The romance between Bengali actor Debleena Sen and filmmaker Ashish Avikunthak showcases love's ability to overcome barriers. Meeting on a film set, their connection deepened despite societal dissent over their 17-year age gap. Today, their marriage stands as a testament to love's triumph over judgment and adversity.
THERE IS A COMMON EXPRESSION, ‘age is just a number.’ Some believe in this saying in the context of love, while others are taken aback and argue about it. There is a recurring question surrounding this popular phrase: can the age gap between lovers be overlooked if it is true love? In India, people still have regular discourse about subjects such as late marriages, older lovers, and second marriages. Even in these times, does love always prevail?
Some stories make one believe in love, and the story of Bengali actor Debleena Sen and director Ashish Avikunthak is nothing short of an epic romance. Both Debleena and Ashish’s story began with the magic of cinema, and that too Bengali cinema. An epic romance or a story that screams pure love, overlooking all other factors. Debleena and Ashish have a 17-year age gap, and today, they are living happily ever after.
Debleena Sen is a Bengali actor and model who has worked in several critically acclaimed films, such as Dispassionate Love and Ghost of the Golden Groves. Her husband, Ashish Avikunthak, is a renowned Bengali avant-garde filmmaker known for Dispassionate Love, Ghost of the Golden Groves, Devastated, among other projects. Both Debleena and Ashish have worked with each other in the past. The couple first met in 2013, and years later, they fell in love with each other, irrespective of their age difference.
Debleena Sen shared their meet-cute story in a conversation with SheThePeople. It was in 2013 when she met Ashish for the first time after being cast as an actor in one of his films. During this time, she found out that Ashish was going through a rough patch as he was getting a divorce. Debleena interacted with his daughter, Iravati, and was one of the first people in the family with whom she formed a close connection.
The film set brought Debleena and Ashish closer, and the magic of cinema mirrored itself in real life as well. One day, Debleena confessed how she felt about Ashish. Debleena told SheThePeople that she knew the feeling was mutual between them and saw how Ashish immediately became shy. Their relationship was indeed complicated from the beginning, with Ashish going through a divorce and Debleena being an actor in his movie. On top of that, their 17-year age gap drew dissent from society. She wanted to give the relationship a chance to work out, and later, the couple started dating.
Debleena was old-school, while Ashish was also a romantic. She once asked him to write her love letters, something Ashish started doing immediately afterwards. Two years later, Ashish visited her in 2015, and Debleena told her mother about him as well. She recalled her mother asking her to be careful and warning her about what society would say about her relationship with a man older than her. Their relationship hit a rough patch when they stopped speaking to each other for some time in 2016. This happened after Debleena asked Ashish for commitment.
Their destiny had other plans for them. A year later, the couple moved in together and started living together. It was Debleena, Ashish and Iravati. Ashish proposed to Debleena in 2017, and they later got married. Today, they have become an example of how love transcends all rationality. Debleena says that Ashish still writes her letters when he is away. Her bond with Iravati only grew stronger, and she became not an evil stepmother, but a good friend.
Talking about Ashish Avikunthak, apart from being a filmmaker, he is a film theorist and archaeologist who was born in Madhya Pradesh but raised in Kolkata, West Bengal. He has decades of experience in filmmaking, with much of his work being based on religion, philosophy, and history. As per some reports, his journey as a filmmaker began with short films that he made between 1995 and 2010. His most recent feature film is The Killing of Meghnad, released in 2026. The film is adapted from a 1861 blank-verse poem by Bengali writer Michael Madhusudan Dutt.
RH/VS/HP
(Edited by Harsh Pandey)
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