Satyajit Ray : Part 1

It is said that the blood inherits the qualities of the
ancestors… Satyajit Ray was one such man I have known. A versatile
genius, he was and what a personality! Being the son of the master of nonsense
rhyme, Sukumar Ray and the grandson of the father of
the half-tone printing technology, Upendra Kishore Roy Chowdhury, Ray may had inherited the merit, the talent
which he in his later life expressed with any of the forms of art he was
involved with. Like the concept of Philosopher’s
Stone ( Bengali – parash pathar), what ever

he touched turned out to be pure gold.. Be in drawings, cinema, fiction, music,anything.. He was a master
of creativity.

Ray was born in 1921 in Garpar
Road in a house, which was built by his grandfather and it was also a printing
press for many books written by Upendra Kishore and a
magazine for children called “Sandesh”, which was edited
by him. Ray, since his childhood was interested in that and many a times, used
to scribble gibberish in a piece of paper and used to go to the man at the
press and said in a bold voice,”it has to be
published in the next issue of Sandesh ( Eta ebarer Sandesh e berobe)”..

From his memoirs of childhood, “Jokhon Choto Chilam” ( When I was a child ).. I got to know about his childhood,
the Ray family, the Kolkata in the early 20^th Century and many
things.

Since my childhood is have been reading his books and
watching his movies.. Even as a child of 21^st

century, in the age of animations and special effects, I found those amuzing and thoughtful..

At the age of 12 perhaps, I first saw the movie “Nayak” ( The Hero ) which I hardly understood. As I grew
up, in different phases of my teenage and manhood, I interpreted it in
different ways and I still do.. unknowingly

it became one of my all-time favorites and the most favorite movie by Ray..

Pather Panchali (The
Song of the Little Road) was a new experience for me when I was around 14
perhaps. I am thankful to the almighty to have been born in a family where I got
to be imbibed
with so rich culture ( the word rich isn’t related to money). I got to read so many books in my childhood
and so many movies to watch, that it made me what I am today..

( though I don’t know what exactly I am)..

One after another, I went on watching movies by Ray, which
ever came in my hand and were amused each time and never did the quality of
this movies, the concept, the script, the technique with which he handled themand especially the music..

Music was one such thing that reminds me… I was a Ray-maniac.. It makes me laugh but while I was 8 or 9, my father
bought me a cassette of the songs of the two “Gupi-Bagha”
movies and I remember to play them in a Walkman, and used to sing the songs
with the playback and used my fingers to keep the beats on the plastic cassette
covers..

I excavated a 2 cassette collection of Ray’s compositions, “Music
of Satyajit Ray”.. actually I found out the first cassette but the second was missing..
I started listening to those, and inspite of not
having watched any of the movies except one ( Goopy gyne Bagha Byne)
of them, I listened to them like a maniac.. (I am glad to be one), over and
over and over again.. I forced my father to buy the collection
again so that I could get the second volume of it, and later at an elder age, I
bought the digitally mastered disc and it is something I often play and listen.. The tracks which I have, perhaps, listened a thousand times
seems fresh to me.. I get mesmerized at the feelings,
the moods which are impacted upon my mind by those few instruments, a mixture
of eastern and western.. Indeed in the field of music,
Ray has his own niche..

I constantly read as many biographical books related to Ray
and after a lot of reading, his life is like a clear picture to me.. I was born just months before he died, but his life is
fresh in my imaginations..

The years he spent as a commercial artist, how he married
his love of childhood, his own cousin, who was four years elder to him, how mad
he was about movies since his youth and so many things!! While he was in
London, he watched about 300 movies and was influenced greatly by Hollywood and
its techniques.. Vittorio De Sica’s
“The Bicycle Thief” was one such movie which influenced him. He was mesmerized by
the neo-realistic genre and how De Sica had the movie
made with mostly non-professional actors but with great perfection.. Ray decided to give his own movie which slowly he was
conceiving in his mind, the same treatment. After he returned he decided to
shoot for “Aam Atir Bhepu”, a childrens version
of the book “Pather Panchali” by

Bibhuti Bhusan Bandyopadhyay, which he got to read while drawing its
cover page and pictures for the Signet Press. He chose his friend from The
Calcutta Film Society, Subrata Mitra to be
the cinematographer of the movie and chose to direct himself..
With mere luck and God’s blessings, inspite of having
hard times, he could finish the film and then, there was no looking back.. Let me share another fact, that Ravi Shankar, the wizard
of Sitar composed it’s background score and recorded
them at the same time, nonstop, at a stretch in 11 hours, to meet the dead
lines of a foreign film festival.

There are so many things, so many, to tell about him… which I
will in due course.. I end this post here and promise
to write more on Ray soon…

 

To be continued…

Life, as I have seen it………..

A river originates from its source through the three courses into the final destination, where it meets the ocean.. The life is just like a river.. It is born.. It flows through thick and thin and at the end of the day emerges into the great source of energy from where it originated…. It is a never ending process and we, are like the drops of the river, we are born, and as we live, we come across manythings which constitutes our lives and in the end,we embrace death and unite with the supreme power, the omnipotence..
I think only one thing is constant about life, that is, it never stands still.. Time is such a dimension, which is something everyone can realize but its true identity is still a mystery,its never ending, as we know “Time and tide waits for no one”…….except perhaps Rajinikath..
Jokes apart, life flows on with time and it has an end too.. But while it goes on.. it goes through so much of things.. One can experience life with his body and mind.. While in a body, one has a unique identity of a person, who lives for quite a number of years, in whatever state or standard maybe.. It is all about the growth and decay of a body and we tend to act accordingly, the control centre being the mind, operating through the brain..
Einstein quotes “There are two ways to live your life - one is as though nothing is a miracle, the other is as though everything is a miracle.” And what a truth does he speak! Indeed life shows us such miracles,and atleast I believe so, that it itself is the greatest miracle that ever happened!
Creating everything out of nothing..
Life out of the non-living..
And today life has reached such a state that it seems too short to do everything.. Today, we all have a hectic schedule, from the morn, till the end.. And whole of our life, we tend to strive to understand what life is about, and when we do, we are already vanished from the earth!

Death is the ultimate truth of life, the only inevitable thing that has ever been there.. The universe with all its constituents obeys a same rule that is the cycle of creation and destruction, isn’t it ?

Life is indeed such a wonderful thing! We have our senses to feel, see ear, talk, smell, taste and do so many things.. We have an inbuilt soul which retains its individuality,and we all wander across the ten mental states of being!

So long my friends I end with a word of advise :
There are two rules for ultimate success in life. Never tell everything you know.
That’s something to think about..isn’t it?

Civilization

The land on this Earth, which was the gift of nature is now divided between humans. I believe there doesn't exist an inch of land or water surface on the earth, which does not belong to any human being..

From what right did they take away and on what basis did they divide it? Maybe god divided it into few continents, but where from this concept of Nationalism came? As this is my blog, I think I can and should express my views and opinions about anything I wish.. isn't it ? So.. regarding this matter, I think that, the present day condition in which we live, whatever it is, it is because of the series of events in past.. isn't it? and where they always right? Here again comes
the question of what is right and wrong.. that is again a paranoia!

Let's not get into controversies and I am coming straight to the point..

The civilisation was the product of man, with the sole aim to make the world a better place to live and for the welfare of mankind. What was religion created for ? to make the common mass follow some norms and live in a decent way.. but each of those norms were made according to some scientific base and reasons.. But as time passed those were lost in time and what was left was a modified version of those and the people following them blinded by faith and fear, without knowing the reasons..

Since the dawn of cilivisation, as far as my history book said, back then in the secondary level, all over the world, there Brothels and the concept of prostitution were prevalent very much and openly.. yet We are Cilivised.. Today I see NGOs working for the girls and women in the brothels to give them education.. Yet they are not erradicated.. Porn, considered as a social pathos is a 60 Billion Dollar Industry.. So, isn't civilisation, at least the meaning it has today is really controversial ? I believe yes.

Since the dawn of civilised society, it discriminates man just by colour, race, religion and specially in India, we have the caste system, the terms like "untouchable", "bidhormi" meaning "of a different religion". In the movie "Moner Manush" ( The one who belongs to your soul), it is shown that a mother refuses to touch his son, just because he changed his religion and doesn't let his wife travel with him just because "jaat jaabe" ( the purity of one's self will be lost forever)..

What i mean to say is people have, because of misinterpretation, forgot the meaning of the true essence of any religion and I believe all religions are equal and each of them,the best! Any path to the unanimous, the omnipotent power, can not be called as bad, bad are those who alters it and make the people deluded of the path chosen for them and most important is, I believe every person in this world has the right to choose his way of living, his religion. A child born as a Hindu should not be compelled to remain one because of his birth in a Hindu family.. Isn't it?

Now let us concentrate on the facts that in Greek, and Aryan societies.. There existed Gyms, where not only body related exercises were performed, but also discussions were made.. By the most learned peoples of the society.. Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Herodotus and the subjects of this discussion.. Science, Arts, Philosophy, Psychology, Mathematics... So many things.. This I think is a very wonderful thing isn't it ? Debates were organised.. Games were played, so many things.. Unlike the today's gossips.. Adda, at the highest level.. I admit that today's world also has the same too.. but most of them are biased, politically, ideologically, whatever it may be..

What I intended to convey to you is that, freedom of mind is the utmost necessary element in a "cilivisation" and people shouldn't think that being civilised means being what we call good or decent..

Civilisation is something that should have room for everything.. the good and the bad.. where no man is discriminated against being different from other, no race should claim supremacy and love, unconditional love should be prevalent amongst all.. That will make the world along with its dwellers approach the

PERFECTION..