Sonali Dasgupta, the real woman behind the scandal

In countless stories, Sonali Dasgupta has been portrayed as a tragic, lonely figure overwhelmed all her life by the magnitude of the scandal she set off when she ran off to Rome with filmmaker Roberto Rossellini in the 1957. It sounded like a suitable lesson for a woman who left her marriage and children to chase some prohibited passion.
The truth is far from this.She lived a full life in Rome till her death on Saturday evening, a feisty, independent and successful businesswoman who ran an India-inspired boutique - probably the first such in Rome of the early 60s — and remained an integral part of the city's social and cultural circuit. Her clothes, jewellery, furnishings and handicrafts sold at Sonali, her store, were much sought after and her clientele included the film fraternity of Itlay and Hollywood. And she certainly remained in touch with her family back home.
The only people who have the right to be betrayed/outraged by her decision to walk out on her first marriage, her siblings and children, have long put it behind them. A talk with them is enough to debunk the media myth of the miserable recluse. “As her family, we are all tired of reading the same old story of her and Rossellini,” says her niece Sukanya Wignarajan, a psychotherapist based in Tokyo.
Sonali was closest to her youngest and only brother, Karun Senroy, an engineer who now lives in Ventabren, close to Aix-en-Provence, in southern France. He laughs away the stories about her insular existence. "She was close to all her siblings, one in Oxford and another in Kolkata. She travelled with her daughter, Raffaella, to India to visit our parents in Lucknow. She was not ‘cut off’ as it has been written about her. Her son, Gil, used to travel to India on a regular basis on business. He made it a point to visit his grandmother (my mother) in India," he says.
In an interview to Calcutta Times, her grandson Birsa Dasgupta, says this of the very dramatic episode in the family’s history. “There’s never been a hush-hush about it because we, Dasguptas and Rossellinis, don’t treat it as a scandal… The first person in the family who made me aware of why my thamma doesnt live with us was my dadon Harisadhan. He made me understand that there’s a part of our family in Rome which thamma has to run and take care of so between the two of them they have decided to split to take up separate responsibilities.”
By all accounts, Sonali was an extremely reserved person, and became more so in the aftermath of the scandal and howls of outrage that followed her flight to Rome. But she was far from being a reclusive wreck. Nor was she Rossellini's social shadow. She was a celebrity in the cinema circuits thanks to him but she was very much her own person as well. Even after her relationship with him crumbled, she remained a known and respected name in her city.
In the early 60s when Indian handlooms and crafts was barely the craze it is now in Europe she set up Varuna, a shop on Via Borgognona, a fashionable street in Rome. Initially she worked with a partner but then took charge of it on her own. According to Senroy, she juggled home and work with skill, running the store single-handedly. And making several trips to India to find the cottons and silks she needed for her designs.
"She was very involved with her work, engaged with every aspect of it. She was very, very happy at her store," says Senroy.
Sonali's engagement with design started early as a student of art and music at Shantiniketan. She came from a family of Bengalis settled in Benares for four generations by the time of her birth. Her father was a civil surgeon and the four siblings travelled around the small towns of Uttar Pradesh.
Sonali married early and became a mother in her early 20s, with little time to engage in a career. She was passionate about Indian handlooms. Wignarajan talks of her incredible collection of Indian silks and cottons from Odissa and south India. And the pride she took in each of them. "They meant a lot to her," she says.

The eye for design translated into her work at Sonali, as she renamed her store. Wignarajann remembers the sketchbook of daywear and formal wear her aunt showed her as a child. In sepia tinted photographs of the time you can see her at the store in Rome, shod in the most elegant Indian silks and woollens, a walking advertisement for her work.
"She always wore saris, always. My uncle who went to meet her in Rome off and on recalls that in the Rome of the 60s she drew attention — 5'8", slender and elegant in beautiful silks," says her niece.
She didn't live a life of disgraced exile from her roots. "She remained an Indian, always. Very much so. She visited for business, kept in touch with her associates, family. Till illness forced her shut her business some years ago. Then she would spend time collecting, reading, writing," says her brother. "A lot of stuff written about her was worthless."
If you search the internet, at the Italian media site http://www.mediatecaroma.it/ there is a photograph of her at her storefront with a young man. There are Indian artifacts on display and she is looking at them. There is pride in her face and excitement. This certainly was no life led in the perpetual shadow of scandal.