Silver screen's Iron Lady

Suchitra Sen's inner strength came through in her roles

Films about some strong real-life female characters, rarities though they are, virtually demand designated performers to play them. The legendary Greta Garbo was an automatic choice to play Queen Christina, a seventeenth-century Swedish monarch, and not merely because of her nationality. The much-awarded American Meryl Streep had no competition to essay the role of Margaret Thatcher, the British Prime Minister. And when Gulzar made Aandhi based on a thinly disguised version of Indira Gandhi in 1975, he approached Suchitra Sen who had just turned him down for another project. She accepted instantly, and her Aarati Bose in the film is a fitting addition to classic strong-willed women on screen anywhere. The reclusiveness of Suchitra Sen, who passed away this week, has been likened to that of Greta Garbo, but their respective signature roles would be a far apter basis of comparison.

Suchitra Sen defied expected patterns of behaviour in Indian cinema. Her debut film was released in 1953, when she was 23, happily married to a successful industrialist and mother of a five-year-old daughter. This was, and is, very rare in the world of Indian movies, where barely pubescent girls vie to enter with a bang playing leads against stars older than their fathers. She probably turned down as many roles as she accepted and that list included offers from presiding deities such as Satyajit Ray and Raj Kapoor. In a career spanning 25 years, she made 63 films. That included seven in Hindi, only one of which did not have a memorable role.

Suchitra Sen’s heavy Bengali accent did not sound jarring to viewers of Hindi films. The make-up the 45-year old star used to play a 20-something character for a good part of Aandhi did not appear clumsy. She could powerfully suspend the disbelief of her audience and enthrall them with the inner strengths — and conflicts — of her characters. The dingy cinema halls of those days were mesmerised by the strong young woman defying her interfering mother in Saat Paake Bandha, the sensitive yet tradition-bound innocent Paro trying to shore up her rather effete beau in Devdas, the demure village belle who does not understand her attraction to the young man who is an impostor for her brother in Bambai Ka Babu, the iron-willed politician making it big in a man’s world yet lovingly drawn to her estranged gentle husband in Aandhi or the psychiatric nurse battling her own demons in Deep Jwele Jai. It was neither her beauty nor her acting talent — many of her contemporaries had these qualities in even greater abundance than she — that lit up the screen. It was the inner strength of her own person that transformed these roles into unforgettable gems.

Suchitra Sen won precious few awards for her magnificent œuvre, not that it mattered to her. She had turned down the Dadasaheb Phalke award in 2005 supposedly because she did not want to go to New Delhi to receive it. She would have probably refused it even if it were to be presented to her at her residence as was done for Pran. Just as Graham Greene’s readers did not admire him less because he never won the Nobel, Suchitra Sen’s fans were not disturbed by her shelf being bare of award statuettes. Wahida Rehman, who did Sen’s role in Khamoshi, the Hindi version of Deep Jwele Jai, and no mean performer herself, said it all when she confessed that her effort was far inferior to Sen’s. Both Queen Christina and Aandhi end with ambiguity about their protagonists, much like that surrounding the stars that played them. That enigma is the enduring allure of these divas.