and serials, though many didn’t make it to the air. And she continued to write. “She wrote a show about magistrates which she was very keen that I be a part of. Unfortunately, after the first few conversations, it didn’t go anywhere,” recalls Kapur, who also acted with her in a series directed by Vinay Dhumale that never aired.
Chaudhry wrote the Anil Kapoor-Shilpa Shetty film Badhaai Ho Badhaai, which was directed by fellow National School of Drama alum Kaushik. Her last screen outing was the Doordarshan crime show IPS Diaries (2015), in which she played a retired policewoman.
“Even before it became fashionable, she gave us characters who were living their dream,” Khedekar says, “with a fulfilling career and family life. In the ’80s, we didn’t see women like Kaveta Chaudhry’s Kalyani Singh on screens.”
