Suchitra Sen and the importance of beauty

At the Jaipur literature festival there’s no better proof that art is beauty than the Dove booth for the “real woman”. The booth promises us “You are more beautiful than you think”. Those enticed by the slogan get a hairstyle makeover and a goody bag of Dove products says Kritika Gupta whose job is to get women to walk up and believe in the slogan. I ask her if she’s heard about the death of one of the most legendary beautiful women in India – Suchitra Sen. “Sushmita Sen?” she asks in shock. “No, Suchitra” I reply. Oh no, she says with palpable relief. She has never heard of a Suchitra Sen. It’s excusable. Kritika is 19. Even Suchitra Sen would probably be fine with Kritika’s obliviousness because Sen left the spotlight almost two decades before Kritika was even born. And Suchitra shunned the limelight after her film Pranay Pasha flopped in 1978 with a ferocity that was both legendary and unfathomable. No mother roles. No judging reality shows. No inaugurating art exhibitions. Her last known close-up was when she went to get her voter ID card. [caption id=“attachment_1346951” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Suchitra Sen as paro in Devdas. IBN Live.[/caption] In a world where every minor celebrity thinks that ten minutes outside the limelight means oblivion, Suchitra became even more famous by becoming invisible. “We live in a fast-food use and throw culture, aap ka wajood banta hain (your worth is made) by coming into the limelight,” says actor Irrfan Khan at the Jaipur festival. “If your work has real dum (staying power), then you don’t have to keep appearing in the limelight. Suchitra Sen was magical. It’s sad we did not get to see her in the later years.” But probably she was just weary of being seen, being constantly looked at. Or perhaps her seclusion was about keeping the mystique intact, unravaged by age. Many books and magazine articles were written recycling the same few stray bits of gossip about “Suchitra’s life now”. A reporter from a Bengali television channel once snuck into her hospital room disguised as staff with a mobile phone. Perhaps we wanted to see her fall apart, to be convinced that age destroys even the most unfairly perfect. Or it might have been the reverse. We wanted some reassurance that beauty does not fade.  That’s what beauty products constantly promise us. At Jaipur, Nelofar Currimbhoy was launching Flame, a book about another Indian beauty queen – her mother Shahnaz Husain. If Suchitra was the epitome of unattainable beauty, a fairy tale princess, Husain was the fairy godmother who packaged the dream of beauty in bottles and tubes and made it accessible to millions.  “Some beauty is meant for coming out into the public. Some beauty is about remaining private. Both are beautiful,” says Currimbhoy. “Suchitra had mystery in a generation that valued it.” The mystery is anachronistic in a world where stars are meant to tweet, not just twinkle, where the Dalai Lama attends literary festivals. Jaipur literature festival producer Sanjoy Roy says he cannot imagine someone like Suchitra Sen ever coming to an extravaganza like JLF.  But if she did, he says, she would do it in her own style. Suchitra Sen paid a certain price for her beauty. In her book Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen – Bengali Cinema’s First Couple, Maitreyee B Chowdhury writes that actress “Sabitri Chatterjee confirmed in an interview that Suchitra used to be perturbed at being considered a pretty face while Sabitri received accolades for her acting prowess.” Her acting, many felt, was all about camera angles, often too stilted. She didn’t have  her costar of 39 films, Uttam Kumar’s easy charm. Sen reportedly turned down an offer to work with Satyajit Ray. One rumour went she was afraid her acting chops would come under scrutiny. Others said she was afraid to lower her market price after having worked so hard to become  Bengal’s first Mahanayika (great actress) who could demand top billing. Bengal itself produced far greater actors than Suchitra. But only Suchitra had beauty so magnetic that you could not look away from her  when she appeared on the big screen. “There are at least three versions of Devdas, “ says historian Rani Shankardass. “But Suchitra Sen was the best. “ Shankardas’ face softens at the memory. She says even her seclusion had its beauty. “There was grace in her bowing out. You have to know when to bow out.” It was by no means beauty that was perfect. She was slightly cock-eyed or what’s fondly called “Laskhmi-tyera” in Bengali. The magazine Anandalok tells the story of how a photographer tried to get his editor to use a photo of Suchitra Sen on their magazine cover taken while she was filming Shesh Kothay. The editor replied that you could do a toothpaste ad with such big teeth but you could not do cinema. Yet her imperfections somehow only added to her utter luminosity, the human touch that would have otherwise made her beauty insufferable. It might seem demeaning to remember the mahanyika for her looks, a sort of diminution of her talent.  But that’s because we underrate the importance of beauty in our lives though we pursue it relentlessly. Beautiful things matter because the pleasure they provide us is so ineffable. We can admire the craft behind a soul-stirring performance, or a perfectly pitched high note. But the joy of beauty is often treated dismissively because we think it just exists - like a sunset, like a rainbow, serendipitous, not the result of perseverance, diligence and labour.  But its pleasure is that much more keen because it is so utterly accidental. The same pieces put together slightly differently do not have the same effect.. “When Suchitra smiled, the way she curled that upper lip, it was just magical,” says Sanjoy Roy. That magic entranced us because it was so completely random, because there was nothing we did to deserve the pleasure we got from it. And it was a pleasure we could not hope to replicate it through perseverance, diligence and labour. Or even a camera angle. A few days ago when Suchitra Sen was in the Intensive Therapy Unit at Belle Vue hospital in Kolkata, I told my mother with journalistic cynicism that many of my colleagues were asking me if I had my Suchitra Sen obituary ready. It was just being practical. Sen was 82 and in critical condition. My mother said, shocked, “Don’t say that. I am praying for her.” Every morning she would ask us two things at breakfast when the newspaper came in. What was the temperature yesterday for Kolkatans take their winters seriously. And how is Suchitra Sen. She didn’t believe the temperature because she felt in her bones that it was colder than whatever the papers said. But she believed, even clung to every little sliver of good news about Suchitra Sen –  she was serious but stable, she  had drunk tea, she had talked to her daughter. And each day she would say “As long as she is there.” As long as Suchitra Sen was there, a generation like my mother’s, now saddled with bad knees and cataracts, could still believe that a certain kind of grace was not gone from the world, that they still spent their days in crisp tangail saris instead of shapeless nighties. Now she is gone and though the films live on, and a glimmer of her beauty occasionally fleets across the face of her actress granddaughter Raima, we are left with the mundane realities of nightgown lives – convenient and functional but unmagical. Mrs Sen has left the building. We are left with the dullness of sensibility.