The screen goddess says goodbye

Many of us, the old-timers, for the first time in our life came to learn what romance was like only when we saw Uttam and Suchitra in love on the silver screen. Uttam had left us many years back. Now Suchitra had but to leave us. Thank God she has passed away in 2014 at the age of 82. Had this screen goddess left us when she was in the prime of her life a few decades back only God knows how we would have reacted!
 Suchitra Sen is not mere a name. It is a catchphrase that evokes sounds and images of a romantic life many of us had lived or at least pretended to live inside and outside of cinema halls. She was a model that millions of our Bangla-speaking women in the fifties, the sixties and even in the seventies ardently followed in an attempt to replicate her unique styles - style of her speaking, style of her flashing a measured smile, her intones, her costumes, her face gently turning to flicker rays of love and surprise - her hypnotic styles that still sparkle and spark before our eyes, the styles that make a Bengali woman genuinely attractive.
Today's cultural space is filled up with the modern day heroes and heroines and the bit-sized starlets evoking only envies and mistrusts. Gunshots have replaced romances. Peace-loving cine-viewers are tired of the hip hop culture with tits and ass and mad-like tap-dances. Of course, there are viewers who still find in Suchitra Sen's magical aura a serene refuge to take shelter in. Suchitra was a lady the like of which men still want to see in their lovers and in their wives.
Suchitra Sen wanted to be a singer. A few of her songs were also recorded. But, a strange turn of fate brought her from the realm of music to the world of films. In the filmdom Suchitra suddenly became the trailblazer who along with Uttam redefined the stardom and verily enriched Bangla cinemas. Bangla movies would not have risen to whatever height they have reached today without the duo Uttam and Suchitra igniting the fire of romance in the cine-viewers' hearts.
Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen are two names that any one even distantly connected to Bengali culture can associate with even today, more than three decades after they ever acted on screen. The dignity Suchitra Sen used to exude in each of her films, especially along with Uttam Kumar, registered a strong imprint in the cine-viewers' hearts and souls. Her acting prowess and magnetic personality had mesmerized the audiences of Bangla as well as of Hindi films. Agnipariksha, Devdas, Saat Paake Bandha, Aandhi and Deep Jele Jai will remain as eternal sentinels to bear testimony to her prodigious success in the world of Indian films.
With Uttam and Suchitra now gone, romance has never be the same in Bangla cinema. Those were the golden time of the 1950s and 1960s when life on the screen depicted a battle between the hero and the villain and an inexplicable tension between parents of the girl and the boy. Typically, parents of the heroine would try desperately to convince their girl that she deserved someone of her class. But the girl would defiantly fall in love with someone belonging to a class of different social backgrounds as far as affluence was concerned. If a relationship did thus arise on those lines, the objections would result in emotional conflicts and excesses that would often turn out to be quite romantically painful, creating a huge mist of tears in the audience's eyes. A different kind of painfully pleasant romance was there that used to grip the audience so intensely, much different from what we see on today's screen.
In the 1959-movie "Deep Jeley Jai" (To carry on lighting a lamp) it was Radha Mitra, a character of a devoted nurse Suchitra Sen played as a part of a team exploring a new therapy to rehabilitate patients who suffered emotional trauma. Her role was to act sometimes as a friend and at some critical moments as a passionate lover for the patient, always keeping in mind that she was a nurse not meant to be emotionally involved with the patient.
The role in "Deep Jeley Jai" placed Radha in between two wrenching forces: one to stage-manage a love-affair with the patient she was to treat only as a nurse and the other dragging her perilously to fall in real love with the same patient. She was torn by the pull of two diametrically opposite forces and in the end her nerves could no longer control her emotional storm and she became a patient herself just like the patient she just treated.
The cabin where the patient was treated, the same cabin where she as a similar patient was now admitted, echoed with the sound of her hysterical laughs as she cried out for redress, passionately solicited mercy from the doctor-in-charge and helplessly pleaded anybody for help. The last two phrases that she whispered in her tear-drenched voice at the end of the movie epitomized what a great actress Suchitra Sen really was: Ami Avinoy Korini, Ami Avinoy Kortey Janina (I wasn't acting, I couldn't act), indicating that she indeed fell in love with her patient!
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said: "Suchitra Sen had carved a special niche in the hearts of millions of Indians through her graceful cinematic presence. Her versatility and range of performances mark a unique contribution to Indian cinema and to Bengali films in particular." Amitabh Harivansh Bachchan, the towering Indian actor, said: "She adorned the film world of Bengal with exquisite performances." Mamta Banerjee, the Chief Minister of the Indian state of Pachimbango, said: "She was a wonder. She was not just a legend." The Indian film critic Saibal Chatterjee told the BBC: "Suchitra Sen combined the understated sensuality, feminine charm and emotive force and a no-nonsense gravitas to carve out a persona that has never been matched, let alone surpassed in Indian cinema". The Prime Minister of Bangladesh and the Chairman of Bangladesh Nationalist Party, who during their young salad days in the past must have seen some of her movies that left them in tears, also sent their
condolences.  
It is still an enigma why Suchitra Sen had chosen her reclusive life. The reason of her staying away from public life will forever remain a mystery. Ironically, her wariness of the spotlight only made her that much more appealing to her fans and the media. Even after her death she wanted to be shrouded by that mystery. Nobody, except Mamta Banerjee and a few of her close relatives, would ever know how Suchitra Sen, who was hardly seen in public in the last 35 years, looked in her last few days before death. The hearse carrying her body was also covered with white flowers and black-tinted glass making it difficult for fans to catch a glimpse of the star. Members of her family said this was done keeping with the last wishes of the veteran actress.
Suchitra Sen is often called India's Greta Garbo. "I want to be alone", a line Garbo uttered in the Oscar-winning 1932 film Grand Hotel, was a declaration that perfectly encapsulated her approach to the outside world as she shunned all the trappings of Hollywood life, avoiding film premieres and awards ceremonies. Suchitra Sen similarly had chosen a hermit's life since 1978, refusing to sign autographs, declining interview requests, and avoiding photographers. Why?
Can we guess that the immortalized whisper Ami Avinoy Korini, Ami Avinoy Kortey Janina Suchitra Sen made at the end of the movie Deep Jeley Jai was her pronouncement to hide away from the rest of the world and live in seclusion once she can no more live her roles? Did she want to play out the role to live only, not to act, for the whole of her life? She had merit and she could of course carry on acting; or she could at least engage in philanthropy. But, she perhaps felt a weight on her shoulders and knew that, given her past glories, if she remained in the filmdom or in the glare of the public domains she would merely be acting or mimicking, not really living her roles. Because, she did never act; she always lived her roles as she couldn't act.
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