The lessons of “diversity and inclusiveness” that Jadavpur University taught her helped her become the person she wanted to be, said Anasuya Sengupta.

The former student of JU’s English department bagged the best actress award in the Un Certain Regard category at the Cannes Film Festival last month for her performance in Bulgarian director Constantin Bojanov’s The Shameless.

She was back on campus on Thursday for a felicitation to celebrate her feat.

Basking in her Cannes glory, she heard her teachers fondly remember how she often spent more time outside class than inside.

“As the years went on, it became so clear to me that the person that I wanted to be, that I started becoming, happened here on this campus, in that department, watching the people around me, the professors that we had, the lessons that we learnt inside the classroom,” she said in her address in the KP Basu Hall on the campus.

“It was at Jadavpur that I first encountered and started understanding true diversity, the inclusiveness, that the people with different ideas and ideologies can coexist happily and (that) it makes for a more enriched society. I therefore owe in a big way to this university and to the department. They have helped me grow as a person. I think I am in good stead.”

The girl from Lake Gardens said her time in JU had not only reshaped her professional journey but her “entire journey”.

“Jadavpur University English department encouraged freedom, free thought, the revolutionary spirit. The liberal atmosphere that I got from the teachers has helped me grow,” said Anasuya.

She dabbled with theatre for some time before shifting to Mumbai in 2013.

Several teachers at the felicitation said Anasuya would spend much of her time outside the classroom, sitting on the “ledge” on the department’s balcony.

After the programme, Anasuya was exactly there. “This is where it all happened,” she said.

Her affair with the ledge and time spent outside the classroom also featured in her address.

“I wish I could spend a little more time inside the classroom.... That is something I realised when I graduated. But that’s the way with the English department of JU. I recall playing 29 (a game of cards) on the ledge and inside the classroom,” Anasuya said.

In The Shameless, Anasuya plays Renuka, a vagabond seeking refuge in a sex workers’ community having fled a brothel after being charged with a police officer’s murder.

On Thursday, Anasuya was accompanied by her mother Mitali Sengupta, also an alumna of JU’s English department.

Mitali Sengupta, who graduated in 1977, is a retired teacher of La Martiniere for Girls.

“Anasuya has always been unconventional. She has been very passionate about what she is going to pursue. The kind of atmosphere that she got in JU has helped her in this pursuit,” the mother told Metro.

The head of the English department, Manojit Mandal, vice-chancellor Bhaskar Gupta and pro-VC Amitava Datta were present at the felicitation.

The pro-VC requested Anasuya to become the brand ambassador of the university’s alumni cell.