An open letter to Soumitra Chatterjee

Soumitra Babu,

I was driving back home after a long and tiring day when the phone beeped. A friend of mine sneaked in a news in my mobile – “Soumitra Babu has been conferred the Dada Shaheb Phalke Award for his life time contribution to Indian cinema”. My heart leaped. I met you last week and I never could imagine life has such a surprise in store. I am supposed to meet you soon for the project that I have undertaken. What will I tell you then? I know you don’t have much faith in the award process and have refused Padmasree a couple of times before. Do you care for a Dada Shaheb Phalke? You may, I guess. After all, any star of the screen yearns for posterity. Almost 25 memorable films apart, awards of highest degrees do matter. Being a professional that you are, I guess you may probably brush aside and wake up tomorrow since tomorrow is always a different day.

As I sit in my quiet room the mental bioscope unfurls – where to start from? Apu I guess undoubtedly. The light of your eyes, the belief in everything noble is so sublime that for a person who belongs to a different generation and genre, there is no problem in connecting. Or the quintessential romantic in Amal who like Apu fosters our belief in the milk of human kindness and love. And as Feluda, suave and smart yet traditional. You move on with Gangacharan, to Sashibhusan of ‘Dekha’ and the indomitable Kshit-da in ‘Koni’. How can I forget the several theatre jewels that you so casually sprinkled at us – Tiktiki, Naam Jibon, Homa Pakhi, Nilkantha and Raja Lear to name a few. We and many others before and after our generation grew up to be like you – not one ‘you’ but the many profiles of yours. Are these all masks of a superlative actor? Then who are you Soumitra Babu? The rational friend in my head has always warned me – “Judge a creative person by his creations only”. But through-out our lives as we embrace death and rise to live so many times, we cling on to these different Soumitra Chatterjees of our lives.

Whom can I think of as a parallel to you? Not one Uttam Kumar or an Amitabh Bachhan. If there is one he is none other than a Naseeruddin Shah for his range and depth of sensibilities. But Naseer also probably will be proud to match your stage presence.

The Govt of India should be proud to confer this award. Since after all these and everything, you make me believe that even if I am not Apu, I am none but Apu.

I conclude with an ode, hats off to you.

The sky

-----------

In our sky of silence

Your dreams flutter their tail,

Glide up,

Forget.

I have followed them

Every time,

My strings tired,

Sad.

Painted black

The canvas beckons,

I wind up my kite –

The sky is yours.

Amitava Nag

Soumitra Chatterjee - a way of life

Soumitra Chatterjee had been my way of life. He is, for many Bengalis even if he passed our stage of life three decades ago. This is one classic test that he endured like his mentor Satyajit Ray. But even apart from the towering shadow of Ray, Soumitra carved out an image of him which he fostered over a period of time, so much so that even younger generations can’t but try to emulate him. Be it the dreamer in Apu (Apur Sansar) or Amal (Charulata), the charismatic sleuth in Feluda (Sonar Kella), the casual romantic in Teen Bhuvaner Paare (twisting his way to impress Tanuja) and Basanta Bilap or the fairy-tale villain Mayur Bahan in Jhinder Bandi, Soumitra had played it all. He had been a successful hero, second only to Uttam Kumar in popularity perhaps but never shied away from doing character roles even then. How else can we get an Aghor in Sansar Seemante, a Gangacharan in Ashani Sanket or a Khsit-da in Koni? He showed that the actor prevails and not the star. This is why he had broken his star image so many times to nurse the actor inside. He should haven awarded the Best actor for any of his favourite 20-25 films. Ironically, he got it for Padakshep which is not a distinctive one. The Indian Govt. probably got it right this time – they didn’t mess up with India’s one of the finest actors.

What sets Soumitra apart? On one side, he had been thriving and bursting with creative restlessness that makes him a more complete creative persona – he being a poet, an elocution artist, editor for two decades of one of Bengal’s most versatile literary magazine and an actor. Notwithstanding 14 of Ray’s films he had acted with all major directors of Bengal barring Ritwik Ghatak. He wanted to remain ingrained to his culture and never wanted to move to Hindi films. As the cinema richness of Bengal started dwindling since the mid or late seventies, his creative thirst was satiated in theatre. Unlike in film where he remained only an actor, in theatre Soumitra Chatterjee became the writer (most of his plays are adaptations of foreign plays, though the adaptations are truly Indian and Bengali in spirit) and also the director apart from being the lead actor. True, probably his star image helped his theatre to start with but it is his range of topic and his strength of characterization that kept the audience interested for more than three decades now. Atleast with Neelkantha, Tiktiki and Raja Lear Soumitra reached insurmountable heights and these will be included in any serious discussion on Soumitra as an actor – both in films and on stage. I can find no parallel to Soumitra as an actor in Bengal. There are excellent film actors like Uttam Kumar (whose heroism is unparallel without any iota of doubt), Chhabi Biswas and Bikas Roy. But none of them have his range – from the youth to the middle-aged citizen to the old Samaritan, Soumitra played all with equal élan. He is probably the only Indian actor who matured so gracefully playing all the roles that fit his physical appearance at that point in time. If we compare the stage actors – Sombhu Mitra, Ajitesh Bandyopadhyay and Utpal Dutt or even the legendary Sisir Kumar Bhaduri (Soumitra’s guru in theatre) then also we have to admit none of them had the filmic presence of Soumitra. He is the only successful bridge between theatre and films; every other notable Bengali actor has either one in their oeuvre but not both.

In the national scene, only a Naseeruddin Shah can be a parallel to Soumitra for his range of characterizations and deep sensitive understanding of the premise of acting. Not even Balraj Shahni whom Soumitra admired most. Simply because, for the last 5 decades with so many theatres and films Soumitra has filled his cupboard with so many acting jewel renditions that there may be many worthwhile pieces which need to be left out – some of which any other accomplished actor as well would be fortunate to act on in their lives. Naseer is probably an actor who played roles of different shades more than Soumitra, who mostly played the Bengali middle-class bhadrolok through the different ages of his life. Naseer on the other played characters with different ethnicity, race and socio-economic profiles with vivacity. Soumitra being a regional actor probably justifies for not able to match up on these grounds. However being a highly successful romantic hero and his theatre laurels will help him be one of the two finest actors of India for all times along with Naseer.

Now that I had a chance to interact with him often for a project I witness at 78 and with a failing health how he can churn out 4 different plays in a week at times, all nearly 2 hours runtime with him playing the lead. “How do you memorise all these lines?” I ask. He smiles “Am too worried that I will forget, it is out of fear”. I know he is acting, he is not true. The perfectionist in him makes him run, it doesn’t make him sit for a while. After 5 decades of crowning glory the restlessness to be creative is still in him. For 5 decades he had been part of a Bengali life the way Tagore is, the way Satyajit Ray is. My salute to the starlit sky for letting me and us witness one of its brightest star.

Interview of Catherine Berge

Amitava Nag, editor, Silhouette was engaged in a small conversation with Catherine Berge [the director of Gaach (1997) - the documentary on Soumitra Chatterjee - who was in the city recently.

Amitava – How did you come up with the concept of Gaach?  

Catherine – In 1992, I was graduating from the Columbia University and my professor asked me to prepare a paper on Satyajit Ray (following Ray’s demise earlier that year) and I researched Ghare Baire. I developed a deep interest in Ray and discovered that in film after film there is this hero who always plays Ray’s protagonist. So I naturally became interested in him. In 1995 a friend visited Calcutta and I told her “If you love me, get me Soumitra Chatterjee’s number”. I was heartbroken in a small village near Paris and then one evening I received a fax from my friend with the phone number of Soumitra. I mustered the courage to call him the following year and asked if he minded having a documentary made about him, to which he replied, “You have to come to Calcutta for that.” A few days later, quite accidentally, I met Ismail Merchant in his Paris office when I went to meet a friend. Merchant Ivory had already been planning to celebrate the 50 years of Indian independence, but as yet had no specific project in mind. Ismail and I discussed my idea of making a film about Soumitra to which he readily agreed, and in January 1997, we started filming in Calcutta.

As far as the link between Gaach and the films of Satyajit Ray, the whole story is linked together. I met Ismail and James Ivory during the same period that I was planning the film about Soumitra quite coincidentally. I knew that Merchant Ivory had restored a number of the Ray films and I was also interested in the way Ray and Soumitra had grown up together over the 30 years that they worked together as director and leading actor.  It was serendipitous to find producers who had themselves been formed by Satyaji Ray, who had been their “guru”, according to James Ivory, so in a way it was passing from one guru to another.  Ismail Merchant and James Ivory had Ray as their guru and I had Merchant Ivory as my gurus, which was invaluable, as they had such a close relationship to Ray, as well as to his actors and technicians, Above all, the story of Gaach is more a story shared by Soumitra, Catherine and Ismail Merchant and James Ivory. In the case of Ismail Merchant and James Ivory, the important aspect was their personal relationship to Ray who had helped them from their very first film, The Householder.  You cannot mention Gaach without mentioning Merchant Ivory.  Ismail and Jim loved the project because they had always admired Soumitra. I was interested in Soumitra because he had made so many films with Ray, from 1958 to about 1990 - they had grown up together.  Ray was a genius - he knew how to do everything except act, so Soumitra became Ray’s voice.

My story cannot exist without Merchant Ivory.  I was able to make the film with Merchant Ivory’s support.

Amitava - How did you find a producer for Gaach?

Catherine - I had read in the newspaper that Merchant Ivory had restored Ray’s films, and it happened that they had an office in Paris and were shooting two films in France at that time.  It was very easy to meet Ismail Merchant and, as he and James Ivory were great admirers of Soumitra Chatterjee, which I hadn’t known in advance, that’s how it went so fast.

Amitava - Gaach shows clips of Soumitra in the Ray films. Don’t you think that is a fractured representation of Soumitra as a film actor?

Catherine – No. I wanted to show mainly Soumitra and his interaction with Satyajit Ray in the latter’s films. So I was not too keen to show Soumitra as a cinema actor in whole. It is however true that I haven’t seen all Soumitra’s other major films with other film directors.

Amitava – You had always been interested in theatre I know. Did you know of Soumitra’s theatre perspective when you initially thought of making Gaach? Or you evolved your script as you proceeded to know him more as a creative person?

Catherine – I was not sure of his theatre stint. When I came to Calcutta to meet him before the shooting I had long interviews with him and then I saw Tiktiki and a few other aspects of his theatre personality. Yes, I do love theatre and theatre actors. To find it in my favourite cinema actor is a bonus and I used that to the advantage of my film.

No, I did not know, but when I arrived the first time in Calcutta in 1996, Soumitra immediately asked me to come to see him performing on stage and I really appreciated what he did as a playwright and his adaptations of plays from all over the world, making them more Bengali. And now so many years later I’m returning to Calcutta, mainly to see him perform in Raja Lear. And I was extremely fortunate in having the opportunity to see two other plays that Soumitra was appearing in during my visit. During Raja Lear, I sat with a Spanish scholar and I was extremely impressed by Soumitra as King Lear.  Many, many years ago, I saw Sir Laurence Olivier on stage in London as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice and now, years later I am seeing Soumitra Chatterjee in Raja Lear in Calcutta. I do remember that the British audience stopped breathing when Sir Laurence appeared on stage, and it was the same level of emotion in the theater when Soumitra appeared in Raja Lear.

Amitava – Have you seen his theatre productions of late?

Catherine – Yes I have seen Tritiyo Onko Otoeb, Chhari Ganga and of course Raja Lear. I was so moved by Raja Lear – nearly 2 hours on stage and it’s so taxing both physically and mentally. I saw it on two back to back evenings and was spellbound. I wonder where from does he get this energy and vivacity to play these challenging roles even now.

Amitava – Tell something about the project which you will embark soon and how you want Soumitra to be involved in it?

Catherine – Ten to twelve years ago, I sent Soumitra a story I had been working on for a feature film about Romain Rolland and the period when he was living in Switzerland with his sister and welcoming all the major Indian personalities who were building the foundations of India, among them Nehru, Gandhi and of course Rabrindranath Tagore.  I immediately thought of Soumitra for the part of Tagore, and Ismail Merchant agreed with enthusiasm. Then, dramatically, Ismail passed away and unfortunately, it was never possible to make that film.  But a few of years ago, I was in the region of Champagne and a friend from the Merchant Ivory crowd who lives there told me about something which would take place in the Champagne and Rheims area and I immediately thought of Tagore’s visit to a French pacifist, Albert Kahn.  One year later, I won a prize for that story. In September 2011, at the UNESCO conference, it was announced that Soumitra Chatterjee would be performing in Raja Lear and when I heard that, I knew I would have to go back to Calcutta to see Soumitra again.

Amitava – What about the other cinema related work that you have done so far?

Catherine – After making my first film, a documentary on the Hollywood director King Vidor, I lived in the United States for ten years, during which time I earned an international journalism degree at Columbia University. As you know, with the support of director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant, I directed the film Gaach (“The Tree”) in Calcutta, collaborating with the Bengali actors who had appeared in the films of Satyajit Ray.  In addition, I have made numerous film portraits of writers (including Eudora Welty and Richard Ford) and artists (including Josephine Ann Endicot and Tim Robbins).

Amitava – How did you find Calcutta now?

Catherine – My friend Chinmoy Guha, recently named Vice Chancellor of Rabrindranath Tagore University, welcomed me at the airport. The first thing I did when I arrived in Calcutta was to go back to the Fairlawn Hotel which is a landmark in Calcutta on Sudder Street and here there was still Mrs. Smith, now 91 years old, and I immediately felt at home again. 

I was surprised in Calcutta to see women wearing trousers and jeans. I never saw this 15 years ago.  It was a funny thing to see Soumitra with a backpack.

Amitava – Will you be back to Calcutta soon? Tell about your plan of filming the city.

Catherine – I hope very much to be back in Calcutta soon.

In one week I saw 3 plays by Soumitra Chatterjee, and I saw Raja Lear twice. I could not believe he was able to be on stage for that long, 2 hours or more each time. I admire and cherish him.  I’m very lucky to have met Soumitra, Ismail Merchant and James Ivory, and I’m very proud to know Soumitra Chatterjee. I can talk for hours with him about theater and poetry- talking with someone from a very different country and continent about theater and poetry is a very rare thing these days – I feel very lucky and privileged. 

I thought it would be essential to see him in his first Shakepearean part and in Raja Lear.

I returned to Paris last week and noticed that there is a Tagore exhibition ending this week and that in the first week of March they’re screening Charulata and The Home and the World.  I come back to Paris and what is the first thing I see, but Soumitra at the Petit Palais.  If I come back to Paris and see Soumitra, I’ll definitely return to Calcutta to see Soumitra on stage. 

Amitava – Catherine Berge, Thank you and looking forward to meeting you again in Kolkata.

Catherine – Thank you and same to you.

Soumitra is Lear!

The first Saturday in December and Madhusudan Mancha in South Kolkata was running packed house. A theatre show of any magnitude drawing such a big audience is rare by any standards. Given the fact that a week before when the ticket distribution started, people thronged the counter almost five hours before. And, within a couple of hours of opening the counter, the shows were full! Blame it on one person – Soumitra Chatterjee. Raja Lear - the production of Minerva Repertory – the first in Bengal with Repertory’s own full-time actors and few guest actors like Soumitra was stopped for almost 6 months since its first show in November 2010.

            Soumitra Chatterjee had been successful in theatre – a huge box-office crowd-puller given his star image, but at the same time had been intriguing in his theatre productions – something he sadly cannot exercise much in cinema these days. William Shakespeare’s King Lear is one of Chatterjee’s dream roles and he had been vocal about his wish to play the king. In Catherine Berge’s compassionate documentary on Soumitra named Gaach there were snippets of the play that the legendary thespian acted along with Rabi Ghosh playing the Fool.  That had however increased our thirst to watch Chatterjee play Lear in a full-fledged play. It is great to experience the play hence, considering the wait we have borne with as audience.

            The play directed by Suman Mukhopadhyay (who like Soumitra is carelessly confident and flows freely between theatre and films but as a director) is setup with a grand design, interesting use of architectural levels and light projections. The background score is dramatic befitting the epic saga. Acting is very important in this type of play that relies a lot on lengthy dialogues and in being predominantly verbose to carry forward the narrative. Unfortunately, the standard of acting is not consistently carried forward through the breadth of the play – as a result the viewing experience is laden with discomfiture in parts.

            The main attraction of the play is however Soumitra. The majority of the audience in mid forties and above did gather in large numbers to savour Chatterjee’s one of finest performance. And it may be one of his last as well. The element of nostalgic remembrances towards Bengal’s foremost international acting talent, arguably the greatest thespian who donned Bengal theatre and acted with same finesse on screen as well. There are other greats in the long tradition of Bengal’s performing art culture but none is as creatively successful in both the platforms as Chatterjee. He is on stage for more than two hours in a play close to three hours. The physical acting is stupendous. There is the violent impetus, the blind swagger against any voice that is not relenting, the royal impatience – King Lear is embodied in flesh and soul. The original play and this adaptation as well successfully vacillate between the ebb and tide of emotions, embedded with typical Machiavellian villains, of deceit and misconceptions. So sways the mood of Lear – from a king of England to pauper at heart – he earns pity from the audience for being confronted in haste by his cold-blooded elder daughters. His longing for being loved and for being cradled by his daughters make the Fool jibe at him - "he has made his daughters his mothers”.  The father’s innate love and fervor makes Lear endearingly human – and not just a royal crown. Soumitra’s pathos, the anxiety, the wounded father is as much the king as any Bengali father. In deft touches he plays to the heart, connecting to the soul which gets wounded seeing at the battered father.

            In a review of Rituparno Ghosh’s The Last Lear (refer here: http://www.newquestindia.com/Archive/173-174/Html/The%20Last%20Lear.html), I maintained that Amitabh Bachchan had failed to understand the melancholic drops of Lear, he only managed to shout at full thunder, just that. Soumitra, lived Lear on stage, fumbling, childish and at times lamenting for not having stripped his royal overcoat earlier. In a way, Soumitra ropes in the audience with him, Lear leaves the mortal structure – reverberates in the auditorium and then resides in the soul of every audience. When he murmurs to his youngest daughter Cordelia “won’t you stay back just a while more, dear” Soumitra takes our breath away for the tragedy of life, for Lear and his haplessly dead three daughters but more for the absurd nothingness of our mundane lives.

            The ‘dance of death’ seemed plucked straight out of Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal but that created a brilliant theatric moment. Notwithstanding Soumitra’s health conditions there should be an effort to digitize the production for posterity – if the Bengali stage and the Bengali audience care to shed off their latent disinterestedness at the slightest pretext, that is.

Soumitra Chatterjee Revisited

At Satyajit Ray Auditorium, ICCR,Kolkata on July 11,2011, Films Division, Government of India & Rabindranath Tagore Centre, ICCR jointly presented the premiere of Soumitra Revisited, a documentary made by Sandip Ray (not the son of Satyajit Ray) on the legend Soumitra Chatterjee. This is a every important incident to me. When the nation state is ga-ga over the new "Indian" cinema which is in essence only Hindi cinema, the retrospect on regional cinema is all which is welcome. And yes, this can be made possible by the Govt of India only since they can look beyond the bazaar.

It was important for me to write this piece as a flock of emotions cloud my mind. I was rather harsh on him post his Best Actor felicitation in my article The Enigma That is Soumitra Chatterjee (http://dearcinema.com/article/the-enigma-that-is-soumitra-chatterjee/1944) due to his overt and insensitive support of the Government in the Nandigram killings. I, at a later point in time, took an interview of him for my magazine Silhouette which was later re-published in Dearcinema (http://dearcinema.com/interview/taa%C2%AAte-aa%C2%A0-taa%C2%AAte-with-soumitra-chatterjee/2026). During the interview and afterwards I felt Mr. Chatterjee only acted a scene - one of the many which he does to many interviewers - on screen or off.  I still have that lamentation with me - wished I could take another with a more decent timeline and which actually probes and brings out the mysteries round creation.

I grew up watching cinema in the decade of the eighties. How I wished to be there when a Satyajit Ray classic got released or Ritwik Ghatak's Subarnarekha hit the theatres. That feeling eluded me ever. However on the brighter side, I could get a retrospective effect of the cinema of the Indian masters. And who else than Soumitra hogged it all. It was some sultry afternoon when I completed reading Bibhutibhusan's Pather Panchali and Aparajito - the two literary masterpieces that gave birth to Ray's Apu Trilogy. Like many, the electrifying feeling was to think myself as Apu - life is so beautiful, so vibrant and it never mattered if Apu and I are separated by decades, hundreds of kilometers and the comfort cushions of the living rooms. It was quite an experience hence to watch Ray’s Pather Panchali and liking that as well – how could he see the pictures that I have drawn in my mind! I was little apprehensive of Aparajito, Ray’s middle one of the Trilogy then (though it evolved as slightly more dear than the other two much later) but when I saw Apur Sansar, the last part, I was again sure that this man and no one else can be Apu. Till today, fifty two years after the film was made, I cannot think of anyone else as Apu. That film made Soumitra Chatterjee an icon. He stayed young and Apu ever since.

Chatterjee acted in hundreds of films, directed innumerable plays (many of which remain quite peerless even today), edited a premiere intellectual magazine in Ekkhan and had been a poet. Is there any other actor on this planet been so versatile? I know not. This multifaceted intellect is what made him popular – shaping up a Bengali intelligentsia in the mould of him. This is the reason why even today, a smart and sleek Sabyasachi Chakraborty isn’t accepted full-heartedly by the Bengali audience in the role of Feluda, the sleuth penned by Satyajit Ray and acted in two films by Soumitra. The two Feluda characterizations by Soumitra and Sabyasachi which are separated by few decades are difficult to be compared - Soumitra’s one is more cerebral and Sabysachi’s more physical.  As mentioned the blue-print of intellect – sharp eyes, hanging cigarette, reciting Bengali poetry dressed in a Panjabi with a shawl crossed across the shoulders with a few day’s unshaven beard – Soumitra-ness is the cult. His association with Ray yielding fourteen roles in the latter’s film only helped in fostering the image. From the romantic Apu, to the manipulative Sandeep (of Ghare Baire) till the stead-fast and honest doctor in Ganashatru, Soumitra had nurtured the image of Bengali-conscience and consciousness. The Bengali-ness which makes us think that pride is above money, that knowledge is more important than being street-smart, that being laidback is superior to throwing tantrums about being ‘professional’.  Interestingly, in many an interviews and memoirs Soumitra had presented a character of himself which is so unlike Bengalis. He is a dynamic person, professional to the hilt and extremely dedicated to his work and art – just like his mentor Ray, we as Bengalis size him and his philosophy the way that suits us. 

But what is more important is to appreciate that probably no other Indian actor aged so gracefully as Soumitra. This is the reason why we never had any problem accepting him in more mature characters where the reel-age was far more than the real. Ray once quipped that Soumitra was not equally good in characters which are not up to the mark. The maestro director was wrong at times and this assessment of his about his leading man is one such – there are umpteen examples of Soumitra being extraordinary in films made by inconsequential directors in forgettable roles. It is unfortunate hence, for an artist of his stature to be always labeled as a director’s actor – his fourteen extraordinary appearances in Ray’s films are to be blamed! It took long for Soumitra to prove his detractors wrong, but he surely did it. For many long years he was without doubt the greatest Indian cinema actor to me. I would argue that he was successful both as a romantic hero and also in character roles even as villains. However, it is true, it is essentially that single Bengali-conscience role that he played with impunity – as a youth ageing to an old. In contrast, Naseeruddin probably holds a more sparkling gamut of offerings – from rags to riches, from being a Parsi to a South Indian – he played them all. Soumitra being a regional actor, it may be argued, got less chance to portray this variety.

There have been many words written about the artist, a documentary by Catherine Berge named Gaach on him and few other tributes. That the Films Division stepped up to pay a tribute is a commendable gesture. For all those, who thrived on a lot of things that nurtured us the way we are, Soumitra Chatterjee remains a vital cog. He had ruled the scene for long and is continuing to startle with the veracity of his commitment towards life and art.

Take a bow, Apu – the world is truly, yours.