Suchitra Sen (1931-2014)

Suchitra Sen adorned the Bengali screen for about three decades with her glamour, beauty and charisma. She was not the most gifted Bengali actress of her time, yet she was the “darling of the masses”. In the 1950s and the 1960s, her romantic pairing with the great Bengali actor Uttam Kumar on the screen catered to the romantic desires of the Bengali middle class. The bike ride of Uttam and Suchitra for an unknown destination in Saptapadi was a great poetic moment in the history of romantic Bengali cinema. The journey was accompanied by a romantic song in the film.

Suchitra Sen adorned the Bengali screen for about three decades with her glamour, beauty and charisma. She was not the most gifted Bengali actress of her time, yet she was the “darling of the masses”. In the 1950s and the 1960s, her romantic pairing with the great Bengali actor Uttam Kumar on the screen catered to the romantic desires of the Bengali middle class. The bike ride of Uttam and Suchitra for an unknown destination in Saptapadi was a great poetic moment in the history of romantic Bengali cinema. The journey was accompanied by a romantic song in the film. The song expressed the desire for a world of dreams where the romantic journey never comes to an end. It may be mentioned in this connection that the lyrics of Bengali songs of that time reflected such romantic yearnings.

Suchitra acted in 30 films with Uttam Kumar. She acted in only seven Hindi films in her career, but she also earned her fame in Hindi cinema by acting in Devdas with Dilip Kumar, and in Gulzar’s Aandhi (1975) with Sanjiv Kumar. Suchitra played the lead role of an ambitious political leader in Aandhi, which gave birth to political controversy on the suspicion that it was based on the life of Indira Gandhi.