If Devdas has been recreated time and again by filmmakers today, it is not because of the tragedy of lost love but the poignancy of a black and white classic. Here Dilip Kumar dies broken-hearted, unable to touch his Paro, the ethereal beauty with an alabaster face, the doe-eyes brimming over with unspoken words, the wisp of dark hair falling on her cheeks and the sigh just about escaping her full lips. That haunting vision of Suchitra Sen has stayed with us down the generations, the dignity and poise of silence never so eloquent. An image that she had kept intact, retreating into a Garboesque silence, not letting age and noise stale the “infinite variety” of her youth and classicism. A “variety” that made her Bengal’s first woman superstar, a mahanayika and for a brief while a much-courted actor in mainstream Hindi films.
Sen preserved this “most wanted” title with a resolute, self-imposed exile, not diluting her mystique. She even refused the Dadasaheb Phalke award in 2005 just because it was predicated on her receiving the honour in person. She only made exceptions when it touched her deep. She came to put a wreath and perfume on her famous co-star and friend (much before buddies became cool in the film industry), the legendary Uttam Kumar, who died at his prime in 1980. She came out to vote as long as she was fit. Old-timers recall that she walked barefoot at Belur Math when Bharat Maharaj of Ramakrishna Mission passed away in 1989. And in her last days, she met Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, her first public personality in decades. Banerjee had visited Belle Vue Clinic where Sen was admitted but had left without meeting the veteran actress, valuing her request for medical privacy. When Sen learnt about the visit, she expressed the desire to meet her after which Banerjee rushed to the hospital and was with her till her last day. As her aides and more flamboyant daughter and grand-daughters, Moon Moon, Raima and Ria, would tell you, she was alert and kept abreast of current developments, had a vivacious spirit and was fiercely independent.
Having acted in 52 Bengali and seven Hindi films for three decades, nobody knew why she chose the quietitude of ascetism. Maybe it had to do with the torridness of her early life and the manic frenzy of stardom in regional cinema, which had a vibrancy bigger than Bollywood in the east and the south. Maybe it had to do with the insecurity of her appearance, finding a Zen-like peace or the simplicity of being a home body which she had sorely missed.
Born Rama Dasgupta in Pabna in present-day Bangladesh, she was the fifth child and third daughter of a headmaster. She married Dibanath Sen, son of a wealthy Bengali industrialist, in 1947, and much like a metaphor of a newly-born nation, she soared with her talent, debuting in 1952 with Shesh Kothaye. Unfortunately, the film was canned. Dibanath helped her shape her career but her later successes seemed to have strained the relations between the two. Having made little choices in her early life, she stuck to what made her a sublime expressionist, her strong characters. Be it pathos or ecstasy, the quiver of the lips or her heart-warming smile, Sen swung the whole spectrum of emotions.
And when she appeared opposite Uttam Kumar in Sharey Chuattor, they began a dream run of unmatched chemistry. The genteel and stiff-lipped Bengalis were swamped by a gush of passion so unique and liberating that they were overwhelmed. In many ways, they set the grammar of physicality in a Hollywoodish manner. The open-hearted embrace of the lead couple set youngsters afire and their dual intensity created a genre of its own, be it in Pothe Holo Deri, Chawa Pawa, Agniporikhkha, Saptapadi and Harano Sur. There were films and then there were Uttam-Suchitra films.
Both the actors were pragmatic enough to work with other actors and notch up commercial successes but passionate enough to hallmark their own brand, one they leveraged over 20 years, becoming the iconic onscreen couple of Bengali cinema. Though they towered over other co-stars, with each other, there was an egoless and almost equal participation. They embodied romance. And almost a sufiyana love. Uttam Kumar once said, “Yes we love each other but not in the way the world understands. There’s a lot of mutual respect, admiration and she balances me as a co-star.” The two were there for each other through all the crises in their lives.
For Sen, her lyrical beauty was also her worst enemy, subsuming a fair assessment of her abilities as an actor and lowering people’s expectations of her. One of Britain’s best loved critics and Indophile Derek Malcolm, wrote of her effect on the viewer: “She was very, very beautiful. She had this ‘still’ quality. She did not need to do a lot of ‘acting.’ Suchitra Sen was someone who had charisma which was quite apart from her beauty. She ‘underplayed’ the acting and, of course, looked wonderful.” As she matured in years and grace, she decided to take up solo-centric projects that would give her spine. Particularly so because the new wave of realist filmmakers picked up other actresses while treating her like Venetian porcelain.
One of her best known performances of a fragile woman was in Asit Sen’s Deep Jwele Jaai (1959). She played Radha, a hospital nurse employed by a progressive psychiatrist to develop a personal relationship with male patients as part of their therapy. She attends to the hero, a patient with an unresolved Oedipal dilemma, and plays the role of a nurturer to restore his faith in womankind. Though she is hesitant, as in a similar case she had fallen in love with a patient, she agrees, faces a violent and tormented man, impersonates his mother, sings his poetic compositions and in the process falls in love again. In the end, even as she cures him, she suffers a nervous breakdown, fearing rejection. And turns insane herself. With shadowy close- ups in a play of light and darkness, she had the viewer in thrall of her conflicted soul. If you were scared of touching her, she touched you instead. And broke down her ivory visage, revealing the messy mush behind the tears. It was films like these that became the template for many directors in Bombay.
Asit Sen remade the film in Hindi as Khamoshi (1969) with Waheeda Rehman because he could not repeat Bengal’s leading lady as he did in Uttar Falguni (1963) and its Hindi version Mamata. Here she carried the film single-handedly in the dual role of a courtesan Pannabai and her daughter Suparna, a lawyer, spanning different ages and looks. Sen broke out of her comfort zone, playing the trapped, fallen woman who protects her daughter from an abusive husband, entrusts her growing up to a benefactor and murders him, wearied by blackmail and disease. As the modern, confident lawyer, the daughter argues her case when she meets her mother the first time. The face-off between mother and daughter is one of the most restrained and emotional scenes in the film. And became one of the signposts of her career.
Sen’s wholesome aura impacted the Hindi film industry where she may not have had commercial success but left an indelible mark, beginning with Devdas in 1955. An award later, Sen tested waters, appearing with Dev Anand in Bambai Ka Babu. In his book, Dev Anand talks of a trip to the Kulu Valley in 1960: “I had gone there earlier to participate in the shooting of Bambai Ka Babu, with Raj Khosla directing, and Suchitra Sen, the doe-eyed, dusky beauty and immensely popular star of Bengal, starring opposite me.” He even did a second film, Sarhad, with her and though he wanted to meet her to discuss projects, she rebuffed him. “People discouraged me, ‘She doesn’t meet anyone,’ and after a while I gave up.”
That was Sen. If she felt it had been worthwhile, she withdrew and let people hold onto their best memory of hers. Not quite at ease in Bombay studios, she returned home to play characters she related to most, urban women struggling for a definition, characters where she could invest much of her troubled life.
Saat Paake Bandha, about a newly-married couple, saw a young girl torn between love and the overbearing interference of her rich mother, between ideals and a consumerist society and forging her own identity in between parallels. In many ways, Sen was adroitly walking the middle road, the girl with a characteristic insouciance layering herself with the complex scent of a woman. Perhaps, she was ruing her decision not to work with Satyajit Ray. Her reason was starry: She just didn’t have dates. And he didn’t get back to her after that, nor thought about anybody else to play the feisty character of Debi Choudhurani, based on Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s novel. So when she became the first Indian actress to be awarded at an international film festival (Best Actress award for Saat Paake Bandha, Moscow, 1963), it was vindication. She was awarded the Padma Shri in 1972.
As luck would have it, she was asked to play a woman politician in the 1974 film Aandhi, inspired to a great extent by the life of Indira Gandhi. Gulzar extracted her best work, even letting her speak Hindi, though her diction left much to be desired. Sen received a Filmfare Award nomination as Best Actress while Sanjeev Kumar, who essayed the role of her husband, won the Filmfare as Best Actor. The transformation of a spoilt brat to a mellowed woman, the compromises and regrets in between were so artfully and sensitively conveyed that it almost seemed like a summary of her own life. Perhaps, she realised she had said enough and withdrew completely from Bombay, refusing Raj Kapoor’s film. Story goes she was upset that Raj Kapoor had bent before her with a bouquet. “Why should a man bow before a womanIJ” she had asked.
Men, she treated them equals, fostering some friendships even in Bollywood. She maintained her camaraderie with Sanjeev Kumar, even inviting him to the wedding of her daughter Moon Moon. And as the stardust settled in the warp and weft of the red carpet, she did a series of films with her old friend Uttam Kumar, Priya Bandhabi being the last, her tribute to where her romance with the movies began. That was the high she wanted people to remember her by.
Few can make a graceful exit. Fewer can live in the shadows. Only the fewest can give it all up, just like that. Sen knew how to toss her coin and not worry about the results. As long as she was at peace. RIP.