Surprised, confused with the title of this piece, are you? Well, it refers to Satyajit Ray and his film, "Pather Panchali", which celebrates that sunshine period of our life, that is, childhood. Actually, personally i love "Apur Sansar" more, not to forget many more of his other films. I shall, may be, talk about "Apur Sansar" on May 2, the date of the maestro's birth anniversary, and, at least currently, the birthday of Yours Truly! With Corona cudgeling life hard again, let us all live long and strong!!
April 23 was Ray's death anniversary. Hence this tribute! Why did I choose "Pather Panchali"? Well, it was the first film ever from India to get global recognition. Indeed it is sheer poetry on celluloid. Every frame in that film can inspire a chapter, if not a book. Much debated, Nargis called it "selling India's poverty abroad", for instance, this great film shows us the real India, or Bharat, if you wish to have it that way.
Well, actually, i have chosen to talk about this film for a very personal reason as well. During my mid-teens, i made Aai watch with me all sorts of great films. More about this theme some time later. "Pather Panchali" was the first ever among these.
Aai loved it absolutely. Yet again the reason was extremely personal, and truly cute. Subir Banerjee who enacted the young Apu looked rather like Raju in many scenes, and absolutely like Sanju in practically every scene. Anyways, as young boys, as if they were twins, they did look like each other's carbon copy.
She used to absolutely adore a particular scene, and the still shot thereof, mostly used in the publicity material. It consisted of Durga and Sarbojaya getting Apu ready for the school. With his hair parted, Sarbojaya looks at Apu with pure love and sheer adoration. Aai loved the scene, and remembered it forever. Of course, all of us were terribly innocent, nay, naive, then. Hence the feminist issue of a sister's role, patriarchally defined, kind of questions never emerged.
With a honest, sincere, poetry obsessed husband who is never worldly wise, she must have found identifying with Sarbojaya very easy. Though Indiran Thakur was mostly not a member of family those days, i suppose, many scenes in that great film are very close to Indian hearts from the middle class.
I have discussed the film in many film workshops which, at times, as in the HCU Eng Dept, i initiated and led, etc etc etc.The film is a film buff's Bhagwadgeeta, Bible, Guru Grantha Sahib, and every other sacred scripture, all rolled in to one. Even when you watch it for the hundredth time, THE nth time, every shot, each frame such as the train sequence energises you eternally.
Beautiful indeed is the scene, for example, when Apu and Durga follow the sweetmeat seller, their undulating reflections, the long-legged fly skirting on the water whom one repeatedly met, once in my M.A. Yeats classroom, and yet again while teaching Ramanujan.
Durga's tragic death never fails to move, not even the hardest heart. In the HCU workshop i mentioned earlier, one of the foreign students who attended it was so deeply touched that he vehemently denied my critique of the unmistakable sentimentality of the Durga episodes, especially her rather filmy death.
Well, the film indeed is about the simple but strong bonds that string our existences together as the scene when Sarbojaya tells Harihar of Durga's death proves. Well, i can go on and on, discussing, for example, how this celebration of childhood is also about its end. Before the rays of readers' patience dim, however, it is better to stop, right?
Pratima@ i am terribly busy with all sorts of assignments lined up, and yet I think i would make time to watch "Pather Panchali" yet again!
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