Retrieving lost images

Satyajit Ray's controversial documentary Sikkim 1971, banned by the union government and subsequently lost sight of, has at last been foun...

Satyajit Ray8217;s controversial documentary Sikkim 1971, banned by the union government and subsequently lost sight of, has at last been found safe in the British Film Institute BFI after thirty-two long years. Sikkim, about the small Himalayan princely state north of Darjeeling was initially commissioned by the Chogyal of Sikkim and his then wife, an American, Hope Cook. The film became the property of the Indian government after it took over Sikkim in 1975.

But unfortunately the documentary which the great Ray made in his own way, defying the official propaganda, vanished mysteriously from the country after it was made. It had raised many eyebrows in the then Indian bureaucrats and the ruler Chogyal as it showed a party with a senior bureaucrat shot in a 8216;not very flattering way8217;. The shot had provoked Chogyal to cry out 8216;8216;That8217;s wicked! That8217;s wicked8217;8217;, and Ray rightly apprehended that this would be one of the parts that would never make it to the finished version. Besides, the film shows Sikkim as a monarchy, with shots of people prostrating before the Chogyal.

Says Sandip Ray, son of Satyajit Ray: 8216;8216;We were confident of its existence somewhere in USA since Hope Cook deposited its print to a US university. We are delighted to learn now that a print of Sikkim has been preserved in the BFI and found in very good shape8217;8217;.

Dilip Basu, founder member of Ray Society, an international body for promotion, preservation and restoration of Ray8217;s work, who himself saw the screening of the rare film at the BFI recently told this critic: 8216;8216;The print is so good that you feel the film has been made yesterday. There is a little loss of resolution, but the film has superb quality and its tone is so touching and vibrant8217;8217;. He hoped to acquire a copy of the film for the Ray Society shortly.

It may be mentioned Ray himself harboured tremendous scepticism about the documentary as he was, he noted once in a conversation, compelled to make about forty per cent of the film into something 8216;bureaucratic with statistical information8217; and a disproportionate stress on the Sikkimese population instead of on the Nepalese as would have been appropriate given the latter8217;s preponderance in the state.

The vignettes of the film that captured the raw life of Sikkim, beginning with a shot of a parallel ropeway with two carriages advancing towards each other, prompted Ray to note: 8216;8216;While they8217;re reaching this point, I cut to a shot of a piece of telegraph wire. It8217;s raining and there are two drops of rain approaching on a downward curve. It8217;s a very poetic seven minutes. And the end is so lively, very optimistic, with children, happy, laughing, smoking, singing. The whole thing builds up into a paean of praise for the place8217;8217;.

Sikkim, as it stands now, is a film of sixty minutes duration with Ray8217;s vision blended into a paean of praise for the place and the people. Would the Indian government, always passive on the cultural front and losing our films one after another to foreign countries, wake up to retrieve this great work of Ray and make it our proud national property?