Her seduction lay in her intense and dreamy eyes, the softness with which she lifted and moved them, restrained and strong gestures, a mesmerizing smile and her close ups that left many a bewitched followers particularly among the males.

Born as Rama Dasgupta on April 6, 1931 in the Pabna district of Bangladesh to a headmaster father and homemaker mother, Suchitra regaled audiences from 1951 to 1979 after which she went into a quiet seclusion for which she was constantly compared with the Swedish actress, Greta Garbo of Hollywood.

She would shun every award event, interview or filmy do and declined a documentary on her life, yet neither age nor inaccessibility could fade her luminosity into anonymity.

The mystery rather deepened and expanded her aura, appeal and the grace that she exhibited till her last breath was all too evident.

She passed away on a cold winter day, Jan. 17. It was a tearful day for her admirers and fans living on both sides of the border, in India and Bangladesh, such was her popularity.

The streets of Kolkata, the erstwhile capital of arts and culture, were choc-a-block as people followed her last journey and she was accorded a farewell with full state honors.

Down with serious respiratory problems, Suchitra was admitted in a nursing home in Kolkata for past 26 days where she succumbed to a massive cardiac arrest.

Diehard fans remembered her pioneering work and applauds flowed from critics and the lay alike.

She is best remembered for the first ever cinematic characterization of alcoholic Devdas’ love interest, Paro, starring opposite another icon, Dilip Kumar, in Devdas directed by Bimal Roy.

Satyajit Ray, an Oscar-winning filmmaker, had once remarked that very few romantic couples have succeeded and in this category. Suchitra’s pairing with superstar Uttam Kumar is one of them.

One also hears stories of how Suchitra was perhaps the only actor to have refused Satyajit Ray and Raj Kapoor, both India’s gifted filmmakers and while some would attribute it to her avoidance to a close scrutiny of her ‘acting skills,’ others would conjecture over her ‘price’ that was an astronomical sum in her times.

It is said that the actress was aware and sometimes anguished that her magnetic beauty overshadowed and would sometimes marginally lead to a certain diminution of her talent in her craft.

A trendsetter of sorts, Suchitra stepped into the film world after her marriage in 1947, at the insistence of her mariner husband, Dibanath Sen.

Debuting in 1952 with Shesh Kothaay, which was never released, she was cast opposite Uttam Kumar in Sharey Chuattor by Nirmal Dey that became a blockbuster and catapulted her to a journey of unending fame.

This pair materialized into more Uttam-Suchitra movies that were copied and made reference points for more artists and further interpretations in Bengali theatre and drama.

The matinee idol of yesteryear gave us a total of 59 brilliant films, a few being: Sharey Chauttor (1953), Agni Pariksha (1954), Sabar Uparey (1955), Musafir (1957), Harano Sur (1957), Chaowa Pawa (1959), Deep Jwele Jaai (1959), Bombai ka Babu (1960), Saptapadi (1961), Uttar Falguni and Mamta (1966), Saat Paake Bandha and Aashirwad (1968), Aandhi (1975), and Pranay Pasha (1977) which was her last movie.

In Deep Jwele Jaai (1959) by Asit Sen, her character was of a hospital nurse working for a progressive psychiatrist who after great hesitation agrees to act out falling in a love relationship with a patient suffering from Oedipal Complex as part of his therapy.

The film was known for her sheer sensitive performances and memorable musical renditions like “Ei raat tomar, amar.”

Then in 1961, came Saptapadi, where she played Rina Brown, an alcoholic Anglo-Indian woman soldier, a very unconventional role for her times.

In 1963, Suchitra worked with Asit Sen once again in Uttar Falguni, where she portrayed double roles of a courtesan, Pannabai, and her daughter Suparna, a lawyer.

This movie went on to be regarded as the best feature film in Bengali at the National Film Award Festival and was remade in Hindi by Asit and with the main lead as Suchitra but under the title of Mamta.

Ajoy Kar’s Saat Paake Bandha was an important milestone in her profession and she was the first Indian actress to win the ‘Best Actress’ award at the Moscow International Film Festival in 1963.

This flick too was remade in Hindi going by name of Khamoshi and Suchitira’s formidable role was played outstandingly by Waheeda Rehman.

Swayed by Suchitra’s success in Bengali cinema, Bombay film industry knocked on her doors and invited her to play Paro in Devdas (1955), and in a 1975 film Aandhi directed by lyricist Gulzar, for which she won the accolade of ‘Best Actress’ in Filmfare awards.

Based on the life of then leading politician and Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi, the movie hit the silver screens only after Gandhi lost Lok Sabha elections in 1977 and the ban on the movie could be lifted. Suchitra was paired with Sanjeev Kumar in this yesteryear classic.

The songs were penned by Gulzar, composed by Rahul Dev Burman and sung by Lata Mangeshkar and Kishore Kumar and still evoke beautiful memories of the age and settings.

The enchanting actress refused to travel to New Delhi to be decorated by the Indian President with Indian cinema’s highest honor for a movie artist, the Dadasaheb Phalke award in 2005. But in 2012, the West Bengal Government conferred on her ‘in absentia’ its highest award, Banga Bibhushan.

As she had once famously remarked, she preferred to be seen only on screens, the celluloid queen decided to bow out of public glare while she was at the peak.

And amazingly, she reigned at the top in the cinema world even in her 25^th year of acting career.

In the last decades she devoted herself to religious work and the Ramakrishna Mission, gardening and reading.

However far Suchitra may have been, her admirers have continued to smell and savor the wafts of fragrance through her exquisite stills and performances, and her entire body of work that she leaves with us.

Suchitra is survived by her acclaimed actress daughter Moon Moon Sen and two grand daughters, Raima and Reema, also actresses in their own right.