Rajlakshmi Devi(1902-1972)

Although her usual place of work has always been Calcutta, Rajlakshmi was born in Meerut in the then Northern Provinces of India in 1902. She received training in music and dance before joining the professional stage in Calcutta in 1930. The play was Grihaprabesh by Tagore. From then on she became a regular actress of the Bengali stage and finally joined films, her first movie being Palli Samaj (1932). She carried on as a successful stage actress and also took part as a character artiste in films and went on to act in over two hundred films in different languages like Bengali, Hindi, Urdu, Assameseetc. On the stage she came in contact with the legendary Sisir Kumar Bhaduri under whose training she performed in a great number of plays and in films she was mainly chosen for comic as well as villanous roles. As a person she was known in her circle as a most caring and gentle woman, loved by all. She met with a car accident while returning from outdoor shooting of a Bengali film Jiban Jignasa (1971)and although she made a recovery it was never complete and she suffered from anaemia thereafter and kept indifferent health till the end on the 26th day of May, 1972.