A chance meeting at a hospital had led me to Miss Shefali. I was telling the doctor about my aches and pains, when in came a young girl wearing a helmet.

“Thank you, doctor, for all that you have done for my Maam (not ma’am),” she said. “Maam” was a patient in a ward on the floor above, and was to be discharged the next day. “That’s Miss Shefali, the famous cabaret dancer,” the doctor told me later. “This girl is her niece who does all the running around.”

A few weeks later, I called Shefalidi to request an interview and was quite taken by the soft and tentative voice I heard. But she wasn’t very eager to grant me an interview, walled in as she was by her schedule of mealtimes, rest hours, a persistent cough and other difficulties.

Naturally, I wasn’t too expectant when I reached her tiny apartment in a north Calcutta neighbourhood one afternoon almost two years ago.

Some small talk later though — during which time I could feel her eyes observing me keenly — Shefalidi made it clear through her demeanour that she meant business.

Dipping her pretty fingers into a handbag, she pulled out kajal and a lace handkerchief. After putting a few final touches to her pleasant face, she turned to me and said: “Tumi mon khuley jigyesh kortey paro…. You may ask me anything you want.”

Over the next couple of hours unfolded a story that seemed straight out of a bestseller. From a migrant family from Bangladesh that did not have enough to eat to the glittering ballroom of the Grand Hotel, Shefalidi laid out episodes, relationships as well as deals gone sour.

“I don’t know how I managed it all…. But I was sure of one thing, even as an 11-year-old when I went to work in an Anglo-Indian household — that I feared nothing,” she said.

It is possible for me now to construct a fairly clear picture of the woman just by revisiting some precious moments. The adoration in her tone as she spoke of her mother — “she was very beautiful and wise” — the tears choking her as she spoke of her “rajputtur” (prince) of a younger brother who had died a few years ago, the expression of obvious pride as she narrated the event of her first performance at Firpo’s Lido Room and the coyness in her eyes as she looked at the framed photograph of Robin, the American gentleman who had wanted to marry her.

“I often danced with my hip-length hair worn loose.… The audience loved to see me like that,” she said.

Again, she giggled as she recounted her nocturnal binging on fish — struck by craving, she would tiptoe into the dining room of her huge Park Circus house in the wee hours, sit at the large table and polish off the katla maachh bhaja the cook had kept for her.

Even during the hard times, Ms Shefali remained her gracious self.

“Didi has no money for herself, but is always helping out relations whenever they ask,” her caregiver had whispered to me when Shefalidi was out of earshot.

After that day, I always wondered how it would have all panned out for her had she found someone to back her or provide guidance long after her time in the limelight was over.

Today, more than ever, her own proud yet poignant lament rings in my ears — “If only someone had…”