Latest news with #SoumitraChatterjeeandHisWorld
New Indian Express
29-06-2025
- Entertainment
- 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.
Indian Express
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Soumitra Chatterjee is a legend, by no means forgotten
I was a child when I witnessed the phenomenon known as Soumitra Chatterjee by watching his movies. It has remained a mystery to me how or why he was not that well-known outside Bengal, especially in today's world dominated by Bollywood stars. Sanghamitra Chakraborty's detailed and well-researched biography, Soumitra Chatterjee and His World, explores this, and like the eponymous character of Feluda, once played by the actor, tries to solve this mystery. Chakraborty went through the actor's writings — essays, diaries, letters, plays and poetry — and his interviews, as well as interviewed his children, and the people who knew him, to systematically put together his life story. As she mentions in the Introduction chapter, she was inspired by the message that actor-director Sisir Bhadhuri, one of Chatterjee's mentors, had told him: 'Read your lines like a detective'. The book starts with Chatterjee's birth in a north Calcutta home to a mother who is obsessed with Rabindranath Tagore, which influences Chatterjee's interest in Tagore and Bengali literature. As he wrote, 'My own heart and mind, in some way, have also been shaped by him.' The family moved to Krishnanagar later, and Chatterjee was entranced by the writing of his grandfather, Lalit Kumar, and the tales of his uncle and grandfather being jailed, and met various freedom fighters who would drop into their home. This made the young boy crave adventure and he got the acting bug at a young age. After matriculation, Chatterjee moved back to Calcutta. He became the ringleader of a group of students and frequently visited the bookshops on College Street as well as the Coffee House. Reading, meeting with friends, debating and reciting poetry, he soon became a part of a vibrant group of like-minded people, one of whom took him to watch the play Alamgir. That play and its producer and director Bhaduri inspired him to the extent that Chatterjee started learning the theory of theatre as well. It was in the mid-1950s that he started a theatre group, Chhayanot, and started acting in plays, including in one that Bhaduri staged Prafulla. He also worked at All India Radio and during that period auditioned for a lead in a Bengali film,only to be rejected. Despite the rejection, Chatterjee didn't give up and when a friend asked him if he wanted to audition for the role of Apu in Aparajito (1956), the sequel to Pather Panchali (1955), Soumitra agreed to meet with the director, Satyajit Ray. Though he was again not chosen for that role, that meeting was pivotal because the legendary filmmaker remembered him and did eventually cast him for Apur Sansar (1959), changing the course of his life. Apur Sansar was a box-office hit and generated rave reviews for its actors. Chatterjee had by then started getting recognised on the streets and in Coffee House, a sure sign of being a celebrity! He went on to collaborate with Ray on many other memorable movies, including Devi (1960), Samapti (1961), Kapurush (1965), Charulata (1964), Ghare Baire (1984), to name a few. The later sections of the book describe Chatterjee's breakthrough into commercial cinema through Jhinder Bondi (1961), his forays into a diverse roles with parallel cinema directors and his return to the theatre. He was steadfast in wanting to stay in Kolkata, and thus, the city is sometimes as much a character in this book as the actor. He stayed resilient and creative until the end. In fact, in 2020, seven of his new films were released. He remained an icon of Bengali culture and that is why there was an outpouring of grief and obituaries at a global scale on his demise in November 2020. Soumitra Chatterjee and His World is a delight to read for cinema and history lovers. There were many aspects of his life that had stayed unknown, and reading this book gave me insight into those as well as a world that is fast-disappearing, and therefore must be remembered.
