The golden fortress

How a film can have so much appeal? I can’t remember how many times I have seen Sonar Kella (the golden fortress), especially after moving to Jaipur. Is it because Sonar Kella is in Jaisalmer, Jaisalmer is in Rajasthan, and I have been living in Jaipur for the past 3 decades?

The movie is about the adventures of a seven-year-old boy. The boy can remember his past life and that worries his parents. The boy presumably lived in Rajasthan hundreds of years ago. He talks about a golden fortress where he lived with his parents.

Two seasoned criminals learn about it and kidnap him, in the hope that the boy will lead them to the treasure. Enters Feluda into the scene, engaged by the boy’s father to disengage his son from the clutches of the criminals. There is Feluda, there is his assistant Topse, there is the reincarnation expert, there are criminals, and there is exquisite Rajasthan.

Santosh Dutta as ‘Jatau’ enters the film at Kanpur railway station, my favourite station? This scene so beautifully captures the essence of Jatayu’s character in the film.

Every time we have visited Nahargarh Fort we looked at it with new eyes. Whenever we visited Jaisalmer we visited the Circuit house at Jodhpur, as if someone was going to tell us where Mukul concealed the gold. The mystery was revealed in the beginning but that did not lessen any of the story's adventure.

This masterpiece is a complete entertainer and our family favourite. The house we live in Jaipur is known as Pokhran House.

Rajasthan is one of Satyajit Ray’s favourite destinations. He had been to Rajasthan six times. From a young age, Rajasthan’s princely tales, the land of desert and forest and mountain and marble palaces fascinated him.

Writes Ray, “I doubt if I’d ever got to know Rajasthan well if I hadn’t decided to become a filmmaker. As a student of painting in Santiniketan, I had already discovered the exquisite world of Rajput miniatures, and realized that it wasn’t just the martial arts that the Rajputs excelled in.” He then writes, “Setting off from Jaipur by train and heading west, one notices how the land dips and rises by turn, how the wheat fields give way to scrubland, and the lust green to tawny ruggedness. At every halt of the journey, one observes the people. A very special breed, the men, proud in their whiskers and their turbans, and their tunics flared at the waist.”

“And music, too. The strangely beautiful bowed instrument with a tinkling bell, the ravanhatta, that the man in the blue tunic played all along the way as we rode on a caparisoned elephant up the ramp to the Amber Palace.”

We come to a city to live. We make it our own. And then one day we leave it. We follow the law of living and leaving.