Moumita Chaudhuri | | Published 16.05.21, 02:05 AM
The thought occurred to many on the day of the 2021 Bengal Assembly election results and not for no reason. This year, May 2 also marked the centenary year of Satyajit Ray director, composer, writer, artist. Bangali intellectual. As the leads trended that day, the thought also occurred that the BJP had shown no interest in Ray. Why so? After all, in the run-up to the Assembly elections, the saffron party had tried to appropriate and reinterpret several Bengali icons: Vivekananda, Vidyasagar, Bankimchandra, Rabindranath, Subhas Chandra Bose. It is curious that despite the fact that this is a milestone year for Ray, there was not a single saffron spin on him or his works. Yes, information and broadcasting minister Prakash Javadekar announced a national level film award after Ray, but that was all.
There’s been no escaping
pishi and
pishi not so much
bhaipo remains one of the few surviving sentinels guarding the citadel of a pluralist Bengal. Those at Bengal’s doors
pishi’s detractors think otherwise: the pair, they allege, represents nepotism and corruption that they would get rid of with a few lusty blows of their (majoritarian) broom.
The depravity of politics Bengal’s politics is not an exception is such that it often forces viewers to turn their gaze elsewhere: towards, say, a far more luminous
pishi-bhaipo pairing. Leela Majumdar, a cousin of Sukumar Ray, was Satyajit Ray’s
Satyajit Ray: A secret bond with children
On the Birth Centenary Year of Satyajit Ray, the maestro’s work will be revisited again and again by admirers and critics. Among others, an area worth exploring is how the creative genius portrayed, and treated, children in his films and stories, writes Shoma A. Chatterji
Who can ever forget that beautiful B&W visual of little Apu and his sari-clad sister Durga running through the white kaash flowering fields to see the train? Or, Apu inspecting his proud image in a mirror sporting a hand-made paper crown and a moustache, in Satyajit Ray’s debut film Pather Panchali?
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