As a Bengali kid growing up in Delhi, I didn’t have access to all the Suchitra Sen films. It was only through Doordarshan that I could see her films. I remember the more I saw her, the more and more I became enchanted. With her beauty, with her talent, with her charisma.

Of course, Suchitra Sen was synonymous with the Uttam-Suchitra pairing. If one ranks the best screen pairs in Indian cinema of all time, Uttam-Suchitra would come 1 to 10 and then the others will come into play.

I used to believe that Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen were a couple in real life! For a long time. Much later my mother explained to me that they were just two actors in their act.

I must have been 14-15 and watching them together in those classic Bengali movies, I was convinced that these two people must be husband and wife. Their screen chemistry was that genuine. I could feel the pulse every time they came together.

By the time I got interested in the performing arts and started dabbling in theatre and television, Suchitra Sen had taken a spiritual sabbatical. I was heartbroken. I wanted to meet her but she had decided to disappear from public life.

It’s now that I understand the power of that woman to detach herself overnight from that kind of stardom, from the world of showbiz, from the spotlight. There’s a great lesson there for not only actors and stars in Bengal but even those in Mumbai.

I did try to meet her though. Not once, but twice. I went with a friend of mine to her Ballygunge Circular Road home in 2002 hoping to meet her. Cinema tokhon nesha and the mystery around Suchitra Sen compelling! We went there, asked around, had tea in a stall nearby, discussed and debated cinema and came back.

Her beauty was timeless. I remember when Madhuri Dixit came into the spotlight, we used to compare her beauty with Suchitra Sen’s. We used to wonder whether it was the smile or the eyes or the lips that made the two of them look so similar.

My favourite Suchitra Sen films are Uttar Falguni, Saptapadi, Deep Jwele Jaai, Saat Paake Bandha and Aandhi. Aandhi particularly had a very strong effect on me. I couldn’t imagine anybody else playing that part and that too opposite a master thespian like Sanjeev Kumar.

Suchitra Sen, despite being away from the public eye, has been in our collective consciousness all the time. She’s certainly been a big part of my journey in the world of cinema.

Even last year, when Juhi (Chaturvedi, scriptwriter) and I were discussing who to cast for a senior love story, I was so keen to have Suchitra Sen opposite Amitabh Bachchan. That would have been such a great pairing. If only it had been possible in some way....

Shoojit is the maker of Vicky Donor and other films