Mahanayika no more

 She'd done a few films before-- Kajri, Atom Bomb, Shesh Kothay--but it was Saat Number Kayedi and Sharey Chuattar, which made her a star. "And she remained a star till the end," says Bengal's matinee idol Prosenjit Chatterjee, who at the age of four got a hug and a wow from her on the sets of his first film, Chhotto Jignasa. "After that we never met or even spoke but she told her granddaughter Raima Sen she'd liked my performance in Chokher Bali and Noukadubi and that I was as good-looking as my dad (Biswajit)."

Biswajit recalls that while filming Hospital he grabbed her hand so hard that her glass bangles broke and she started to bleed. "She was at the peak of her career and I thought my career was over. I tried to slip away quietly, she stopped me saying it was her fault for wearing glass bangles," he says.

For director Buddhadeb Dasgupta her two performances which stand out are Saat Paake Bandha (which bagged her the Best Actress Award at the Moscow fest) and Aandhi (got her a Filmfare nomination) with Ajoy Kar and Gulzar, because they were bereft of her signature mannerisms. "She will be remembered as a great heroine but not as an actress. I wish she had not turned down Satyajit Ray's Devi Chaudrani," he says, admitting he'd never wanted to work with her. "She'd have to surrender to me completely and was too beautiful."  The third daughter of headmaster Karunamoy Dasgupta and Indira Devi, Roma Dasgupta was born in Pabna, now in Bangladesh. The family migrated to Kolkata where she married Debnath Sen, the son of wealthy barrister Adinath Sen, in 1947. A year later, Moon Moon was born and in 1952, filmaker Sukumar Dasgupta ran into her at a Kolkata studio. She'd heard he was scouting for a new face for his film, Saat Number Kayedi, and she wanted an audience. Dasgupta asked if she was interested in acting and she retorted, "That's why I'm here."
Age cannot wither her nor custom stale her infinite variety.'--Shakespeare (Antony and Cleopatra).

The pictures have faded with time but the woman who looks out from them is frozen in a black-and-white era-- ethereal and unforgettable.

Padma Shri Suchitra Sen, Bengal's diva, stepped out of the public eye over three decades ago, before she turned old and grey. She was 83, when around 8.25 am on Friday she succumbed to a massive heart attack. But the thousands who watched the departing Garbo's last journey, remembered her as an ageless 20-year-old with a Madonna-like smile and an icy hauteur which kept her worshippers from getting too close to Mrs Sen or Madam as she liked to be addressed.

Between 63' and 66' she did not sign a single film with Uttam Kumar to silence critics who said she just a "beautiful face" while he was the "actor".

But Bimal Roy's daughter Rinki Bhattacharya remembers her as a simple, homely woman when she was in Mumbai to shoot for Devdas. "She'd drop Moon Moon off at our place on her way to the shoot. With no make-up on, she didn't look like the legendary beauty she was," she recalls.

Suchitra didn't do too many Hindi films but worked twice with Dev Anand in Bambai Ka Babu and Sarhad. "He was captivated by her 'speaking eyes' and later worked with Moon Moon in Love In Times Square while Raima did an item number in Chargesheet," says Mohan Churawala, Dev's friend. 

 Prosenjit whose upcoming film, Jatishwar opened on Friday, cancelled an event to rushto her funeral. He recalls the golden couple of the 60s with a smile and a sigh, "The mahanayak went away too soon, today, Mamta was a hit, Aandhi raked up a controversy over her resemblance to the then PM Indira Gandhi. May be that was how she'd have looked in her twilight years. But after Pronayer Pasha she went into hiding for real. There were talks of a mystery illness and Ramakrishna Mission monk Bharat Maharaj behind her decision to retire. Once a fashionable lady-about-town, who partied every night, she became a recluse after her husband's death in 1970.

But today we still hear her carefree laughter as she rides behind Uttam Kumar in Saptapadi to the tune of 'Ei path jodi na sesh hoi to kemon hoto tumi bolo to'. The song's composer, Hemant Kumar's son Jayanta Mukherjee, recalls it was voted the most romantic Bengali song ever.
even the mahanayika is gone. An era has ended."