SALAD DAYS: Tagore in Apur Sansar (top) and Sen in Samapti (Teen Kanya)

They were once Bengal’s favourite daughters. Discovered and launched by the great Satyajit Ray when they were barely into their teens, they made their debut in roles that have become iconic in the annals of Bengali cinema — the doe-eyed child bride in Apur Sansar (1959) and the tomboy who slowly awakens to womanhood in Samapti (1961). Today, nearly five decades on, Sharmila Tagore and Aparna Sen are still up there. Glamorous and frenetically creative, the one as an actress and the other also as a film-maker, they are still the mistress of our hearts and minds — Bengal’s living icons who just seem to get better with age.

And for the first time in their long careers, Sen and Tagore are now starring in a film together. They are acting in director Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury’s Bengali film Antaheen, where Sen plays Rahul Bose’s sister-in-law, while Tagore plays his aunt. (Sen did have a blink-and-miss flashback scene in Ray’s Aranyer Din Ratri (1969), where Tagore had a key role; but other than that, this is the first time that the two prima donnas are sharing screen space.)

In a happy coincidence, their daughters Soha Ali Khan and Konkona Sen Sharma are also acting in a Hindi film called Dil Kabaddi, with none other than Rahul Bose as one of their co-stars. It could make Bose an interesting chronicler of mother-daughter acting styles. But that, as they say, is another story.

So is she looking forward to acting with Sharmila Tagore, you ask Aparna Sen. She smiles in assent, looking youthful and attractive dressed in a flaming orange kurti and beige trousers. Her 62 years sit lightly on her. But she is a bit upset today as her grandson (elder daughter Kamalini’s child) is unwell. Still, she does not cancel our appointment and is her usual cordial self.

Later, when you request Sharmila Tagore for an interview, you are met with brusqueness. “I have a very small part in the film (Antaheen),” Tagore cuts in tersely over the phone, “And I am not interested in doing this interview.”

Of course, working together may or may not be a big deal to the stars themselves. For movie watchers, though, the coming together of these two illustrious acting bloodlines from Bengal could be fraught with interest. Both share the same roots. Both came from privileged, well-known families — Sharmila belonged to the famous Tagore clan and Aparna was the daughter of film critic Chidananda Dasgupta, who, along with friend Satyajit Ray, set up the Calcutta Film Society in 1947. However, their subsequent careers took on somewhat different trajectories.

Sharmila was not just a Ray regular, acting in as many as five of his films; she also became one of Bombay film’s hottest heroines, one whose famed dimples launched such monster hits as Kashmir ki Kali, Evening in Paris, Aradhana, Safar and Amar Prem. And she has kept up a steady stream of accomplished performances, combining her current role as chairperson of the Central Board of Film Certification with that of an actress, who, even at 63, is not averse to taking up fresh challenges.

As for Aparna Sen, she evolved fairly quickly — from a hugely successful actress in commercial Bengali cinema in the 1960s and 1970s to a cerebral, socially-conscious film-maker in the early 1980s. On the way to making such finely-crafted humanist films as 36 Chowringhee Lane, Paroma, Paromitar Ekdin, Mr and Mrs Iyer, or 15 Park Avenue — and winning a clutch of national and international awards to boot — Sen has been editor of a popular Bengali women’s magazine for nearly 20 years, and is now an activist to reckon with. Last year, she spoke out strongly against the atrocities in Nandigram and marched with the citizens of Calcutta to register her protest.

Clearly, both these ladies have gone from strength to strength. But it was Ray who first discerned the glimmerings of promise in them. It was he who coaxed it out. In fact, when he was scouting for a girl to play Aparna in Apur Sansar, Ray had also considered Sen for the role. “Manik Kaka came to see me one day,” reminisces Sen. “It was my sister’s birthday and I was wearing a skirt. He thought I was too young to play the role. So he chose Rinku (Sharmila’s other name). Later, when he was planning to do Samapti, he chose me.”

Did she ever feel hurt that Ray did not cast her in more of his films? For after Samapti, Sen played just one major role in a Ray film (Pikoo,1980). “Well, I was very hurt that he did not cast me as Bimala in Ghare Baire,” she replies. “He had mentioned once or twice that he would. I think I would have done a very good Bimala.”

But Sen was not one to wait for meaningful cinema to come to her. As it turned out, she simply went on to make some of her own. For though she had shot to stardom in commercial Bengali films, and though her movies were box office hits, she felt stranded in a kind of creative wasteland. “I was making good money,” she says, “but these films weren’t doing anything for me mentally. I was getting no sense of reward from them. It was not the kind of cinema I believed in.”

So she began to write a short story, which grew into a screenplay, and which she made into that gem called 36 Chowringhee Lane (1981), thus transiting from actress to film-maker in one great artistic flourish.

Today, she feels that she is a much better film-maker than she was an actress. “I really don’t enjoy acting anymore,” confesses Sen, who has just completed her latest film, The Japanese Wife.

She is just as candid when you quiz her about that other passout from the Ray school, Sharmila Tagore. “After Apur Sansar, we all thought she was stunning. I still think she is stunning. She is also extremely intelligent. In fact, Rinku is one of the most intelligent people I have ever met,” she says.

Tagore would probably have returned the compliment. For anyone who has worked with these two women swears by their tremendous intelligence and artistic acumen. “They are both extremely cerebral,” says film-maker Goutam Ghose who directed Tagore in his film Abar Aranye (2003) and worked as Sen’s cinematographer in Mr and Mrs Iyer (2002). “Aparna is a perfectionist. So is Sharmila.” But with Sen, Ghose clearly shares a special relationship. “When directors meet nowadays, they only talk about the market and the stars. But with Aparna, it’s different. When we meet, we talk about cinema and aesthetics.”

Their co-stars too point to their passion and commitment as artistes. Mithun Chakrabarty, who acted with Tagore in Kalankini Kankabati, a film directed by Uttam Kumar, way back in 1981, and with Sen in Rituparno Ghosh’s Titli (2002), is effusive about Sen. “As an actress Aparna is lajawab! And as a director, she brings a lot of honesty and sensitivity to her work.” He remembers being slightly in awe of Tagore as a senior actress. She was a bit reserved, but always very polite and helpful, he hastens to add.

But didn’t Tagore, a big ticket Bombay filmstar by then, bring along the baggage of starry airs and graces when she came to shoot in poor old Tollygunge? “At least I never saw any of that,” says Soumendu Roy, Ray’s longtime cinematographer. Shooting on location for Aranyer Din Ratri in a remote area near Daltongunj in Bihar, he was struck by the way she adjusted easily to the spartan living conditions. There was no electricity even, but she didn’t have any problems with that, he says.

Indeed, one reason why Tagore remains a Bengali icon (in a way that Rakhee or Jaya Bachchan can never claim to be) despite having moved to Bombay fairly early on in her career, is that she continued to make a vast number of Bengali films. “She was very much a part of the Bengal scene, and worked with all the senior directors here,” points out Swapan Mullick, film critic, and director, Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute, Calcutta. “Indeed, there is very little to choose between Sen and Tagore. Both are natural, accomplished actresses. And Aparna Sen is also a thinking director, one who always makes a statement in her films.”

Sen doesn’t claim to be an icon. But she says that she is overwhelmed by the love that people shower on her, and the pride they feel in her achievements, “When I’m on my way to an international film festival, people say to me, ‘Didi, amader janye prize niye ashben (Please get a prize for us)’.”

Has Sharmila Tagore had similar experiences?

We wonder.