Abhijit Dasgupta / Calcutta
The Pioneer
May 19, 1999
Title: When Italy rejected our own daughter Author: Abhijit Dasgupta / Calcutta Publication: The Pioneer Date: May 19, 1999 The story had everything that film rags in Calcutta wanted to publish in details in the mid-50s but could not. But it did make banner headlines in the local press in those days. And 40 years down the line, it has acquired a Sonia angle, which should make it good stuff for politicians too. The story was simple: Tollygunge's stunning starlet Sonali Dasgupta, who married fame in the form of Harisadhan Dasgupta, a filmmaker of great repute in the 50s, made headlines when she eloped with legendary Italian filmmaker Roberto Rossellini, who was a personal guest of Pandit Nehru. The Italian attended one of Dasgupta's parties in Calcutta and promptly fell in love with his wife. The wife, with two sons at that time, too could not resist the Italian's charms and shocked the traditional Bengali community here by simply walking off with her lover to the airport, and off to Rome. It was not as if Dasgupta did not know what was happening. Lore has it that the only thing which shocked him was the manner in which she eloped, one son in tow. The newspapers went to town on the story, but Sonali slowly faded from public memory even as Raja, her son who stayed back, grew up to become one of the most popular TV serial directors here. The tale could have rested at that as did the wronged husband, who quietly died some years later, but not before filing a "missing" FIR at the nearest police station. But Sonia Gandhi has changed all that. And Sonali now resurfaces. Not in person though, but in theory. And the person to articulate it is an old man in Delhi, who met Sonali in 1965, when he was a press attache in the Indian embassy in Rome. Mr Rai Singh, now retired and living in the Munirka, said Sonali met him and pleaded with him to intervene with the authorities in Rome to allow her to contest a civic election. The Italian government refused to give her a ticket since she was not an Italian by birth. Though, as Mr Singh says, Sonali had "renounced" her Indian citizenship and become an Italian citizen through valid documents. "She had taken an Italian citizenship a year after she reached Rome, which should be 1957." Speaking to The Pioneer over telephone from Delhi, Mr Singh said, "I still remember her. She was ravishing and fiercely ambitious. She told me that she had wanted to make her international film debut through Rossellini but it had not materialised. So she had taken to politics." The veteran diplomat, who retired in 1978 as director, external publicity, continued, "She pleaded with me but I was helpless. I even placed her case before the then Italian deputy home minister. But he looked the other way, saying while she was free to enter service, politics was a strict no-no, and elected office was out of question. I could not do anything since we did not have a reciprocal agreement. "Sonali was quite a social animal and was seen at elite gatherings as the presiding deity, but she could not make it. Italy would not bend its rules for a lovely Indian lady, always in a saree, who organised exhibitions on ancient Indian jewellery. The rules could not be broken even for the lovely wife of Roberto Rossellini." Mr Singh, who did not keep in touch with Sonali after he left Rome in 1968, does not even know whether she is alive. "All I remember was that she was really keen and that it was a very minor election. Not even of the level of councillor as we know it in India. But even then, she was denied a right to contest only because she was not Italian by birth. "The Rossellini name did not help and she had to be content with organising fairs. It was sad," he added. However, as the retired diplomat adds, "Maybe, there is a lesson in her story. She accepted it with grace and did not sulk."
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