EntertainmentPosted at: Mar 7 2026 4:29PM


Suchitra Sen: Tollywood’s ultimate cine superstar

Women's Day Special
Jayanta Roy Chowdhury
New Delhi, Mar 7 (UNI) As the world celebrates women’s day, one cannot but remember the one defining actress who epitomized female superstars of Indian cinema, certainly Bengali cinema, Suchitra Sen, often called “India’s own Greta Garbo”.
Some two decades back, on this very day, March 7, a lady rolled down a car window, lowered her shades and gave this writer, then a young man on a morning walk down Ballygunge Circular Road, a dazzling if apologetic smile as her car had almost knocked him down while turning in towards her driveway.
She was the one Indian superstar about whom people knew hardly anything beyond what she was willing to reveal. Born Rama Dasgupta in 1931 in the district town of Pabna in what is today’s Bangladesh, Sen was the only true lady Superstar of Bengali Cinema.
Mrs Sen as she was called by everyone including big name directors and producers at Tollygunge, always believed in keeping her personal and professional life separate. She married soon after she came to Calcutta at the age of 16 (then the legal age of marriage) to Dibanath Sen, a businessman scion of an aristrocratic Bengali family, which owned among other properties, the sprawling Villa on Ballygunge Circular Road which was to be her home till her death.
Though many thought of her as haughty and aloof, those who worked with her felt she was just the opposite. Lively, funny, sarcastic at times, but in a good natured way and very sensitively humane in real life to those few to whom she opened up, that is how her fellow actors and technicians saw her.
However, she drew her own lines. Everyone – from the producer to the junior-most spot boy had to call her Mrs Sen, not Suchitra. A few like Supriya Devi called her Rama-di. Even the legendary singer-music director Hemanta Kumar, who was certainly older than her, called her by her chosen Mrs Sen.
Directors often did not decide how she would emote, she did. Lines in the script often changed because, Mrs Sen felt that was what was needed. Dates were difficult to come by as Oscar-winning director Satyajit Ray found out to his discomfort, when he wanted to cast her in his never-made movie `Debi Choudhrani’.

But then, often she would become the perfect pupil for those, whom she felt did have something to teach her. Lyricist-movie director Gulzar tells us how she insisted that she will call him `sir’ during the filming of Aandhi, the 1975 movie where she copied Mrs Indira Gandhi’s mannerisms to act as Aarti Devi, a successful politician who leaves behind a marriage to take over her father’s political legacy.
The movie with its memorable songs `Tere Bina Zindagi’ and `Tum Aagaye Ho’, became a hit, only to be banned by a Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s paranoid Information minister V.C.Shukla during the emergency years of 1975-1977.
Some six years later she acted in her first film, `Saat Number kayedi’ (Prisoner No. 7). People say movie world legend Bimal Roy, who was a relative of her husband, introduced her to `Tollywood’.
The screen name Suchitra was given to her by an assistant director, who felt it would be more saleable than a plain Rama, and it did sell! Her rise from then on was phenomenal.
Despite her success, or maybe because of her success, Suchitra Sen rarely called colleagues home and kept her family life totally separate from her professional one. Suchitra, was perhaps the only Indian actress who successfully shut one life from the other, as she crossed over in an ambassador car down Lansdowne Road and Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Road towards Tollygunge’s fabled studios.
Despite her on-screen sizzling chemistry with Uttam Kumar, Ashok Kumar (Hospital), the much younger Soumitra (Saat Pake Bandha) and Dharmendra (Mamata), her personal life remained untouched by rumours of affairs. The little known Dibanath Sen remained the only man in her life till he died in 1970, only to be replaced by God.
But then, often she would become the perfect pupil for those, whom she felt did have something to teach her. Lyricist-movie director Gulzar tells us how she insisted that she will call him `sir’ during the filming of Aandhi, the 1975 movie where she copied Mrs Indira Gandhi’s mannerisms to act as Aarti Devi, a successful politician who leaves behind a marriage to take over her father’s political legacy.
The movie with its memorable songs `Tere Bina Zindagi’ and `Tum Aagaye Ho’, became a hit, only to be banned by a Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s paranoid Information minister V.C.Shukla during the emergency years of 1975-1977.
Somewhere along the way after her husband’s death and a few flop films, she became a disciple of Ramakrishna Mission, the Hindu savant order founded by Swami Vivekananda. As she turned to God, she turned away from the world. Rarely appearing in public, rarely meeting people, refusing movie offers and interview requests, always hiding her face with sunglasses and veils.
Many saw this as the ultimate `Greta Garbosque’ refuge of a haughty actress who wanted the world to remember her as she was and not as she is. But to those whom she turned to, Monks of the Ramakrishna order saw it as a deliberate attempt to cut her links with the world and to turn towards the divine.
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