Did you manage to get a glimpse of Suchitra Sen? Everybody would ask anybody coming out of Belle Vue Clinic ever since Bengal’s goddess of silver screen got admitted to the hospital — very near to Moitra Street — where Uttam Kumar used to live, on December 24. The answer was always “No”. “The security was too tight, no one except the doctors and her relatives were being allowed to venture close to the cabin,” would be the usual refrain.

The curiosity wasn’t like that of a fan standing in front of Jalsa to get a fleeting glance of Amitabh Bachchan — he is everywhere.

Anybody who could have seen Suchitra Sen, an old lady of 83 fighting for her life, could have become famous for a day.

But no one could. And now that she is no more, the image of the screen diva would always be that of a ethereal beauty, Paro of Dilip Kumar’s Devdas of 1955 or the eponymous law intern in Mamta released in 1966.