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New Indian Express

From Ray's alter ego to cultural icon

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.