‘Give me work’: Disco icon Kalpana Iyer on viral Dhurandhar fame, turning 70 in Dubai and finding a second act in the UAE

Dubai: "I was born underweight. I was born blue. I was born bald."

It's hardly how you'd expect Kalpana Iyer, one of Bollywood's most unforgettable dancing stars of the 1970s and '80s, to begin telling her story.

When I meet her at the Palm Jumeirah home of Bollywood producer and entrepreneur Rajan Lall, one of her closest friends, preparations are underway for her 70th birthday celebrations that weekend.

Kalpana, however, would have happily skipped the fuss. Her plan, she tells me with a laugh, was to visit a temple and keep the day low-key. Rajan and her close-knit circle of friends and family clearly had other ideas.

Dressed in a simple black cotton sari with a gold zari border, she's far removed from the glamorous screen persona that made her a Bollywood favourite. As we settle into a sofa, she rewinds the clock nearly seven decades.

Doctors, she recalls, weren't convinced she would survive. Her mother was told not to worry because she could always have another child. But Kalpana survived. Looking back today, she believes those difficult beginnings shaped the person she would become.

"There are some children who are born old," she says with a smile. "I think I was born old."

Listening to her, it's hard to disagree. Long before Bollywood came calling, Kalpana was already earning to help support her family. She developed a simple philosophy early in life: if an opportunity came her way, she took it. That mindset carried her from stage shows and beauty pageants to Bollywood, television and, years later, a new life in Dubai after arriving here, in her own words, "broken." Work—not fame—became the one constant.

Which is perhaps why, at an age when many actors are content to relive past glory, Kalpana is doing something refreshingly honest.

She's asking for work. The timing couldn't be better.

Earlier this year, a remixed version of her iconic dance number Rambha Ho in Dhurandhar introduced Kalpana Iyer to a whole new generation. Weeks later, a spontaneous dance at a friend's wedding went viral, reminding audiences that the woman who once owned Bollywood's dance floor hadn't lost her charisma or her joy for performing.

Social media rediscovered her, filmmakers began taking notice again and what could easily have been a fleeting wave of nostalgia started to feel like something much more enduring.

Kalpana doesn't call it a comeback.

"That January episode where my dance at a wedding went viral is my booster," she says. "To say, you can still do it. I want to be part of joy. I want to be part of work."

Then comes the line that perfectly sums up where she is today.

"Give me work."

There is nothing performative about the appeal nor does she seem like she is trying to engineer a comeback. Asking for work is simply an extension of the philosophy that has guided her since childhood.

"Call me to your weddings. Call me to your shows. If I can talk, I will talk. If I can dance, I will dance."

Ask her if she carefully planned the twists and turns of her career, and she laughs.

"I never thought anything. I just wanted to work. Whatever came my way, with dignity, I did."

That philosophy would eventually bring her to Dubai as well. When film and television assignments slowed down, she accepted an offer to manage a restaurant that later evolved into a popular dance lounge. It was a dramatic departure from fame and film sets, but one she embraced without hesitation because, to Kalpana, honest work has never been about status.

That outlook can be traced back to her childhood.

Born into a family that struggled financially, Kalpana became aware of life's realities far earlier than most children. As the eldest sibling, she watched her parents stretch every rupee and instinctively knew she had to help.

"Financially, things were not okay," she says. "I started working as a child."

By the time she was in her early teens, she was travelling for stage shows, earning Rs75 (Dh3) per performance, money that made a genuine difference at home.

"Seventy-five rupees was a lot of money then," she recalls. "The house was feeling good. Situations were getting better. I could see smiles in the house."

Those smiles, she says, mattered far more than applause.

If Kalpana inherited resilience from circumstance, she inherited romance from her parents.

Long before inter-community marriages became commonplace, her father, an Iyer, fell in love with her mother, an Iyengar. It wasn't the easiest match in those days, but they chose each other anyway.

"My mother was very beautiful. My father was a rogue—but a handsome rogue with the biggest heart," she laughs. "What a romance."

Then she pauses before adding the line that perhaps best explains her optimism.

"I am the product of that love."

Perhaps that's why, even when life threw unexpected challenges her way, she never allowed herself to become cynical. Her parents didn't leave her wealth or privilege.

They gave her something she values far more: the freedom to make her own choices, the confidence to embrace every opportunity and the belief that no honest work was beneath her.

That belief would eventually take her from Mumbai's modest beginnings to beauty pageants, Bollywood and a chance encounter with one of Hindi cinema's greatest showmen, who would recognise something in the young woman who had never stopped saying yes.

One of those opportunities arrived unexpectedly when legendary filmmaker Dev Anand spotted her after she won Miss India.

She still remembers him driving to her home in a white Fiat and offering her a role. There were no elaborate career plans or lifelong acting ambitions. She simply said yes.

"I never dreamt of becoming an actress," she says. "Whatever came my way, I accepted."

That willingness to embrace the unexpected would define the next chapter of her life. She appeared in dozens of Hindi films, often stealing scenes with her infectious energy and memorable dance numbers. Songs such as Rambha Ho and Hari Om Hari became part of Bollywood's popular culture, even if she never saw herself as chasing stardom.

"I wasn't ambitious in that sense," she says. "I just wanted to work."

Ironically, it is that very lack of calculation that seems to have given her career its longevity. She went on to appear in more than 100 films, becoming one of Bollywood's most recognizable dance performers of the disco era.

Even now, she doesn't dwell on what could have been or the roles she never got. Regret, she suggests, is a luxury she has never had time for.

Instead, she talks about gratitude.

When film offers slowed, Dubai offered her something else entirely -- a second act.

She arrived in the UAE, as she puts it, "broken", carrying emotional baggage but determined to rebuild. Managing a restaurant was worlds away from Bollywood's glitter, but it gave her purpose.

"This country has been very good to me," she says. "Dubai is my home."

It was here that she spent some of the happiest years with her mother, and here that she found a community that embraced her long after the cameras stopped rolling.

"This country gives you people," she says. "It gives you warmth. It gives you protection."

If there is one thing Kalpana refuses to do, it is dwell on old wounds.

She has often been encouraged to write a memoir, but she has no interest in settling scores.

"The people involved are no longer alive," she says matter-of-factly. "They cannot defend themselves."

Instead, she would rather remember the kindnesses than the hurts.

"My thank you is more important."

It is perhaps the most revealing thing she says all afternoon.

There were disappointments. There was heartbreak. There were chapters she could easily revisit in search of sympathy. But she chooses not to.

"My trauma is not important because God gave me so much," she says.

Her philosophy is surprisingly simple.

"If somebody throws you a rope when you're drowning, you don't ask questions," she says. "You catch the rope."

That instinct, to keep moving, to keep saying yes, to keep working, has carried her from a financially struggling childhood to Bollywood, from Bollywood to Dubai and, now, unexpectedly, back into the spotlight.

As our conversation winds down, guests begin arriving for the birthday celebration she never really wanted. The quiet temple visit she had planned has been replaced by laughter, hugs and a room full of people determined to celebrate her.

Watching her greet each one with genuine warmth, it's easy to understand why.

At 70, Kalpana Iyer isn't interested in reliving the past.

She's still looking forward.

And if someone has work for her, she's ready.