“She was younger…but something about the young girl’s eyes told me not to reject her.”
Satyajit Ray couldn’t resist Sharmila Tagore’s eyes when she was just 13 — they asked a lot of questions, and often daydreamed back in 1959. To some, they are reminiscent of ‘Ye chaand sa roshan chehra, zulfon ka rang sunehra, ye jheel se neeli aankhein, koi raaz hai inme gehra’. To others, they still exude the elegance and innocence of Apu’s child bride Aparna (Satyajit Ray’s Apur Sansar). But what remains common is adulation among cinephiles for this beauty-with-brains who defied the Hindi film industry’s and society’s unwritten rules by choice, not necessity.
