Satyajit Rai is one of the greatest thinkers who gave birth to modern India. Even after three decades of the great filmmaker’s passing away, incomparable writings continue to emerge from his writing room. Edited by Rai’s son Sandeep Rai Satyajith Ray: Micellany on life, Cinema, people & Much more The book shines through with genius
ThisIn Kolkata, when the late Peter Brook wandered through the Mahabharata, especially our little Kerala, with his chief collaborator Zhang Cloud Career, in search of a way to dramatize the Mahabharata, he met Satyajit Ray. The story of that struggle has been written like a screenplay for Luis Buñuel. About meeting our protagonist: ‘Kolkata. Meeting with Satyajit Rai. We saw him coming from a distance to pick us up from the hotel. Tall, handsome, towering in the crowd. “He speaks English very well,” said Peter.
Two of the Satyajit Rai photographs I have, including Nimai Ghosh’s, show that ‘Meduradirghakayan’ in particular. One is the Gopuram figure in the crowd, like a career telling, of Rai walking down the street, taken by Nimai Ghosh, Rai’s ‘biographical photographer’. Another, in front of Padmanabhapuram Palace (1983). Who took it? Adoor Gopalakrishnan?
I have written this as a foreword to introduce the book edited by Rai’s son Sandeep Rai titled Satyajit Rai Palavaka Jeorte, Cinema, People, and Ainya Nayam, published as part of the ‘Penguin Rai Library’, because I enjoyed reading an instance of Rai writing about his height in this book. When he landed in the big city after accepting an invitation to be a jury in the story section of the Berlin Film Festival, he met Herbert Luft, who was in charge of looking after the guests. “One of the first things I asked him was his height. He said exactly one meter ninety nine centimeters. That is, five centimeters more than me.” (Wikipedia and some other documents estimate Rai’s height as 1.93 meters. It should be corrected as it is not Rai himself: 1.94 meters).
It’s more convenient to ask what areas Rai, primarily a filmmaker, didn’t dabble in (this guy used to say when his friends reprimanded him for smoking cigarettes like a Godard character that it wasn’t a packet designed by Rai, and it was disrespectful to avoid it). This is a book in which Rai can be seen in many different ways, like in a kaleidoscope. We are slowly beginning to understand that anything that bears his stamp is valuable, not just the works he has labored over to understand an artist. With more variety than the subtitle suggests, the director’s perspective, film reviews, personal notes, lectures, reminiscences, enjoyments, letters, sketches, photographs, greetings, designed posters, sketches, sketches, screenplay sketches, manuscripts, LPs. The book is overflowing with all the fun notes written on the rules of record.
In this ‘Palavaka’ you will find that Satyajit Rai explained the ‘secrets’ of his sargakarma in incidental notes rather than in the articles in the famous film books. ‘Satyajit Rai Film Festival; In the foreword to his memoir ‘Second Decade’, Rai writes: ‘Critics have often criticized my ‘pachatullanmat’ from one theme to another and from one branch to another. I mean, they don’t mind putting me under a label if it’s on a main theme, in an easily recognizable style… I can justify myself in this regard. This diversity is part of my personality. Behind each image there are very clear decisions… In other words, I am interested in the exploration and expansion of arable land, not monoculture in a field.’
Although Rai is mostly serious in his film essays, he is extremely goose-friendly in his casual notes, a goose that scatters when ‘enduring’. A reply to the criticism that some characters in the novel have been left out in Aparajito: ‘Some’ is an understatement. I have omitted 237 characters to be precise. If one character is given one minute each, the film will be almost four hours long. Another: ‘An eminent critic has written that Apu’s lamentation when his mother died was completely unnecessary and there was no such occasion in the novel. True, the book does not say that Apu spoke with his tongue, ate with his hands, walked with his feet…’
Three years after the release of Pather Panjali (1955), Rai reflects on his evolution as a filmmaker: ”I was deeply moved by the writings of directors like Chaplin, de Sica, Rezwar, Clair, Pudovkin and Eisenstein. Renard’s The Southerner has been a major influence in shaping Pather Panjali. Apart from Chaplin, De Zica is the greatest living director. He is unique. His presence is so ingrained in his own films. It is appropriate to distinguish him from other directors. Bicycle Thieves is a role model for all directors.’
The writings in this will also help in some realizations. A ‘myth’ was created that Satyajit Rai and Ritwik Ghatta were polar opposites and not personally comfortable. Could it have been necessary for a conscious ‘dissociation’? That it was Rai who recommended Ghatak to Indira Gandhi to head the Pune Film Institute, or that Rai appreciated Ghatak’s writings (‘Ritvik is one of the rare original film talents this country has produced. As a creator of intense images in epic style, there is virtually no one to rival him in Indian cinema.’) is conveniently forgotten. Rai, who came to see Ghatak for the last time, was even cursed with ‘traitor, you are the one who killed Ritvik da’. It is the outcome of history. The collection contains a letter written by Rai to the documentary maker defending the decision of the Censor Board to deny screening permission to Ghatak’s documentary film Amar Lenin. Not only that letter, but also Ghatak’s brilliant foreword to his book Cinema and Me.
The only time Rai came down to South India was the making of the documentary Bala. Bala means Balasaraswati, the famous dancer. Even though Bala is not Rai’s best documentary, the documentary is the confluence of two creative minds. In the rather long note of ‘Bala’, Rai captures many heartwarming and lighthearted moments. Rai shares his sadness at not being able to film Bala in the spring of their dance charm. Bala was shot at the age of 58. Rai writes about Bala’s long fingers dancing as he spoke. After reading this book cover to cover, I was no longer just a reader. Copies of reports, interviews, photographs etc. in my collection relating to Rai’s visit to Thiruvananthapuram were sent to the Satyajit Rai Archives in Kolkata. Ramayana month, but Annarakanna too!
Content Highlights: Satyajith Ray: Micellany on life, Cinema, people & Much more
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