“I never said, ‘I want to be alone’. I only said, ‘I want to be left alone’.
There is a world of difference.”
Suchitra Sen? No, Greta Garbo.
The screen goddess
who was the most famous hermit of New York for years would often take
long walks through the streets dressed in oversized clothes and wearing
large sunglasses to avoid prying eyes.
The screen goddess
who has been the most famous hermit of Calcutta for three decades has
confined herself to her Ballygunge Circular Road house, surrounding
herself with a chosen few and immersing herself in a life of
spirituality.
“Garbo wasn’t a
true recluse as she went out in public,” said Rachel Dwyer, the British
academic, author of a number of books on Hindi cinema.
So, Suchitra has done a Garbo better than Garbo.
It will forever remained a secret how reclusive actress Suchitra Sen, who was hardly seen in public in the last 35 years, looked in her last days.
So will a glimpse
of today’s Suchitra Sen shatter the three-decade-old enigma? Sanjay
Mukhopadhyay, professor of film studies at Jadavpur University, thinks
not. “A myth was created around Greta Garbo when she went into oblivion.
We too have created a myth around Suchitra Sen. Her aura is based on
the photographic reality in our memory, it is built around her star
status. It is huge and I don’t think the real image on television can
demystify her.”
Silver-haired and chubby, Suchitra seemed to “have a kind of spiritual glow on her face”, observed Sabitri.
Sources in the Sen
household said she does indeed spend her days surrounded by spiritual
texts and is visited only by monks. Access is denied to all other
outsiders by the core group of her daughter Moon Moon, son-in-law Bharat
and her granddaughters.
“Her only link
with filmdom is the work of Raima and Riya. Otherwise, she does not
watch films and even makes it a point to turn off the TV or switch
channels if an old movie of hers is showing,” said a source.
This can be
explained by Dwyer’s analysis of the Garbo-Sen reclusion syndrome: “Some
stars, usually very beautiful, hate seeing themselves grow old. Some
probably find it harder than the rest of us to deal with these changes.”
If Garbo had ruled
the silver screen from 1920 to 1941 and then gone into shock
retirement, Sen was the heartthrob of hundreds from 1953 to 1978 before
slamming the doors shut on the world.
“It’s sad if
people can’t respect someone else’s privacy. But no one can take away
what my grandmother is and will always be,” Riya said in the evening.
She is right. Suchitra Sen is and will always be an enigma.
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