Born in a Mumbai slum, this actor ruled Tamil film industry, had temples and sarees named after her

Before Tamil Nadu: a childhood in Mumbai

Khushbu Sundar was born Nakhat Khan into a middle-class Muslim family in Mumbai. Her childhood was marked by violence and trauma. In an interview with Barkha Dutt on Mojo Story, she revealed that she was sexually abused by her father at the age of eight. She had witnessed the same man beat her mother and brothers. “When a child is abused, it scars the child for life,” she said.

Also Read: Remember the ‘Bol Baby Bol’ girl? 41 years after Meri Jung, Khushbu Sundar reunites with Anil Kapoor for Subedaar

Her parents gave her the stage name Khushbu when she began working as a child artist in Hindi cinema. Her first appearance on screen was in The Burning Train, where she featured in the song “Teri Hai Zameen Tera Aasman.” She was 10 years old. Over the next few years, she appeared in Hindi films as a child artiste.

At 16, she was uprooted from Mumbai and brought to Chennai, where she landed her first Telugu film, Kaliyuga Pandavulu, introduced by producer D Ramanaidu and director K Raghavendra Rao. She went on to do close to 12 films in Telugu and Kannada before Tamil cinema found her.

The Tamil breakthrough

Khushbu made her Tamil debut in Dharmathin Thalaiva, a Rajinikanth film directed by SP Muthuraman. She played the love interest of Prabhu, who appeared alongside Rajinikanth. The film was a commercial success and introduced Khushbu to Tamil audiences for the first time.

Also Read: ‘Glammed-up queen’ Khushboo Sundar was scolded by Kamal Haasan for excessive makeup: ‘I don’t want a trace…’

She followed it with Varusham 16, Kizhakku Vaasal and Nadigan, establishing herself as a reliable commercial heroine. But the film that catapulted her from a working actress to a phenomenon was Chinna Thambi, directed by P Vasu, opposite Prabhu. The rural romantic drama about a naïve village simpleton who falls in love with a sheltered wealthy girl became one of the biggest blockbusters in Tamil cinema history at that point.

Khushbu, who played Nandini with a warmth and accessibility that the Tamil audience had not seen from a Hindi-speaking actress before, became the most popular heroine in the state overnight.

What followed Chinna Thambi was not ordinary fame. It was a level of public obsession that no actress in Tamil cinema had experienced before or has experienced since. Khushbu and Prabhu became Tamil cinema’s most popular on-screen couple of the decade. Almost every film they did together was a blockbuster: Vettri Vizhaa, My Dear Marthandan, Pandithurai, Uthama Raasa, Maravan and Chinna Vathiyar. The audience consumed her films and then the consumption went beyond cinema.

Fans built temples in Khushbu’s name. Madras Musings, the city heritage publication, documented the phenomenon, writing that “the Tamil Nadu urchin-gang, including the not-so-urchins as well, built a chain of temples in her honour, having been blown away by her rotund charms.” A temple near Tiruchendur district of Tamil Nadu, built by a group of die-hard fans, continues to exist to this day, where devotees offer prayers to Khushbu as a form of worship.

Khushbu Sundar in Meri Jung.

Products were named after her. Khushbu sarees became a category in textile shops. Khushbu coffee appeared in local markets. And, most enduringly, the Khushbu Idly was born in Madurai. The idly became so popular that it spread across Tamil Nadu and into Karnataka, where it was adopted under the name Mallige Idly. The recipe uses raw rice, sago (javvarisi) and beaten rice (aval) to achieve a texture that is significantly softer and fluffier than a regular idly made with parboiled rice and urad dal.

Khushbu’s filmography spans over 200 films across Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Hindi. Over 100 of those are Tamil films alone. She worked with every major male star of her era: Rajinikanth in Dharmathin Thalaivan and later Annaatthe, Kamal Haasan in Singaravelan, Vijayakanth in Vaanatha Pokkal, Sathyaraj in Vandicholai Chinnarasu, and Sarath Kumar in Nattamai.

Khushbu Sundar with her husband, Sundar C and her children.

At her peak, she was the number one heroine in Tamil cinema from approximately 1991 to 1996, a reign of about five years during which she was the most bankable female name in the industry. No actress before her had achieved that level of commercial dominance in Tamil Nadu, and very few have matched it since.

Khushbu’s personal life was as public as her professional one. In 2000, Khushbu married filmmaker and actor Sundar C, who had directed her in Murai Maman. She has since adopted the name Khushbu Sundar. The couple have two daughters, Avantika and Anandita. Despite marrying a Hindu, Khushbu did not convert and has stated publicly that she was never asked to.