Miss Shefali
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A brief biography
Priyanka Dasgupta, February 7, 2020: The Times of India
From: February 6, 2020: India Today
Born Arati Das, her teenage years saw her rise from a help of an Anglo Indian household to being Kolkata’s cabaret queen who became a rage at Firpo’s and the Oberoi Grand.
Films and theatre followed, and Satyajit Ray is supposed to have himself come to pick her up on her first day of shooting for ‘Pratidwandi’, in which she was cast as a nurse. Director Sandip Ray says, “Baba wanted to see the room where she performed and so we went there. At the end of her performance, she made Baba wear the garland that she was wearing. This act inspired baba to replicate a similar scene in ‘Seemabadha’.”
Was it the Ray factor that set her apart from so many other cabaret dancers? According to her ‘Seemabadha’ co-actor Barun Chanda, “She might have started out as a cabaret girl, but she certainly went beyond it.”
Aishika Chakraborty, a professor at Jadavpur University’s School of Women’s Studies and author of ‘Kolkatar Cabaret: Bangali, Jounata ebang Miss Shefali’, attributes her enigma it to her “supreme talent” and training. “Here was an extremely gifted teenage refugee dancer from a half-broken family of east Pakistan who, in a patriarchal world, refused to use the victim card,” she said.
However, the middle-class and the Bengali intelligentsia — with deep-rooted morality issues — fumbled about how to accept her choices, desires and body politics. “They couldn’t accept a single woman who was a craze at nightclubs, didn’t dress conservatively and earned a lot of money,” Chakraborty said.
Yet, the last years of her life saw her in deep financial crisis. “She supported so many girls during her heydays but never thought that one day she would face financial crunch,” said niece Elvina Shefali.
“She would pick up beggars from the streets and give them two options: get married or become a cabaret dancer. If they chose to marry, she would buy their gold ornaments. If not, she would train and give them shows,” Chakraborty said.
Yet, the film industry never really acknowledged her. No pivotal roles came her way. Post her demise, countless social media posts paying homage to her is perhaps society’s first attempt at celebrating a power woman who loved to describe her own life as “history”.
