The first time I saw Suchitra Sen on screen was in Aandhi . She was so different from some of the top heroines of Hindi cinema in the 1970s, a list that included Hema Malini, Zeenat Aman, Mumtaz and Sharmila Tagore.

Sen had a certain aura about her which just made her so dignified and inaccessible.

And Aandhi was one of her rare forays in Hindi films where she more than held her own against another top talent, Sanjeev Kumar. Compared to the big ticket releases of 1975 like Sholay and Deewaar , Aandhi was relatively more low-key but managed to attract a fair bit of controversy thanks to Sen’s role as a politician.

Powerhouse act Comparisons were quickly drawn to the then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, who was constantly in the news thanks to Emergency. Aandhi ’s release was delayed as a result but this hardly made a difference to those who saw the leading lady’s powerhouse act a couple of years later.

As someone who loves her husband dearly but still follows her passion in politics, Sen as Aarti Devi was just phenomenal. Combining the no-nonsense attitude of a politician with the vulnerability of a wife who is seeing her husband after many years of separation, it was a mind-blowing performance. And, as is so typical of film awards, Sen did not win one for Aandhi even though she was among the nominees for best actress.

It was this movie that prompted me to watch Mamta released a decade earlier where she was paired opposite Ashok Kumar and Dharmendra.

Beauty & Dignity You could not miss the quiet dignity and ethereal beauty combination in this film either where Sen played a double role of a mother, facing conviction for killing her husband, and a daughter who is a lawyer and seeking her sentence.

Obviously, she is not aware that the older woman is her mother and, once again, Sen was at her best. Mamta ’s theme was replayed 15 years later in Dard (1981) where there was only a gender difference with a father and his (lawyer) son enacting the tragic end.

After seeing Aandhi and Mamta , I only wish I had learnt Bengali during my growing up years in Durgapur. It would have helped me better appreciate Sen’s earlier films with Uttam Kumar, believed to be some of her finest.

It was also more recently that I discovered that the Hindi classic Khamoshi (1969), and a personal favourite, was a remake of a Bengali film, Deep Jwele Jaai made precisely a decade earlier. Waheeda Rehman played, perhaps, a role of a lifetime in Khamoshi but it was Sen who had essayed the part first in the Bengali version.

Deep Jwele Jaai deserves to be watched, whenever it is aired on TV, for the sheer sensitivity of the theme. Here, the nurse falls in love with her patient, undergoing psychiatric care, only to go to pieces finally because she is completely worn out with the effort.

If Rehman, quite expectedly, was outstanding in Khamoshi , I am sure Sen would have been equally formidable in the Bengali original.

Her decision to opt for a secluded life over the last three decades perhaps reflected the same dignity in retirement.

There are not too many people who have the strength to get into a private space after years of being in the limelight.

Like Aarti Devi in Aandhi , Suchitra Sen pretty much knew the path she wanted to take in real life. And we need to respect that privacy today even while she has passed on.

>murali.gopalan@thehindu.co.in

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