My Hero - Satyajit Ray

About Satyajit Ray, so much has already been written, yet I must write about him to pay my respect to the greatest filmmaker of our time. I have known him through his films. Let me confine myself here to the Apu Trilogy — Pather Panchali, Aparajito, and Apur Sansar.

The Story of Apu

Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s Apu is so simple yet so honest. It is the story of a quintessential Bengali.

At Nischindipur, on the Ichamati River, lived Harihar and Sarbojaya with daughter Durga, son Apu, and a distant cousin of Harihar, Indir Thakrun. Harihar, essentially an artist, was a priest. Sarbojaya was a strong yet mild woman. Durga’s world was her brother and Indir Thakrun. Apu, born in a cold month, brought warmth to the family.

Optimistic Harihar waited for fortune to return so he could write poetry again. Years passed, and Apu started school. Small joys kept Durga happy. Harihar left home in search of better times. Sarbojaya waited for better times. In Durga arose a sense of family. In Apu grew a sense of wonder.

Then came Baisakh, then Kaalbaisakhi. Durga was deliriously happy, got drenched, and caught cold. The end of Durga came too soon, in her mother’s arms. Apu was bewildered and lonely. Shattered, the family left Nischindipur for Benaras. Sunsets for a new beginning.

The tale of Apu continued in the holy city. The wide-eyed boy was now a curious teenager, gaining intellectual and spiritual moorings. Individuality sprung in him, alongside poignant conflict. Gradual estrangement from the mother followed. Harihar died in the environs of the Ganges. Birds wheeled across the sky. Apu awakened, penniless. Sarbojaya returned to the city to live with her uncle.

Another phase in Apu’s journey began, not ready to play the role of his father. He wanted to go beyond village life, to quench his thirst for knowledge. His mother did not like her son’s leaving, yet he left, leaving her alone. She lived a lonely life, hoping for his return. Without him, she was a listless shadow gazing at a pond. Fireflies wove their pattern of light on a night sparkling with dancing. The mother died. Apu grieved, yet carried on.

In Calcutta, he lived in a rented room next to a railway yard. Unemployed, yet unfazed. Then came an unexpected turn: he was married to his friend’s cousin. There was love, there was honesty, there was intellectual adjustment to poverty. There was tragedy. Aparna died in childbirth. The child remained.

Apu’s world shattered. He accused his son of causing Aparna’s death. He forsook the child to lead a wanderer’s life. The boy grew wild, venting frustration by shooting at birds. Time passed. Apu returned. The son, at first distant, overwhelmed the father. Slowly, father and son became friends. Apu carried the child on his shoulders. There was hope for a new beginning.

It is the story of a wandering-wondering romantic. The story of relationships — brother and sister, son and mother, husband and wife, young and old. The story is unadorned but honest. It is a story of conscience, of finding a place in the mainstream.

Ray’s Craft

Bibhutibhushan influenced Ray deeply. Ray admitted that he learned about the nuances of village life only after reading Pather Panchali. Before that, he didn’t know rural Bengal. Hunting for locations, finding the right village, and spending time with its people transformed his outlook.

Ray once said: “Pather Panchali is one of the most filmable Bengali novels. But I would say it is not natural film material. One can be entirely true to the spirit of Bibhutibhushan, retain a large measure of his lyricism and humanism combined with a casual narrative structure and yet produce a legitimate work of cinema.”

Consider Indir Thakrun, the old aunt. She dies in the middle of the film. Apu and Durga discover her lifeless in a bamboo grove. It is their first encounter with death.

Chunibala Devi, who played Indir, was eighty. When Ray asked if she could memorize lines, she recited twenty nursery rhymes without faltering. When asked if she could endure the strain, she replied: “I think so; I’ve been conserving my energy for just such an opportunity. But I don’t have smooth skin. Will you put makeup on me?” Ray said: “No, we won’t.”

When her death scene was filmed at dawn, she lay so still that the crew thought something had happened to her. At last, she opened her eyes and asked, “Is it over? Why didn’t anyone tell me? I’m still pretending to be dead.” Chunibala Devi herself died before the accolades arrived. Yet her presence still reverberates in our minds.

Ray’s method was always adaptive. He modified his techniques with each actor, gauging their moods, abilities, and intelligence. He worked with non-professionals and welcomed their naturalness. Villagers, initially hostile, grew warm over time.

My Reflections

I was Apu’s age when I first saw Aparajito. I saw it from Apu’s perspective. I cried when his mother died. Years later, I saw it again as a father of grown-up children. My parents were no more. The film became something else.

Now my sympathies were with the mother. I cried not when she died, but when Apu left for Kolkata, when she waited for him. Her loneliness, her subtle hope that her son might return, that he might become something moved me deeply.

The happiest moment for me was when Apu deliberately missed his train to be with her. I was submerged in their joys and their griefs. That is the power of Ray. He makes us part of their lives.

The Universal Legacy

Ray was not sure of the trilogy’s success. But he believed that if he could portray universal emotions, he could cross barriers of geography and culture.

Some critics accused him of romanticizing poverty. He disagreed, saying Pather Panchali was ruthless in its depiction. On originality, he was clear: a filmmaker may borrow material, but must colour it with his own experience. Books are not written for cinema; reshaping is essential, but never beyond recognition.

Every time I watch Pather Panchali, I am amazed that it was Ray’s first film. He was then an art director in advertising, restless to find freedom in another medium. He thought: “What Indian cinema needs today is not more gloss, but more imagination, more integrity, and a more intelligent appreciation of the medium’s limitations.”

Martin Scorsese once reminisced: “I saw all three pictures in one sitting in a theatre in Manhattan. I was mesmerized. That remarkable close-up of Apu’s eye in Pather Panchali, the way the cut works with the sudden burst of Ravi Shankar’s music — for me, that was one of those precious revelatory moments you have in a movie theatre, and it had a profound and lasting effect on me as a filmmaker. … And the trilogy was only the beginning of one of the greatest bodies of work in the history of cinema. … We all need to see Satyajit Ray’s films again and again. Taken all together, they’re one of our greatest treasures.”

Ray captured what was most fragile yet most enduring: the universality of love, loss, and renewal. For me, each viewing of the trilogy is a new beginning — much like Apu, carrying his son on his shoulders, stepping once more into the unknown.