Ray Reloaded

In the fifties, Seton had been asked by the British Film Institute to identify a world-class Indian film for screening at the National Film Theatre. That was the time when Ray’s “Pather Panchali burst upon Calcutta. Rumours of its uniqueness spread like wildfire across India”. In Calcutta, “the birthplace of new ideas and, paradoxically, of museum traditions”, Seton went to Ray’s house to meet the young film-maker. He was at work, however; she met Ray’s wife Bijoya, his mother Suprabha, and the child Sandip. Later, when Ray went to meet her, she recalls the “embroidered stone-coloured shawl around his shoulders”, but also observes that “he might appear the essence of Bengal yet there was nothing provincial about him.”

Noting that Ray’s “creative preoccupations revolve persistently around family relationships”, Seton took the help of Satyajit’s uncle Subimal Ray to trace the fascinating family history of the Rays, from the earliest recorded ancestor, sixteenth-century Ramsundar Deb of Nadia, through the versifier Bholanath and his Tantric brother Loknath, all the way down to the creative Upendrakishore, the children’s magazine Sandesh (which became part of the Ray family), the rhyming genius Sukumar — and then his young son Satyajit. Seton goes on to trace Ray’s creative path, from his childhood and then the Santiniketan days when he painted under Nandalal Bose, on to the entire heady adventure of Pather Panchali, which is now, of course, the loveliest cliche in Indian cinema, from the year-long wait for the kaash-flowers to bloom again, to the new cloth that Chunibala (Indir Thakrun in the film) first begged for and then decided not to wear, for the sake of the film’s continuity.

Seton goes on to trace Ray’s creative journey film-wise and thematically, as well as in his scenarios, music and editing. She spent a great deal of time watching Ray work. On the shoot of Kanchenjunga, filmed in the Darjeeling mist, Seton tells of the moment when Ray noticed some Tibetan nomads driving a long trail of donkeys down the path. Instantly rethinking his plans for the Monisha-Bannerji sequence, Ray set the sound of the donkeybells against the moment when Bannerji wants a reply to his proposal, and Monisha suggests instead that they just walk, without speaking, for some time.

Two previously unpublished pieces, one on “Interiors in studios” and another on music, appear in this edition. The incomplete “Music” remarks, summing up, that “Ray delights in inventive adventures in whatever he turns his mind and hand to”. Indrani Majumdar’s afterword contains a set of competent, if somewhat colourless, introductions to Ray’s films after the 1977

Shatranj Ke Khilari.

Not least among the book’s several delights are the drawings from the work of Satyajit as well as Upendrakishore and Sukumar Ray. Also, a 1941 brush drawing by Satyajit of Bijoya, whom he married in 1949; glimpses from a visual scenario for a short film on music that he planned; the Goopy Bagha sketches; a letter to Bansi Chandragupta, with designs for Charulata; and Ray’s “most characteristic pose at home”, feet across the armrest of his favourite chair, ashtray and telephone within reach, books and papers everywhere, and he himself making notes on some new project or the other.

That’s how he will always be remembered.