It is rather fitting that Sharmila Tagore returns to Bengali cinema with Puratawn after a hiatus of over two decades, in 2025, a year that marks the 50th year of Mausam (1975), one of her finest performance in Hindi cinema. It is interesting to look at an actor at the top of her game at 80, as she is in Puratawn and compare that with what she brought to the table 50 years ago.
What Sharmila Tagore delivers in Puratawn is arguably among her finest, a performance at par with her earliest ones in Satyajit Ray’s Apur Sansar and Devi. A performance that in its silences and pauses is a world removed from the abrasive and foul-mouthed Kajli in Mausam. Yet over the span of 50 years that separates the two films, one can see similarities between them, not least in the actor’s craft.
The past looms over both Puratawn and Mausam. If in Mausam the actor had a dual role, that of mother and daughter, Puratawn too is at the core a mother-daughter tale which, in the way director Suman Ghosh conceives of Sharmila’s character, has her essay what in essence are three different roles.
As Suman says, “She brings to the character three different perspectives – her present self that lives in the past, when she is lucid and knows her bearings, and her persona in the flashbacks which provides another dimension to the character.”
The actor herself talks about her performance in Puratawn. “It’s a character that one could bite one’s teeth into. Not many female actors get roles that make going the extra mile worth the effort. Particularly in an industry that favours their heroines young. This one had me reaching for reserves I was not sure I was capable of mining.”
Sharmila could have well been speaking of Mausam. When she starred in the film, the actor had already been 15 years in the industry. At 30, she was no longer the age film-makers and audiences preferred their leading ladies. In Hindi cinema she had made a name for herself in blockbuster escapist fare like Kashmir Ki Kali and An Evening in Paris.
As Suman Ghosh says, “Mausam is her best performance. What I find striking is how different it is from the image she had in mainstream Hindi cinema. No one could imagine her in the raw, earthy avatar of Mausam.”
Interestingly, her initial forays in cinema, in Bengali films, cast her in roles that were rooted. Not just the Ray films, but even in films like Barnali, Tapan Sinha’s Nirjan Saikate, Kinu Gwalar Goli and most strikingly, Chhaya Surjo, which she calls ‘the most deglamourised role of my career… a poignant tale of a young girl, Ghentu, shunned by everyone because of her dark skin and unconventional ways’. In 1964, she starred in Kashmir Ki Kali with which her career took a different trajectory.
As she says, “Not till Mausam would I be given an opportunity to play a character that came close to Ghentu’s rebelliousness. Kajli in Mausam was so layered, and I had to work really hard on the character.” It required her to speak while having a beedi between her lips. To complicate matters, the character she essays is foul-mouthed, and uses the choicest abuses. “I had to keep the rhythm of the dialogue delivery in mind. I’m not a Hindi-speaking person, so the rhythm doesn’t come naturally to me. My preparation always starts with the script. But in those days, apart from Manik-da, where would we get a full script? Even in Mausam, there was no script. I made my notes. It was difficult for me because Bangla has no gender, but Hindi does. Mausam was the first time I learned about delivering a line – the pauses, the stress…I didn’t go to the red-light area to study people, but I read the script. I would sit in front of the mirror for Mausam, with the makeup and hair, that’s when I would get into character. It would click.”
Click it did, fetching her a best actress trophy at the National Film Awards that year. And if her performance in Puratawn is anything to go by, it could well have the actor walking up to receive another best actress award 50 years later.