West Bengal’s district of Bankura was anything but sleepy this past Sunday afternoon. Looking more like fans who wait impatiently for their beloved star’s blockbuster to premiere, groups of curious onlookers flanked a small patch of road that led to their town. Though it had been weeks since the graffiti in Bankura’s streets had announced that the Trinamool Congress was fielding Moon Moon Sen as its Lok Sabha candidate, this was the first time the actress was making a pit stop in the constituency, her first real political debut of sorts. Trying hard to contain their enthusiasm, a majority of the villagers were however, forced to confess that they had never seen any of the actress’ films. Their impatient wait finally ended when a convoy of SUVs emerged from the distance. Sen stepped out of her Toyota Fortuner in a white salwar kameez and blue stole. The meet and greet lasted only a few minutes. The sun was harsh. Sen was soon whisked away to her hotel for lunch.

Journalists gathered outside Sen’s room wanting an itemised account of what food the star had been served, down to the kind of dal (moong) and chutney (coriander) that she had sampled. The palpable excitement even made one of the local sweepers want to reconsider his strong communist loyalties.

After having comfortably won the Bankura Lok Sabha seat nine times since 1980, CPI(M) leader Basudeb Acharia is not to be taken lightly, but the Trinamool Congress believes it has found itself a trump card in Moon Moon Sen. As the 49-year-old teacher Sasticharan Chatterjee opined over a cup of cha, “When things get old, all you need is a whiff of something radically new.”

In an interview to this paper, Sen hinted at a new kind of poriborton (change), one of mindsets. She said, “We don’t live in a time when people say that since we are poor, we are communists, we are ideological, or since we have read Karl Marx and Lenin, we don’t want a film star in our midst. People want a freshness.” Back in Bankura, that is precisely what the star brought to the table. She changed clothes the way she’d change costumes on a film set. Wearing a blue and white-striped chiffon saree to address party workers at the Bankura stadium, Sen seemed to redefine the oft repeated Trinamool slogan of ‘Ma, Maati, Manush’ (Mother, Earth, Man) to a more apt ‘Ma, Mamata, Moon Moon.’ While senior leaders tried to enthuse the 30,000-strong crowd with badly pronounced cries of “Ei bar or nebhar” (Now or never), peppering their speeches with references to Telangana, 2G and Coalgate, Moon Moon Sen stuck to telling a story she knows best — her own.

The actress began by introducing herself as the daughter of yesteryear star Suchitra Sen. The idea of hereditary glory does not bother Sen much. As she later clarified — “I have my mother’s recognition that I am riding on, but I am also riding on my own recognition because I have worked for 22 to 24 years in Bengali cinema and in the cinema of other States. I didn’t do too badly.” When introducing her husband Bharat Dev Varma to potential voters in Bankura, Sen used his scheduled tribe background to ingratiate herself with the adivasis who were present. The fact that he is a descendant of Tripura’s royal family might of course have felt too opulent a truth to labour. But the 66-year-old actress cannot really be faulted for dishonesty. As soon as she had told the audience that she wanted to stay with them and work in the district, she felt the need to correct herself. “Maybe not for the whole month, maybe for seven days and also when the need arises.” She insisted that the work she wanted to do was small, leaving the bigger jobs and tasks for bigger leaders.

Sen may have spent a good portion of her Bankura speech extolling the virtues of Mamata Banerjee, but she doesn’t always find it necessary to add the reverent suffix ‘di’ when referring to the chief minister in conversation. Living up to her somewhat unorthodox credentials, she even starts an interview by saying that she has just returned from the hairdresser’s — “People do that. They go shopping. My normal life hasn’t fully stopped.” But there is some evidence that Sen’s life isn’t as normal as it once was. On Monday evening, a woman from Bankura is said to have come up to Sen before she left the salon and is believed to have told her that even after all these years, it is really difficult to procure safe drinking water in the area. Sen says that she had to ask, “So what were you doing for nine terms? Why were you voting for the same man and the same party?” Sen realises now that “politics is all about keeping your doors open. It isn’t about getting into a slanging match on one of Arnab’s shows”. The prospect, though, of seeing Moon Moon Sen debate the nuance of legislation has never seemed more appealing. Even if it’s only for the chiffon saree she wears.