In the beginning of the book Soumitra Chatterjee and His World, author Sanghamitra Chakraborty recounts a memory of the actor when he was six years old. “One day, because he was sick, Soumitra could not go to school. His elder brother Sambit returned from school earlier than scheduled. Their mother, Ashalata, asked Sambit the reason. Here is how Soumitra remembered that moment: ‘Rabindranath Tagore is dead, so our headmaster announced a holiday,’ Dada said flatly.”
Ashalata was an ardent admirer of Tagore. Like his mother, later in life, Soumitra worshipped Tagore as a sage, prophet, great artist, and social reformer. An ardent bibliophile, Soumitra read Pather Panchali by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay when he was a teenager. Later, he wrote, ‘I had no idea then that playing the role of the grown-up Apu [protagonist of Pather Panchali] would be the birth of my acting career.’
But it was not always an idyllic life. He saw some tragedies firsthand. During the Bengal Famine of 1943, in which 30 lakh people died, Soumitra recalled the unbearable stench of dead bodies piling up on the streets in Krishnanagar.
As he grew up and got a job at All India Radio, he was always keen to embark on an acting career. His life changed when, one day, while recuperating at home from chickenpox, Satyajit Ray’s assistant Subir Hazra told him the maestro wanted to meet him.
When Soumitra stepped into Ray’s house, the latter said, ‘There you are; please come in. But everything seems fine. I don’t see any marks on your face. Someone was saying you had developed pockmarks. This is nothing. It should be fine.’
The result: Soumitra was cast as the lead in Apur Sansar.
Sanghamitra delves at length into the relationship between Soumitra and Satyajit Ray, which changed the young actor’s life completely. Ray’s son Sandip spoke about the ‘instant chemistry’ between his father and Soumitra. ‘Even before Baba spoke, Soumitra Kaku knew what he wanted,’ said Sandip. ‘You rarely see this kind of understanding between a director and an actor.’
Sanghamitra also writes at length on one of Ray’s greatest films, Charulata (1964), and the roles played by Soumitra and Madhabi Mukherjee.
In the end, Soumitra and Ray worked on many films together, including Kapurush, Aranyer Din Ratri, and Asani Sanket. ‘The fun in working with him [Ray] was that he gave you immense freedom,’ said Soumitra. ‘And when you took the initiative, he would come up with a suggestion that would take it to the next level.’
Interestingly, in the famous memory card game scene in Aranyer Din Ratri, Ray placed the camera in the middle of the group that sat in a circle on a sheet on the ground in Palamau. The actors included Soumitra Chatterjee, Sharmila Tagore, Kaberi Bose, Subhendu Chatterjee, Samit Bhanja, and Robi Ghosh.
As Sanghamitra writes, ‘Though his close-ups, with the roving camera, paused on each face, Ray superbly captured their mental landscape and the emerging group dynamics.’ Later, Sharmila said that it was so hot and the shooting had to be completed within an hour. This tie-up of Soumitra with Ray lasted from 1959 to 1992, when Ray passed away on April 23, at the age of 70.
This is an extensively written book. Undoubtedly, a lot of research has been done. Sanghamitra interviewed around 75 people, apart from family members. What was a blow to the author was the star’s unexpected death because of lung complications from Covid on November 15, 2020, at the age of 85.
This book is a valuable addition to the literature of films. For fans of Soumitra, this is a must-read. Go for it.