WHEN ITALY REJECTED OUR OWN DAUGHTER
Dr. Jai Maharaj
By Abhijit Dasgupta in Calcutta
The Pioneer
Tuesday, May 18, 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."
Not for commercial use. Solely to be fairly used for
the educational purposes of research and open
discussion.
Jai Maharaj
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