Supriya Devi had to struggle a lot before getting her big break in the 1952 multi-starrer Basu Paribar.
In the opening frame of Ritwik Ghatak’s seminal 1960 Bengali film Meghe Dhaka Tara (Cloud Capped Star), Neeta (Supriya Devi), the protagonist, grows from a speck in the horizon to a diminutive figure in a saree. A jhola slung on her shoulder, a neat plait trailing her, Neeta negotiates the potholed roads of the refugee colony she lives in. Suddenly, the strap of her kolhapuri slipper comes off. She picks it up, considers it for a second and walks on. Neeta, the refugee girl who supports her entire family, doesn’t have the luxury to do anything else. Neither did Supriya Debi, one of Bengal’s most celebrated icons, who passed away in her south Kolkata residence early morning today.
It was not for nothing that Ghatak chose this statuesque actor to play one of the most iconic roles in Indian cinema. Supriya Devi, born in the small Burmese town of Myitkyina in Myanmar (then Burma), had similar antecedents as her most famous on-screen role. Like Neeta, she too knew what it takes to be a refugee in an alien land. When they arrived in Kolkata in the later part of the 1940s, Supriya Devi’s family had literally nothing. They apparently took the most of the 2000-km journey on foot. Supriya Devi had to struggle a lot before getting her big break in the 1952 multi-starrer Basu Paribar.
Also read: Veteran Bengali actor Supriya Devi passes away
But unlike Neeta, Supriya Devi was not a passive recipient of the cruelties of life. Bengal and its women owed a lot to Supriya Devi, who never shied away from living her life on her own terms. Much through the 1960s and 1970s, her relationship with the much-married Uttam Kumar was the fodder for rumour mills. Supriya Devi, who was also married to someone then, brazenly admitted to being involved with Bengal’s most-celebrated matinee idol, much to the chagrin of the flag-bearers of middle-class Bengali morality. Supriya refused to be the other woman. She wanted the recognition of being the partner of the man she loved, and if society refused to give her that status, she couldn’t care less.
She chose to opt out of her first marriage with Bishwanath Choudhury when she moved in with Uttam Kumar and later, according to interviews given to various Bengali magazines, she arranged for an alliance for Bishwanath herself.
Meanwhile, like her famous contemporary Suchitra Sen, Supriya Devi was breaking the glass ceiling for Indian female actors. She played an array of sexually-liberated, assertive characters in the 1950s and 1960s when Bollywood heroines where still playing virginal prototypes. In Lal Pathar (1964), she plays a Bengali widow who chooses to become a zamindar’s consort, only to be consumed by jealousy when the zamindar brings a new bride. Supriya Devi brings a sense of resilience and tenderness to what could easily have been a one-note character. In Bilambita Loy (1970), she plays a successful singer who chooses to give up her alcoholic husband and is not guilt-ridden by it. Even in the scenes where she meets her husband after abandoning him, Supriya ensures that her character is not shown regretting her decision. Instead, she shows pity to the man she loves.
One can’t remember exactly how it happened, but sometime in the late 1960s, Supriya Devi earned the sobriquet of “Sophia Loren of Bengal”. It was probably because of her striking resemblance to the Italian diva but Supriya Devi celebrated that nickname with boat-lined blouses, chokers and the elaborate eye makeup. In fact, the burlesque phase contributed to Supriya Devi’s queer following decades later when her films were readily available online.
In the late 1990s, after the advent of satellite television, Supriya Devi reinvented herself as a television star by playing the lead in the iconic Doordarshan daily Janani, where she played an ageing matriarch who chooses to stay away from her family. The serial was adapted into a number of other Indian languages too. She also hosted the iconic cookery show Benudir Rannaghor, where she shared secret recipes from her cookbook with the audience. Each episode was accompanied with an anecdote relating to her memories of Uttam Kumar. Needless to say, the celebrity-starved Bengali audience had never seen anything like this before.
In 2006, when celebrated filmmaker Mira Nair cast her in a small role in The Namesake, she mentioned how hounoured she was to have Ghatak’s Tara (star) in her film.
Goodbye Supriya Devi, you are not cloud-capped anymore.