A life to live

Elizabeth Taylor, actor, activist, diamond lover, serial monogamist and all round star came to the end of a life she herself described as "one that was enough for four lifetimes", last week

A life to live

Elizabeth Taylor, actor, activist, diamond lover, serial monogamist and all round star came to the end of a life she herself described as "one that was enough for four lifetimes", last week.

She had been famous for so many things ufffd for being one of the most astonishingly beautiful women in the world, and for her roles as some of the great beauties of history including Cleopatra and Helen of Troy; for her Academy Awards for Butterfield 8 and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf; her support of her friend Michael Jackson through several controversial cases, including child sexual abuse; for her activism on behalf of the gay movement and her fundraising work to find a cure for AIDS; for her striking jewels and perhaps equally striking plastic surgeries and for being the first actor in Hollywood to be paid a million dollars for a movie.

Most of all she was famous for her eight marriages, two of them to Richard Burton and one to a construction worker twenty years her junior who she met in rehab when she was 65.

We know that a definitive era is ending because most days bring news of the death of a figure that dominated the 20th century, either at home or abroad.

It is easy to glamourise the stories of people such as Liz Taylor, full as they are with imperious excess, a larger than life, blockbuster quality ufffd when her illness left her unable to walk in 2004, Taylor reportedly ordered a gold-plated, jewel-studded wheelchair. But for all the grandeur and adventure it could not have been easy to go from a child to a grown up inside a movie studio, not knowing, as she said, "what's real and what's not." And behind the scandal, the gossip and romance there must have been incredible suffering and pain too ufffd quite apart from her lifelong illnesses and addictions. And in a way these are the things that made her special, even exemplary.

Because people like that come not just with beauty and wit and skill ufffd they come with the courage of a big, big heart; one that knows how to fill up with desire again and again despite loss and failure. Such people hold out for others a sense of flight, never afraid to seize love, speak out on behalf of others, not count your actions and watch your words with a smart eye on the consequences. After all if you're always trying to be on top of the system, you are its biggest slave. These were people who knew better than to let society set the agenda for them.

For women who were young in the last century, people like Taylor, and closer home, Nadira, Rekha or Parveen Babi embodied a similar zest, the idea that desire in life itself was a way of living; and that often there is no choice but to make the difficult choice. They were much more than their beauty because they were never afraid, as women, to claim and live out their power. Such women embodied an era because whatever already existed was irrelevant for them, the compass they followed, was entirely their own. As Miss Taylor herself said, "I sweat real sweat and I shake real shakes." That's an abiding thing.

Of course each era has its own significant figures ufffd those who will span generations and decide the limits of possibility for the age. This new era will hopefully throw those up too ufffd when it does it will have some catching up and matching up to do. Because an obituary that says, "I made size zero fashionable" doesn't quite seem to cut it, no?

Paromita Vohra is an award-winning Mumbai-based filmmaker, writer and curator working with
fiction and non-fiction. Reach her at https://www.parodevi.com/.