KOLKATA: For some time now,
veteran actress Gita Sen
had been confined to bed. She had suffered a cerebral haemorrhage that had robbed her power of speech too. When she breathed her last on Monday afternoon, it plunged actor
Shreela Mazumdar
into grief.
The veteran actress has worked in films like “Chorus”, “Calcutta 71”, “Kharij” and “Akaler Sandhane”, among others. On screen, Sen had played Mazumdar’s mother in Mrinal Sen’s “Ekdin Pratidin”. “It feels like I have lost my mother. I owe my
acting career
to Gita-di. She was the one to spot me when she heard my performance in a radio play titled ‘Antyoja’,” Mazumdar said. The play, which had Mazumdar play an adolescent girl, had been broadcast on the radio when Mrinal Sen was away in Moscow. “Mrinal-da was planning a film and wanted a newcomer. He had asked
Gita-di
to search for a new girl. After listening to my performance, she had referred my name to Mrinal-da who then met up with the drama producer of All India Radio so that he could listen to it too,” she added.
The director had liked Mazumdar’s acting on the radio. “He had wanted a dark and slim girl. When we met, I matched the kind of looks he wanted for the characters. I had just given my test exams for Madhyamik. Mrinal-da had waited for me to write my final exams. Gita-di had even done workshops with me. Not just Mrinal-da’s own films, she had also worked in Shyam Benegal’s ‘Arohan’ too. I had also acted in this film too,” she recounted.
Memories flood her mind when she recalls how Sen would generously pamper her during lunch. “She would offer me an extra piece of fish too. I remember occasions when she would take out her own saris from the wardrobe and make me wear them. In some of my initial work, all the saris that I wore were from her wardrobe. She would even help me get dressed,” she fondly recalled. If Mazumdar made mistakes, Sen would scold her too. “She was like my mother-cum-friend. Even in my personal life, I have shared so many things with her that I haven’t been able to tell anyone else. She was my counsellor,” Mazumdar said.
When Sen was seriously ill, the actor would visit her too. “The day she suffered the haemorrhage, she had said ‘amar boro ghum pachhe (I am feeling very sleepy)’. Who would know that she would never wake up from that sleep? Mrinal-da and Gita-di’s son, Kunal, had literally transformed their room into a mini nursing home. She would lie still on the bed with numerous tubes fitted on to her body. On Sunday, Kunal came down to Kolkata from Chicago. A day later, she passed away,” she said.