Satyajit Ray centenary: Professor Shonku’s world no longer exists. Can he still cast a spell?
Satyajit Ray’s eccentric super-scientist charmed generations of Bengali children, once upon a time. Today’s children may be less impressed. Dhritiman Chaterji in Professor Shonku O El Dorado (2019) | SVF
My school days in the early 1980s were enriched by Satyajit Ray’s movies and children’s stories. Ray’s Trilokeshwar Shonku, an ex-professor of Scottish Church College and an eccentric super-scientist, is perhaps one of the writer’s greatest creations.
Indrani Majumdar, who translated some of the 38 Shonku stories in
The Mystery of Munroe Island and Other Stories (2015) and
Crisp tales: The beauty of Satyajit Ray’s prose lay in its lucidity×
On his 100th birth anniversary, a diehard fan and translator of Satyajit Ray’s stories recalls the man and his work So, I grew up worshipping Satyajit Ray; my friends teased me mercilessly about what they called my Rayomania We arrived at his doorstep one morning without an appointment, shaking like leaves in autumn In 2008 I received a call from the then editor-in-chief of Penguin India office, suggesting that I translate Ray’s wife Bijoya’s memoirs
Amader kotha (Manik & I)
“If you had different parents, you would have been different, too,” the author Lila Majumdar told her nephew, Satyajit Ray, while dedicating to him the biography she had written about his father a much-loved author of humorous verse and books for children. These words, penned almost 50 years ago, are telling. Because, for me at least, it all started with Ray’s father and grandfather.