RAIMA

I have this very disgusting habit of dividing the people of this world into those who have read and liked J.D.Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye and those who haven’t. Obviously I hold the former group in sky- high esteem (I could have kissed them on both cheeks!) and pity the latter. (I could have written here that I have complete disdain and unmitigated hatred for them but stopped short of such extremes because all is not lost - the book is still in print, they can read it and redeem themselves!) So, I was relieved, and pleasantly reassured, when I read in a recent interview of Raima Sen that ‘Catcher’ is her favourite book. Yeah! That made my day, because Raima Sen happens to be one of the few people from the world of entertainment I genuinely like. For her sultry good looks, sure, but mainly for what she can do on screen. The 3 individuals (barring Rabindranath Thakur) Bengalis unabashedly adulate has to be Subhas Chandra Bose, Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen. A freedom-fighter and 2 matinee idols! Sourabh Ganguly is fast closing in on them but as of now Bengalis are not wholly convinced of his greatness (besides he is stinking rich and we Bongs simply hate the stinking rich. It’s got nothing to do with the stink though!) But since I am into Raima Sen today I’ll stick to Suchitra Sen. Ask any Bengali to name the most beautiful woman of all time, and 7 out of 10 will still vote for Suchitra Sen. In the 60s innumerable impressionable Bengali girls got stiff necks trying to clone her famous head-turned-to-one-side-and eyes- to- the- other look. It was a class act. Coyness, standoffishness, Presidency or Lady Brabourne educated Bengaliness personified. Then one fine day she just turned away from the cameras reducing Bengalis to heart-broken rudalis whose only refrain was After Suchitra the deluge! Until….Raima came along. When her photos were splashed across the pages of glossies many a Bong heart skipped a few beats. Raima was Suchitra Sen re- incarnated! Well not quite. She gave Tollygunge what it deserved - a short shrift. (Take out Rituporno Ghosh and Aparna Sen from Tolly and you’re left with a huge yawn! Anjan Dutta and Sandip Ray do have their fans but I am not one of them, sorry.)

Moonmoon Sen, her mother, in spite of her many talents, couldn’t make much headway in Bengali films because she couldn’t act! She should have tried her hand at making films, instead. She is an accomplished photographer, a trained painter and for many years was one of the moving forces behind Chitrabani, Father Gaston Roberge’s film school. I’ve heard innumerable Bengalis refer to her as ‘makal phal’ (loosely translated it would mean beauty without brains/talent). How wrong they could be! But then can you blame them really? She was famous only for being her mother’s daughter then and now all indications are that she’ll be known only for being her daughters’ mother! Aishwarya Rai underestimated Raima, in Chokher Bali,( why wouldn’t she? Afterall she was the reigning queen then, and Raima, a greenhorn.) and paid a heavy price for it. Raima stole scene after scene from right under Asihwarya’s snub nose! It was an early indication of the kind of stuff she was capable of delivering given the right script and the right director. It’s a long road ahead, but keep walking Raima…………….’cause you have places to go.
uday
Ps: the beautiful photograph I've uploaded is by Ronny Sequierra. Ronny, please don't sue me for copyright infringement. Nobody reads my blog anyway!