How letters on dhobis, insulin and Tagore shaped Ray's formative years

KOLKATA: The night Satyajit Ray lost his mother was one of the most harrowing times of his life. He had lost his father, author Sukumar Ray, at the age of two years and four months and it was his mother, Suprabha, who had raised him single-handedly while instilling in him an interest in art and aesthetics.That night, his wife, Bijoya, had quietly pulled up a chair in the balcony adjoining his mother’s room at their Lake Temple Road flat and whispered into his ears, saying: “Cry your heart out. Nobody will disturb you here tonight."That was on November 27, 1960.Satyajit was 39 and had released ‘Pather Panchali’, ‘Aparajito’, ‘Parash Pathar’, ‘Apur Sansar’, ‘Jalsaghar’ and ‘Devi’.When 50-odd letters of Satyajit, written to his mother from Santiniketan were unboxed during the lockdown cleanup by son Sandip, they revealed details about the mother-son relationship that had unfortunately never been documented well. Since Sandip was only seven when he lost his grandmother, these letters are also a revelation for him. The film-maker has started cataloguing them and is hoping to publish them as a book. medium77497606Though Satyajit had made a documentary on his legendary father, his mother was never in the spotlight. From cooking to being an expert in needlework, knitting and singing, Suprabha was an unsung talent. Satyajit’s biographer Marie Seton, in “Portrait of a Director”, had described her presence as “commanding without being formidable”. She used to teach sewing at the Vidyasagar Bani Bhawan Widows’ Home. Seton also mentions that back in the 1930s, Suprabha would model for “heads” that were sold at Rs 50 per piece to ease the family’s financial burden. medium77497745When not working, Suprabha would read out Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories to Satyajit in English and then translate them into Bengali for easier comprehension. Before Christmas, she would take him to Kolkata’s largest departmental store, Whiteaway Laidlaw, to buy him crackers. There are stories about her taking him to meet Tagore in Santiniketan and how the poet had obliged a young Satyajit’s hope of getting a poem inscribed in his notebook. They had stayed on for three months on that visit. On full moon nights, mother and son would go on walks to the banks of the Kopai river. Bathed in the moonlight, Suprabha would sing Brahmo hymns, perhaps to give vent to her sorrow of being widowed early in life.When Satyajit joined Santiniketan as a student of Kala Bhawan in 1940, he started writing letters to her. “I think she used to teach arts in a Jhargram school. Most of my father’s letters are addressed to her in Jhargram,” said Sandip.The first lot of letters were written between 1940-1942. While there are some references to Rabindranath Tagore and Abanindranath Tagore, many are about his teacher, Nandalal Bose, with descriptions of his sketches and his learning process. One such letter is a confession about having submitted a “very bad” painting to an exhibition, simply because he had no time to draw another one. medium77498797That the mother-son bond was strong is evident since his letters don’t miss out even minor details about having food on time, the dhobi washing his clothes properly and if the money being sent from home was enough to pay his bills. He would ask his mother about her blood sugar level, remind her to take medicines on time and also ask about the availability of insulin injections.The nearest cinema from his hostel was two miles away and screened mythological films that he had no interest in. So, he would rely on his trips to Kolkata to watch movies of his choice. In one of his letters, Satyajit mentioned his longing for a film that was then being screened in Kolkata and how he hoped that it would still run when he went home after two weeks. “However, he didn’t mention the movie’s name. I think that was ‘Citizen Kane’, which was released in 1941. Unlike today, films were simultaneously released in India and abroad. Back then, Kolkata had a large number of GI (initials used to describe the soldiers of the United States Army and airmen of the United States Air Forces). Cinemas like Metro were buzzing. Baba would miss all that a lot. In fact, he didn’t complete his five years' course and returned to Kolkata after he understood that he had gathered a kind of an idea of fine arts,” Sandip said.His interest in cricket and music have also found mention. One letter has references to a particular cricket match at Eden Gardens and how if he didn’t get to watch it then, it would mean not getting to watch any match of importance that year. He had also requested his mother to send across clippings of concert reviews published in newspapers.Yet, even this relationship was not without a gap in communication — a fact also endorsed in Andrew Robinson’s book titled “The Inner Eye: The Biography of a Master Film-Maker”. This gap is later supposed to have helped give the mother-son relationship in the second part of the Apu Trilogy, ‘Aparajito’, a degree of “poignancy”. According to Sandip, ‘Aparajito’ is a reflection of how his father was raised by a single mother. “After Harihar dies in the film, Apu is raised by his mother, Sarbajaya. Baba’s personal life did influence him subconsciously when he was portraying the strange relationship between Apu and Sarbajaya,” he said. 77497859The parallels exist on various levels and Satyajit had himself said that the link between the reel and the real was more than “an echo on a purely psychological place”. In ‘Aparajito’, Sarbajaya’s uncle comes to take her and Apu when she is left with no money after the demise of her husband. Suprabha and Satyajit, too, had gone to live with her younger brother, PK Das, in 1926 after the failure of the family’s printing business.However, the worlds of Suprabha and Sarbajaya were very different. They also made very different choices when it came to the education of their sons. While Sarbajaya wasn’t particularly keen on Apu pursuing higher studies instead of earning money as a priest, Suprabha had pushed Satyajit to enter Presidency College following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather. His own inclination was to avoid further studies and develop his artistic skills while Suprabha had wanted him to become a “graduate and not a vagabond”. medium77498824This gap between Satyajit and his mother had resurfaced when he wanted to become a director after quitting his job at the British-run advertising agency, DJ Keymer, which he had joined in 1943. “My grandmother had wanted something stable. She had wanted him to continue there and not plunge into an uncertain territory. Back then, films were an uncertain domain. Initially, she was upset with my father’s decision,” Sandip said.Interestingly, Sarbajaya too was upset when Apu didn’t follow her career advice. Later her love for her son overshadowed her personal disappointment and subsequently, she offered him money from her own savings. Suprabha was similar. Despite her initial reservations, she had arranged ‘Pather Panchali’ to be watched by a common friend of the then Bengal chief minister, Dr BC Roy, to get financial aid for its completion. This friend, in turn, convinced Roy to give government aid of Rs 2,00,000 to finish ‘Pather Panchali’. “Following the reception of ‘Pather Panchali’, my grandmother began feeling proud and started to maintain a scrapbook. She would preserve news about my father there. Everything that we have till the time of ‘Teen Kanya’ was in her scrapbook,” he added.Suprabha would also go for song recordings of Satyajit’s documentary on Tagore. “Being diabetic, she had diet restrictions and couldn’t always accompany Baba to shootings. I remember one shooting where she had gone to Nimtita. We used to stay at the house where ‘Jalsaghar’ was shot and would shoot in nearby places for various films. ‘Samapti’ and ‘Devi’ were all shot in and around Nimtita,” Sandip said. Incidentally, it was the birth of her grandson, Sandip, that is supposed to have brought about a transformation in her. “She was a strict lady and I am told that after my birth, she mellowed down,” he mentioned. medium77498778It’s perfectly possible that memories of the unspoken facets of their evolving relationship must have overwhelmed Satyajit when he sat alone in the balcony and mourned his mother’s demise. The next day, Satyajit had walked barefoot to the crematorium. Heartbroken, he couldn’t bring himself to light her funeral pyre. Suprabha’s longtime family physician, Dr Suhrit Mukherjee, had taken on the responsibility. As her mortal remains were consigned to flames, Satyajit just stood at a distance trying to make sense of the closure. Untitled Carousel 75405084