A sum­mer with Satya­jit Ray

Satya­jit Ray is not miss­ing from world cinema’s his­to­ry books, but as an Indi­an and a stu­dent of the arts, it is almost com­i­cal for me to admit that I had nev­er engaged with his cin­e­ma before this sum­mer. This was for many rea­sons, none good enough, except maybe one that betrays a sense of envy – I am not Bengali.

In June, a sum­mer break from my post-grad­u­ate degree was fast approach­ing. A stu­dent of per­for­mance and soci­ety, liv­ing away from home for the first time in my 21 years of life, in one of the busiest and most hap­pen­ing cul­tur­al cap­i­tals of the world, I decid­ed to immerse myself in the city’s offer­ings. There is no feel­ing that match­es the one you get when you walk out of the Nation­al The­atre after enjoy­ing a par­tic­u­lar­ly bril­liant play all by your­self, onto the South­bank as the sun sets, and you realise you real­ly are in London. 

It was dur­ing one of these vis­its that I noticed a big orange bill­board next to the BFI entrance, with the face of a young Sha­bana Azmi plas­tered over it – one of my favourite per­form­ers, and a dar­ling of alter­nate Indi­an cin­e­ma. The words ​‘Satya­jit Ray,’ were writ­ten above her. I quick­ly took a pic­ture to send to my fel­low fans back home. 

I knew then and there, that if there was ever a right time to get into Ray, it was now. On the British Film Institute’s web­site, I found a sea­son of Satya­jit Ray films curat­ed by Sangee­ta Dut­ta, play­ing well into August. It was the the­mat­ic cura­tion of ​‘The Big City’ that secured my inter­est in final­ly tack­ling Ray. Titles like Mahana­gar (The Big City) and Seemabad­dha (Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed) were the lures but it was Teen Kanya and the Apu Tril­o­gy that offi­cial­ly made me a Ray devotee.

At the time that I was grow­ing up in India, there was not much access to sub­ti­tled region­al films for wider audi­ences, and if a dubbed ver­sion were to be made avail­able, I would run in the oth­er direc­tion. I stat­ed ear­li­er that I find my illit­er­a­cy in Ray’s cin­e­ma ​‘com­i­cal’, because, by the time I was watch­ing films in lan­guages I did not speak, I was almost intim­i­dat­ed by the idea of final­ly watch­ing Ray’s work. 

All the great and won­der­ful things I’d learned about his place in the world of cin­e­ma made me unsure of whether I would actu­al­ly be a ​‘good audi­ence’ for his ​‘type of cin­e­ma.’ I had enough cinephile and film­mak­er friends that it felt eas­i­er to say I hadn’t watched his work, rather than poten­tial­ly admit I didn’t get it. This is fun­ny to me now because – I have found his films to be my biggest source of com­fort for the entire­ty of this hot, list­less time in London.

The first Ray fea­ture film I watched was Pather Pan­chali (The Song of the Lit­tle Road) at the begin­ning of July. From the sim­plic­i­ty of its depic­tions to the seeds of minute details plant­ed in the first part of this tril­o­gy, every­thing was a pow­er­ful reminder of a home that exists not in a place but in the past. The inno­cence and mis­chief of ear­ly child­hood are Ray’s play­things, but so are the more heavy moments of grief and tragedy. 

At no point in his films are any char­ac­ters sep­a­rat­ed from the sto­ry of the world at large, no mat­ter their place in it, and that is pre­cise­ly the mes­sage Ray leaves his audi­ences with. The cycles of life and death, love and grief, vic­to­ries and loss­es are their own char­ac­ters in his sto­ries, giv­en the time and space to play out an intri­cate visu­al chore­og­ra­phy on screen, ele­vat­ed by Pan­dit Ravi Shankar’s musi­cal contributions. 

While Pather Pan­chali is an hon­est, and evoca­tive first act about roots and what mem­o­ry and nos­tal­gia tru­ly con­sti­tute, the sec­ond part Apara­ji­to (The Unvan­quished) is a tale of being faced with life’s ele­ments that take us away from this, focus­ing instead on time, ambi­tion, and all the nov­el real­i­sa­tions that come with ques­tion­ing one’s iden­ti­ty and place in the world, final­ly beyond the con­fines of the home one has always known.

Inevitably Apara­ji­to deals with the grief of los­ing all exter­nal ties to the home – first in the form of migra­tion, and then in the form of his last remain­ing parent’s death for Apu. Karuna Banerjee’s Sar­bo­jaya, Apu’s moth­er, is a raw and refresh­ing por­tray­al of moth­er­hood, unapolo­getic in its hardships.

At the time of the sec­ond installment’s release, it was not well-received amongst the Ben­gali mid­dle class­es. The rea­son for which even Ray acknowl­edged was the pop­u­lar­i­ty of films like Moth­er India, which glo­ri­fied moth­er­hood as the ulti­mate sac­ri­fi­cial ide­al of super­hu­man tol­er­ance and flaw­less devo­tion. A real­is­tic por­tray­al of a moth­er-child rela­tion­ship fraught with fric­tion was not exact­ly wel­come with audi­ences pop­u­lat­ing cin­e­mas for easy escapism. But that was pre­cise­ly why I found it refresh­ing – because such authen­tic por­tray­als are still rare occur­rences in Indi­an Cinema. 

Yet it was the last act in the saga, Apur Sansar (The World of Apu) that achieved what most finales in any medi­um fail to achieve – a res­o­lu­tion that doesn’t shy away from admit­ting that cli­mac­tic moments are only a junc­ture. The film demon­strates that there are pre­cious, fleet­ing moments of life that hold immense val­ue, but does not con­tain any roman­ti­cised notions of improb­a­ble ever­last­ing sat­is­fac­tion. Instead, Apur Sansar is an acknowl­edge­ment of suf­fi­cient con­tent­ment being found in an array of such moments.

Mahana­gar lit­er­al­ly trans­lates as ​‘The Big City,’ and it deals bril­liant­ly with this theme in the con­text of fam­i­ly, moral­i­ty, and a woman’s affir­ma­tion of her self­hood. But what stood out for me in Apur Sansar’s depic­tion of every­day met­ro­pol­i­tan life was the way in which an unan­chored youth floats about life itself, know­ing his way and los­ing it some­times. The shots of Apu walk­ing around the city, and the motifs that mark his path home to his rent­ed room, are all such beau­ti­ful trib­utes to the rhythms of big city life. When his neigh­bour asks him at the begin­ning of the last film why he receives no mail, it is a heart­break­ing moment as the audi­ence remem­bers the hap­pen­ings of the pre­vi­ous two films, and in a flash we spot that remem­brance in Apu’s demeanour. Then, just as quick­ly, he moves on. 

This is only one of the many ways in which Ray made these films about no one per­son in par­tic­u­lar, but about every­one. The entire­ty of Pather Pan­chali and Apara­ji­to cul­mi­nates in the actions and choic­es the pro­tag­o­nist makes through­out Apur Sansar. And it is a sto­ry about exact­ly that– the respon­si­bil­i­ty of mak­ing the choic­es we do make. This hit home in more than one way, not least in a par­tic­u­lar scene of ban­ter between Apu and his dear friend Pulu, on the rail­way tracks they cross at night to go back to Apu’s rent­ed room in the city. Apu’s pas­sion for writ­ing and a sense of his own jour­ney is evi­dent. The dis­cus­sion between the two friends about whether one has to expe­ri­ence love to write about it, or whether imag­i­na­tion can suf­fice in such an endeav­our, resem­bled a con­ver­sa­tion I had had with a fel­low cre­ative friend myself. 

It is also Ray’s only film where he has explored romance in his own pen­chant cin­e­mat­ic lan­guage of sub­tle­ty and depth, Soumi­tra Chat­ter­jee and Sharmi­la Tagore being absolute delights to wit­ness as Apu and Aparna. Keep­ing in mind how wary he was of using labels with his own idol, Jean Renoir, Ray has been termed a true human­ist, and this is most obvi­ous once you dive into his work. The Apu tril­o­gy is more than just a com­ing-of-age saga exe­cut­ed well – it is an essen­tial query into the nature of human exis­tence and what gives it meaning.

There is a very spe­cial rasa (mean­ing nec­tar or flavour) – one that can only be described as a flavour of joy – in wit­ness­ing Ray’s mas­tery in an actu­al cin­e­ma with oth­er peo­ple around to share it with, strangers or oth­er­wise. I doubt I will ever again expe­ri­ence the kind of last­ing gig­gles, bemused laughs, audi­ble gasps and strik­ing silences that accom­pa­ny the Apu Tril­o­gy in the BFI. It is an expe­ri­ence that reminds you of the pow­er of the purest kind of cin­e­mat­ic sto­ry­telling and makes you a bet­ter per­son for hav­ing expe­ri­enced it.

When my screen­ing of Apur Sansar con­clud­ed there was a round of applause in the cin­e­ma direct­ed towards some­thing inef­fa­ble. This was a film, after all, not a live pro­duc­tion; not even a pre­mière or fes­ti­val screen­ing where any­one from the cre­ative team was present in the hall to gath­er appre­ci­a­tion. In the end, I sup­pose what we felt was the alive­ness of Ray’s films – it is as if you can smell the wild, rus­tic breeze of Ben­gal, and feel its cool­ness on your face, attest­ing to the mag­ic Satya­jit Ray has crafted.

The next half of the BFI’s Satya­jit Ray sea­son runs through August 2022.