Kolkata, Jan 5 (IANS) The West Bengal government has declared cancer as a notifiable disease making it mandatory for hospitals and doctors to report every case of the disease that comes to their notice, an official said Wednesday.
The direction is aimed at maintaining a proper database and better surveillance.
The order issued by the state health department has made its mandatory for all medical establishments to report the number of cancer patients at their hospitals or centres to the Chittaranjan National Cancer Institute (CNCI).
'Cancer is now a notifiable disease in Bengal. The order has been issued on Dec 28. All the medical establishments have to report the number of cancer patients at their establishment to CNCI,' said Jaydip Biswas, director, CNCI.
'It will enable us to have a complete database of cancer and better surveillance of the disease. It will also help us to locate the areas where the number of cancer patients are high,' said Biswas.
Biswas added that all medical establishments in the state would get the order by the first week of January.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Maoist activities adversely affect West Bengal tourism
Rising Maoist activities in West Bengal's Bankura district have badly affected the tourism industry in the region.
The recent incidents of violence have deterred tourists from visiting the State, particularly due to fear of shutdowns.
"There are some apprehensions among the people who are coming from other parts of the state. There are frequent shutdown in these areas. People got some apprehensions about coming into this area that if they are coming, and there is a shutdown, then there is no point in coming there," said Mohammad Ghulam Ali Ansari, District Magistrate, Bankura.
Meanwhile, a tourist complex owner blamed the media for spreading fear of Maoists.
"There is no fear of Maoists in this area. Their activities and presence is almost 100 kilometers away from here. But some mediapersons are propagating that there is fear of Maoists. That's why tourists are afraid to come here," said Tapas Mondal, owner of a tourist complex.
"We have informed the local administration and they are taking necessary steps and we have a also informed the police administration and trade associations about the same," he added.(ANI)
The recent incidents of violence have deterred tourists from visiting the State, particularly due to fear of shutdowns.
"There are some apprehensions among the people who are coming from other parts of the state. There are frequent shutdown in these areas. People got some apprehensions about coming into this area that if they are coming, and there is a shutdown, then there is no point in coming there," said Mohammad Ghulam Ali Ansari, District Magistrate, Bankura.
Meanwhile, a tourist complex owner blamed the media for spreading fear of Maoists.
"There is no fear of Maoists in this area. Their activities and presence is almost 100 kilometers away from here. But some mediapersons are propagating that there is fear of Maoists. That's why tourists are afraid to come here," said Tapas Mondal, owner of a tourist complex.
"We have informed the local administration and they are taking necessary steps and we have a also informed the police administration and trade associations about the same," he added.(ANI)
Monday, January 3, 2011
Maoist terror in West Bengal
Fakir Mohan Pradhan
Counter-insurgency operations have yielded significant results but it has been a terrible year with West Bengal topping the list of Red terror-hit States
Replying to a question in the State Assembly on December 23, 2010, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee claimed, “Because of sustained joint operations (against Maoists) by 35 companies of Central Reserve Police Force, six companies of Nagaland Police and 51 companies of State Police, the situation ... has greatly improved... The situation has changed in the past three months. Some of the blocks (in Jangalmahal) are terror free... (But) till the situation improves in Jharkhand and Odisha, it would be difficult to keep West Bengal unaffected. Till such time, the paramilitary forces should be there.”
Earlier, in an interview to a TV Channel in Kolkata on November 13, the Chief Minister asserted, “The Maoist leadership is now divided. They are now cornered.” Ironically, on December 17, cadre of the CPI(Maoist) had shot dead seven workers of the All-India Forward Block, a party belonging to the ruling Left Front, in Purulia district.
In fact, West Bengal has witnessed a dramatic spurt in Maoist-related fatalities in 2010. According to available data, 425 people, including 328 civilians, 36 security forces personnel and 61 Maoists, including cadre of the Maoist-backed People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities, were killed in West Bengal in 2010 till December 26, as against 158 people, including 134 civilians, 15 security forces personnel and nine Maoists killed in the State in 2009.
With this, West Bengal has now earned the dubious distinction of recording the highest Maoist-related fatalities in 2010, dislodging Chhattisgarh which had topped the list since 2006. The intervening years have seen an extraordinary rise in Maoist-related fatalities in West Bengal, from just six in 2005, through 24 in 2008, and up to 158 and 418 people, respectively, in 2009 and 2010.
Significantly, the civilian casualty figure of 328, which includes 148 fatalities in the Gyaneswari Express derailment of May 28, is by far the highest among the Maoist affected States for any past years, followed distantly by Chhattisgarh in 2006 with 189 civilian fatalities. In 2010, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand each recorded 71 civilian fatalities. Civilian fatalities in West Bengal have recorded a 145 per cent increase over the elevated base level of 134 for 2009.
The principal cause for this dramatic escalation is the rapid expansion of the Maoists in the State and their focussed infiltration of the tribal movement in Lalgarh, as a result of which they have taken control of wide areas despite mounting pressure from the security forces. The movement in Lalgarh snowballed after a failed assassination attempt targeting the Chief Minister and then Union Minister for Steel Ram Vilas Paswan at nearby Salboni on November 2, 2008, and the clumsy police responses that followed.
Unlike other States, the expanding Maoist sway is confronted by the organised (and often armed) cadre of the ruling CPI(M) in West Bengal. In order to hold the area under their control, the Maoists have neutralised the CPI(M) cadre base and terrorised the masses — tactics that explain the large number of Marxists and ‘sympathisers’ among the civilian fatalities in the State. Indeed, of the 328 civilians killed in 2010, CPI(M) leaders and cadre account for as many as 116.
Security forces fatalities have also risen to 36 in 2010, from 15 in 2009, even as 61 Maoists were killed, as against nine in 2009, reflecting increasing direct confrontation between the forces and the Maoists.The State witnessed 14 major incidents (involving three or more casualties) through 2010. The Maoists were also involved in at least 25 cases of landmine explosions, 18 incidents of arson, and two incidents of abduction (an overwhelming majority of abduction cases go unreported because of fear of the Maoists). The Maoists also executed seven ‘swarming attacks’ involving a large number of their armed cadre in 2010, as against eight such attacks in 2009.
There were, however, major successes scored by the security forces in 2010, including the killing of six Maoists, along with Sidhu Soren, the founding ‘commander-in-chief’ of Sidhu Kanu Gana Militia, in an encounter on July 26; the Ranja forest encounter of June 16 in which at least 12 Maoists were killed; and, the Hathilot forest encounter of March 25 in which Maoist Politburo member Koteswar Rao alias Kishanji was injured. Most significantly, the PCPA founder-president, Lalmohan Tudu, was killed by the forces on February 22, along with at least two other PCPA cadre.
These operational successes were compounded by key arrests. Four members of the Maoists’ West Bengal State Committee, including ‘State secretary’ Sudip Chongdar alias Kanchan alias Batas, Anil Ghosh alias Ajoyda, Barun Sur alias Bidyut, and Kalpana Maity, wife of Ashim Mondal alias Akash, were arrested from Kolkata on December 3 and 4. A day after these arrests, Asim Mondal alias Akash, a senior member of the State Committee, admitted that “The arrest is unfortunate and no doubt it is a jolt for our organisation.”
Earlier, on March 2, 2010, Venkateswar Reddy alias Telugu Dipak, another State Committee member, was arrested near Kolkata. Dipak was the suspected mastermind of the February 15 attack on the EFR camp at Sildah. Indeed, there seems to be an abrupt leadership vacuum among the Maoists in West Bengal with seven of the 11 State Committee members either behind bars or killed.
Further, Bapi Mahato, a prime accused in the Gyaneswari Express derailment as well as a senior member of the Maoist-backed PCPA, was arrested by a joint team of the West Bengal and Jharkhand Police from Jamshedpur in Jharkhand on June 20. At least 245 arrests have been made in 2010 in connection with Maoist activities. On June 18, however, State Chief Secretary Ardhendu Sen claimed that security forces operating in the Jangalmahal area, which includes Bankura, Purulia and West Midnapore districts, had arrested “about 400 to 500 Maoists”. Nevertheless, the mastermind behind almost all the Maoist attacks in the region, Koteswar Rao alias Kishanji, CPI(Maoist) Politburo member in charge of West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand and Odisha, remains elusive.
Expecting that the pressure mounted by the security forces would induce some Maoists to lay down arms, the State Government announced its new surrender policy on June 15. The ‘package’ followed the Union Government guidelines, with a one-off payment of Rs 1,50,000, vocational training for three months, and Rs 2,000 in a monthly stipend for each surrendering cadre. If arms were also surrendered, they would receive, in addition, Rs 15,000 for an AK-47 rifle, Rs 25,000 for a machine gun, and Rs 3,000 for a pistol or revolver. On June 17, West Bengal Director-General of Police Bhupinder Singh said, “We have received feelers that a number of people are willing to surrender.” By December 26, however, only five Maoists had surrendered after the announcement of the ‘package’.
Despite these successes, however, there is little reason for any great optimism. The Chief Minister’s claim that “the situation has changed in the past three months”, while not altogether incorrect, nevertheless glosses over the reality of continuing killings in the Jangalmahal area.
The writer is associated with the Institute for Peace and Conflict Management. Visual shows CPI-M’s anti-Maoist posters.
http://www.dailypioneer.com/307761/Maoist-terror-in-West-Bengal.html
Counter-insurgency operations have yielded significant results but it has been a terrible year with West Bengal topping the list of Red terror-hit States
Replying to a question in the State Assembly on December 23, 2010, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee claimed, “Because of sustained joint operations (against Maoists) by 35 companies of Central Reserve Police Force, six companies of Nagaland Police and 51 companies of State Police, the situation ... has greatly improved... The situation has changed in the past three months. Some of the blocks (in Jangalmahal) are terror free... (But) till the situation improves in Jharkhand and Odisha, it would be difficult to keep West Bengal unaffected. Till such time, the paramilitary forces should be there.”
Earlier, in an interview to a TV Channel in Kolkata on November 13, the Chief Minister asserted, “The Maoist leadership is now divided. They are now cornered.” Ironically, on December 17, cadre of the CPI(Maoist) had shot dead seven workers of the All-India Forward Block, a party belonging to the ruling Left Front, in Purulia district.
In fact, West Bengal has witnessed a dramatic spurt in Maoist-related fatalities in 2010. According to available data, 425 people, including 328 civilians, 36 security forces personnel and 61 Maoists, including cadre of the Maoist-backed People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities, were killed in West Bengal in 2010 till December 26, as against 158 people, including 134 civilians, 15 security forces personnel and nine Maoists killed in the State in 2009.
With this, West Bengal has now earned the dubious distinction of recording the highest Maoist-related fatalities in 2010, dislodging Chhattisgarh which had topped the list since 2006. The intervening years have seen an extraordinary rise in Maoist-related fatalities in West Bengal, from just six in 2005, through 24 in 2008, and up to 158 and 418 people, respectively, in 2009 and 2010.
Significantly, the civilian casualty figure of 328, which includes 148 fatalities in the Gyaneswari Express derailment of May 28, is by far the highest among the Maoist affected States for any past years, followed distantly by Chhattisgarh in 2006 with 189 civilian fatalities. In 2010, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand each recorded 71 civilian fatalities. Civilian fatalities in West Bengal have recorded a 145 per cent increase over the elevated base level of 134 for 2009.
The principal cause for this dramatic escalation is the rapid expansion of the Maoists in the State and their focussed infiltration of the tribal movement in Lalgarh, as a result of which they have taken control of wide areas despite mounting pressure from the security forces. The movement in Lalgarh snowballed after a failed assassination attempt targeting the Chief Minister and then Union Minister for Steel Ram Vilas Paswan at nearby Salboni on November 2, 2008, and the clumsy police responses that followed.
Unlike other States, the expanding Maoist sway is confronted by the organised (and often armed) cadre of the ruling CPI(M) in West Bengal. In order to hold the area under their control, the Maoists have neutralised the CPI(M) cadre base and terrorised the masses — tactics that explain the large number of Marxists and ‘sympathisers’ among the civilian fatalities in the State. Indeed, of the 328 civilians killed in 2010, CPI(M) leaders and cadre account for as many as 116.
Security forces fatalities have also risen to 36 in 2010, from 15 in 2009, even as 61 Maoists were killed, as against nine in 2009, reflecting increasing direct confrontation between the forces and the Maoists.The State witnessed 14 major incidents (involving three or more casualties) through 2010. The Maoists were also involved in at least 25 cases of landmine explosions, 18 incidents of arson, and two incidents of abduction (an overwhelming majority of abduction cases go unreported because of fear of the Maoists). The Maoists also executed seven ‘swarming attacks’ involving a large number of their armed cadre in 2010, as against eight such attacks in 2009.
There were, however, major successes scored by the security forces in 2010, including the killing of six Maoists, along with Sidhu Soren, the founding ‘commander-in-chief’ of Sidhu Kanu Gana Militia, in an encounter on July 26; the Ranja forest encounter of June 16 in which at least 12 Maoists were killed; and, the Hathilot forest encounter of March 25 in which Maoist Politburo member Koteswar Rao alias Kishanji was injured. Most significantly, the PCPA founder-president, Lalmohan Tudu, was killed by the forces on February 22, along with at least two other PCPA cadre.
These operational successes were compounded by key arrests. Four members of the Maoists’ West Bengal State Committee, including ‘State secretary’ Sudip Chongdar alias Kanchan alias Batas, Anil Ghosh alias Ajoyda, Barun Sur alias Bidyut, and Kalpana Maity, wife of Ashim Mondal alias Akash, were arrested from Kolkata on December 3 and 4. A day after these arrests, Asim Mondal alias Akash, a senior member of the State Committee, admitted that “The arrest is unfortunate and no doubt it is a jolt for our organisation.”
Earlier, on March 2, 2010, Venkateswar Reddy alias Telugu Dipak, another State Committee member, was arrested near Kolkata. Dipak was the suspected mastermind of the February 15 attack on the EFR camp at Sildah. Indeed, there seems to be an abrupt leadership vacuum among the Maoists in West Bengal with seven of the 11 State Committee members either behind bars or killed.
Further, Bapi Mahato, a prime accused in the Gyaneswari Express derailment as well as a senior member of the Maoist-backed PCPA, was arrested by a joint team of the West Bengal and Jharkhand Police from Jamshedpur in Jharkhand on June 20. At least 245 arrests have been made in 2010 in connection with Maoist activities. On June 18, however, State Chief Secretary Ardhendu Sen claimed that security forces operating in the Jangalmahal area, which includes Bankura, Purulia and West Midnapore districts, had arrested “about 400 to 500 Maoists”. Nevertheless, the mastermind behind almost all the Maoist attacks in the region, Koteswar Rao alias Kishanji, CPI(Maoist) Politburo member in charge of West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand and Odisha, remains elusive.
Expecting that the pressure mounted by the security forces would induce some Maoists to lay down arms, the State Government announced its new surrender policy on June 15. The ‘package’ followed the Union Government guidelines, with a one-off payment of Rs 1,50,000, vocational training for three months, and Rs 2,000 in a monthly stipend for each surrendering cadre. If arms were also surrendered, they would receive, in addition, Rs 15,000 for an AK-47 rifle, Rs 25,000 for a machine gun, and Rs 3,000 for a pistol or revolver. On June 17, West Bengal Director-General of Police Bhupinder Singh said, “We have received feelers that a number of people are willing to surrender.” By December 26, however, only five Maoists had surrendered after the announcement of the ‘package’.
Despite these successes, however, there is little reason for any great optimism. The Chief Minister’s claim that “the situation has changed in the past three months”, while not altogether incorrect, nevertheless glosses over the reality of continuing killings in the Jangalmahal area.
The writer is associated with the Institute for Peace and Conflict Management. Visual shows CPI-M’s anti-Maoist posters.
http://www.dailypioneer.com/307761/Maoist-terror-in-West-Bengal.html
Friday, December 31, 2010
A crore votes at stake, Trinamool, CPI-M, Congress, BJP share dais
Kolkata, Dec 28 (IANS) The compulsions of vote bank politics presented a rare sight here Tuesday when leaders of West Bengal's arch-rivals Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) and Trinamool Congress, as also of the Congress and the BJP, shared the dais at a rally organised by a group of Scheduled Castes and Other Backward Classes.
This, when the main opposition Trinamool has been boycotting, since last year's Lok Sabha polls, government functions where CPI-M ministers and leaders were in attendance.
The union ministers from Trinamool had even in the past left the venue of government functions midway to avoid been seen with CPI-M functionaries.
However, with the All India Matua Mahasangha group, said to wield influence over more than one crore voters mostly in the state's southern districts, political parties made a beeline for the rally in the heart of Kolkata.
Among those at the rally were state Housing Minister and CPI-M state secretariat member Gautam Deb and Trinamool top gun and union Minister of State for Shipping Mukul Roy - the latter having come with two other party leaders - besides state Congress chief Manas Bhunia and BJP's Tathagata Roy, apart from leaders of other partners of the ruling Left Front.
'This is historic. It is great that Trinamool leaders are also here, besides leaders of other parties,' said Deb in his address.
'It is a difficult task to bring all political parties in our state together for a cause, but the Matua Mahasangha has successfully done this,' said Deb expressing his thanks to Barama - Binapani Debi, who heads the group of SCs and OBCs comprising mostly immigrants from Bangaldesh.
Deb also urged all political parties, mainly the Trinamool leaders, to keep aside the political differences and come together to launch the movement on development issues and noble causes.
'All the 42 Lok Sabha members from West Bengal and the MPs in Rajya Sabha irrespective of their political affiliations should come together and place the demands of the Matua Mahasangha in parliament,' said Deb.
Roy and other Trinamool leaders sat on the dais but did not speak. Echoing Deb, Bhunia said his party will support whole heartedly if all the parties come together on the issues raised by the Matua Mahasangha.
'A Congress delegation, including me, will place the demands of the Matua before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Home Minister P. Chidambaram, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Congress president Sonia Gandhi in January,' said Bhunia.
The Matua Sangha, founded by Binapani Devi's husband's great grandfather Harichand Thakur, a Brahmin, at Gopalganj in Faridpur (now in Bangladesh), held the rally demanding changes in the Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2003 to give citizenship, voting rights and proper rehabilitation to refuges staying in India over decades.
A team of delegates of the Matua Mahasangha also submitted a deputation before Governor M. K. Naranayan and Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. (Sify News, 28th Dec 2010)
This, when the main opposition Trinamool has been boycotting, since last year's Lok Sabha polls, government functions where CPI-M ministers and leaders were in attendance.
The union ministers from Trinamool had even in the past left the venue of government functions midway to avoid been seen with CPI-M functionaries.
However, with the All India Matua Mahasangha group, said to wield influence over more than one crore voters mostly in the state's southern districts, political parties made a beeline for the rally in the heart of Kolkata.
Among those at the rally were state Housing Minister and CPI-M state secretariat member Gautam Deb and Trinamool top gun and union Minister of State for Shipping Mukul Roy - the latter having come with two other party leaders - besides state Congress chief Manas Bhunia and BJP's Tathagata Roy, apart from leaders of other partners of the ruling Left Front.
'This is historic. It is great that Trinamool leaders are also here, besides leaders of other parties,' said Deb in his address.
'It is a difficult task to bring all political parties in our state together for a cause, but the Matua Mahasangha has successfully done this,' said Deb expressing his thanks to Barama - Binapani Debi, who heads the group of SCs and OBCs comprising mostly immigrants from Bangaldesh.
Deb also urged all political parties, mainly the Trinamool leaders, to keep aside the political differences and come together to launch the movement on development issues and noble causes.
'All the 42 Lok Sabha members from West Bengal and the MPs in Rajya Sabha irrespective of their political affiliations should come together and place the demands of the Matua Mahasangha in parliament,' said Deb.
Roy and other Trinamool leaders sat on the dais but did not speak. Echoing Deb, Bhunia said his party will support whole heartedly if all the parties come together on the issues raised by the Matua Mahasangha.
'A Congress delegation, including me, will place the demands of the Matua before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Home Minister P. Chidambaram, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Congress president Sonia Gandhi in January,' said Bhunia.
The Matua Sangha, founded by Binapani Devi's husband's great grandfather Harichand Thakur, a Brahmin, at Gopalganj in Faridpur (now in Bangladesh), held the rally demanding changes in the Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2003 to give citizenship, voting rights and proper rehabilitation to refuges staying in India over decades.
A team of delegates of the Matua Mahasangha also submitted a deputation before Governor M. K. Naranayan and Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. (Sify News, 28th Dec 2010)
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Divisive Politics of West Bengal
Shikha Mukerjee: The Pioneer
Regime change in West Bengal is turning out to be a bitter political battle in which the Left Front and the Trinamool Congress are evenly matched. In the process, the State is rapidly descending into a spiral of violence.
Clean and effective Government seems to be what voters want. Voter satisfaction, it would appear, can be gained by providing the minimum that citizenship entitles the citizen to, if not uniformly and of a very high order, but nevertheless tangible and sustained, if the Pundits have correctly read the verdict in Bihar.
The attributes of clean and effective are difficult to identify, because expectations in India about what constitutes clean are probably based on a totally distorted idea of the requirements for probity in public life. The same is true of what constitutes effectiveness. One feature of what constitutes effectiveness, extrapolating from the Bihar verdict, appears to be basic law and order measured in terms of greater mobility of women and school going girls on bicycles.
Therefore, clean and effective boils down to a serious scaling down of the routines of bribery and corruption that public officials have engaged in historically in order to live beyond their official means and a stable law and order regime that allows people to feel reasonably secure, though not entirely risk free. In other words, some semblance of the rule of law has been re-established in the badlands of Bihar.
In contrast, the frequency of violent episodes and the spiralling death count in West Bengal indicates that the effectiveness of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front Government to deliver minimum law and order to its citizens has been seriously impaired. The death count provided by the CPI(M) of its own members and supporters in the Maoist infested areas of West Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia is over 280. Not a week goes by without a minimum of one more dead in either Binpur or Shalboni or Jhargram and now again Khejuri made famous during the confrontations over identifying Nandigram as a possible location for establishing a Special Economic Zone. Not a week goes by without some attack, even burning down of a political party’s office somewhere in the State. This is lawlessness.
The deliberate disruption of the normal is appalling. It is a shame that politics has grown so undemocratic in West Bengal, so violent and vicious that refugees of political violence returning home to Kamardah village in Khejuri block of West Midnapore district after months of a precarious existence in camps were attacked once again. The fate of the returning residents of Kamardah is to be forever victims of a political rivalry that is ugly and inhuman. Trapped between the CPI(M) and the Trinamool Congress, the villagers are pawns to be moved around to serve the political purpose of ‘recapture’ or ‘sanitisation;’ if the CPI(M) stands accused of ‘recapture’ then the Trinamool Congress stands accused of ‘sanitising’ Kamardah and Khejuri of supporters of the CPI(M).
If the CPI(M) is accused of using armed cadres to cover the return of the political refugees, then so should the Trinamool Congress be accused of mobilising overwhelming counter force to prevent the return of the refugees. When political conflict between parliamentary parties reaches a point where force and counter force are the norm rather than the exception, then the one value that becomes debased is the minimum tolerance required in a democratic polity, When law and order is not delivered to the citizen as the minimum condition then no political party ought to be allowed to escape from the responsibility of vitiating the normal to the point that the abnormal becomes routine.
The clash of politics in West Bengal in the last 10 years has resulted in hundreds of deaths. It is incidental that the CPI(M) counts the number of its dead since May 2008 and estimates that about 280 have been victims of Maoist violence. Before 2008 there were political clashes. Ordinary people died. Of that 14 died in the police action in Nandigram. The remaining dead were victims of political clashes. In Nanoor in Birbhum 11 landless peasants died in 2000. In July 2010, Ananda Das, an ex-legislator died. In May Sanjay Ghosh and Al Amin Sheikh were killed.
The clash of politics in West Bengal in the last 10 years has resulted in hundreds of dwellings, be they so humble as mud huts, being burnt and trashed. The escalating numbers in the past five years of destruction and damage of private property reveals the deterioration of law and order. No political party can avoid being blamed for what has happened, because people whose homes were destroyed or damaged were supporters of different political parties. As the dominant political force in West Bengal, the CPI(M)’s share of the blame is greater. But the Opposition is not blameless.
The violence and destruction as a resultant of political conflict has meant a loss of the sense of security that is the fundamental right of every citizen in West Bengal. With fear as a factor, the quality of political life in the State has declined. The decline is not limited to the areas where the Maoists are active in spreading their particularly potent brew of barbarous beheadings, kangaroo courts, night raids and day-time cordons around villages and fields. The decline includes places where political intolerance is rampant, with territories being marked off as belonging to one party or the other.
However divisive the politics in West Bengal is, that does not constitute a reason for the absence of law and order and the fundamental right to a secure life for every citizen. Regime change in West Bengal is turning out to be a war, in which the Government side and the Opposition are evenly matched. History may compare the period after 2006 to West Bengal’s worst period of political turmoil, the period after 1968, when terror stalked the streets of Kolkata and nothing and nobody was safe.
Regime change in West Bengal is turning out to be a bitter political battle in which the Left Front and the Trinamool Congress are evenly matched. In the process, the State is rapidly descending into a spiral of violence.
Clean and effective Government seems to be what voters want. Voter satisfaction, it would appear, can be gained by providing the minimum that citizenship entitles the citizen to, if not uniformly and of a very high order, but nevertheless tangible and sustained, if the Pundits have correctly read the verdict in Bihar.
The attributes of clean and effective are difficult to identify, because expectations in India about what constitutes clean are probably based on a totally distorted idea of the requirements for probity in public life. The same is true of what constitutes effectiveness. One feature of what constitutes effectiveness, extrapolating from the Bihar verdict, appears to be basic law and order measured in terms of greater mobility of women and school going girls on bicycles.
Therefore, clean and effective boils down to a serious scaling down of the routines of bribery and corruption that public officials have engaged in historically in order to live beyond their official means and a stable law and order regime that allows people to feel reasonably secure, though not entirely risk free. In other words, some semblance of the rule of law has been re-established in the badlands of Bihar.
In contrast, the frequency of violent episodes and the spiralling death count in West Bengal indicates that the effectiveness of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front Government to deliver minimum law and order to its citizens has been seriously impaired. The death count provided by the CPI(M) of its own members and supporters in the Maoist infested areas of West Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia is over 280. Not a week goes by without a minimum of one more dead in either Binpur or Shalboni or Jhargram and now again Khejuri made famous during the confrontations over identifying Nandigram as a possible location for establishing a Special Economic Zone. Not a week goes by without some attack, even burning down of a political party’s office somewhere in the State. This is lawlessness.
The deliberate disruption of the normal is appalling. It is a shame that politics has grown so undemocratic in West Bengal, so violent and vicious that refugees of political violence returning home to Kamardah village in Khejuri block of West Midnapore district after months of a precarious existence in camps were attacked once again. The fate of the returning residents of Kamardah is to be forever victims of a political rivalry that is ugly and inhuman. Trapped between the CPI(M) and the Trinamool Congress, the villagers are pawns to be moved around to serve the political purpose of ‘recapture’ or ‘sanitisation;’ if the CPI(M) stands accused of ‘recapture’ then the Trinamool Congress stands accused of ‘sanitising’ Kamardah and Khejuri of supporters of the CPI(M).
If the CPI(M) is accused of using armed cadres to cover the return of the political refugees, then so should the Trinamool Congress be accused of mobilising overwhelming counter force to prevent the return of the refugees. When political conflict between parliamentary parties reaches a point where force and counter force are the norm rather than the exception, then the one value that becomes debased is the minimum tolerance required in a democratic polity, When law and order is not delivered to the citizen as the minimum condition then no political party ought to be allowed to escape from the responsibility of vitiating the normal to the point that the abnormal becomes routine.
The clash of politics in West Bengal in the last 10 years has resulted in hundreds of deaths. It is incidental that the CPI(M) counts the number of its dead since May 2008 and estimates that about 280 have been victims of Maoist violence. Before 2008 there were political clashes. Ordinary people died. Of that 14 died in the police action in Nandigram. The remaining dead were victims of political clashes. In Nanoor in Birbhum 11 landless peasants died in 2000. In July 2010, Ananda Das, an ex-legislator died. In May Sanjay Ghosh and Al Amin Sheikh were killed.
The clash of politics in West Bengal in the last 10 years has resulted in hundreds of dwellings, be they so humble as mud huts, being burnt and trashed. The escalating numbers in the past five years of destruction and damage of private property reveals the deterioration of law and order. No political party can avoid being blamed for what has happened, because people whose homes were destroyed or damaged were supporters of different political parties. As the dominant political force in West Bengal, the CPI(M)’s share of the blame is greater. But the Opposition is not blameless.
The violence and destruction as a resultant of political conflict has meant a loss of the sense of security that is the fundamental right of every citizen in West Bengal. With fear as a factor, the quality of political life in the State has declined. The decline is not limited to the areas where the Maoists are active in spreading their particularly potent brew of barbarous beheadings, kangaroo courts, night raids and day-time cordons around villages and fields. The decline includes places where political intolerance is rampant, with territories being marked off as belonging to one party or the other.
However divisive the politics in West Bengal is, that does not constitute a reason for the absence of law and order and the fundamental right to a secure life for every citizen. Regime change in West Bengal is turning out to be a war, in which the Government side and the Opposition are evenly matched. History may compare the period after 2006 to West Bengal’s worst period of political turmoil, the period after 1968, when terror stalked the streets of Kolkata and nothing and nobody was safe.
Friday, November 26, 2010
West Bengal signals death of communism
By Mahendra Ved
THE road to the dictatorship of the proletariat, Vladimir Lenin once said, lay from Moscow to Beijing to Calcutta.
In 1890, Swami Vivekananda wrote in Adwaita Ashram Journal about the “beginning of a new era either in Russia or China”. He made no reference to India. India’s communists claim that Vivekananda’s views are similar to those of Karl Marx.
While Moscow demolished Lenin’s statues after seven decades of experiment, Beijing, though formally communist, has turned pragmatic, even capitalist, courting multinational corporations.
Indians are not given to breaking statues. Lenin’s statue, which adorns the main square of Calcutta, now Kolkata, may remain untouched. But the city from where the British once ruled large parts of Asia has just witnessed a political shocker that is a red signal for the Reds.
This month’s civic elections show that the communists, ruling West Bengal for a record 34 years, are in trouble. A series of setbacks for the comrades — from the village panchayat polls in 2008 through last year’s parliamentary elections — underscore the deep popular disenchantment with them.
Come the state assembly polls a year away, there is every chance that the Left Front might be defeated.
Squabbling communists also rule in Kerala. Going by the trend of power being won and lost every five years, it is their turn to lose.
THE road to the dictatorship of the proletariat, Vladimir Lenin once said, lay from Moscow to Beijing to Calcutta.
In 1890, Swami Vivekananda wrote in Adwaita Ashram Journal about the “beginning of a new era either in Russia or China”. He made no reference to India. India’s communists claim that Vivekananda’s views are similar to those of Karl Marx.
While Moscow demolished Lenin’s statues after seven decades of experiment, Beijing, though formally communist, has turned pragmatic, even capitalist, courting multinational corporations.
Indians are not given to breaking statues. Lenin’s statue, which adorns the main square of Calcutta, now Kolkata, may remain untouched. But the city from where the British once ruled large parts of Asia has just witnessed a political shocker that is a red signal for the Reds.
This month’s civic elections show that the communists, ruling West Bengal for a record 34 years, are in trouble. A series of setbacks for the comrades — from the village panchayat polls in 2008 through last year’s parliamentary elections — underscore the deep popular disenchantment with them.
Come the state assembly polls a year away, there is every chance that the Left Front might be defeated.
Squabbling communists also rule in Kerala. Going by the trend of power being won and lost every five years, it is their turn to lose.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Satyajit Ray
Satyajit Ray (Bengali: সত্যজিত রায় or সত্যজিৎ রায় Shottojit Rae (help·info); 2 May 1921 – 23 April 1992) was an Indian Bengali filmmaker. He is regarded as one of the greatest auteurs of 20th century cinema.[1] Ray was born in the city of Calcutta (now Kolkata) into a Bengali family prominent in the world of arts and letters. Starting his career as a commercial artist, Ray was drawn into independent filmmaking after meeting French filmmaker Jean Renoir and viewing the Italian neorealist film Bicycle Thieves during a visit to London.
Ray directed thirty-seven films, including feature films, documentaries and shorts. He was also a fiction writer, publisher, illustrator, graphic designer and film critic. Ray's first film, Pather Panchali (1955), won eleven international prizes, including Best Human Document at the Cannes film festival. Alongside Aparajito (1956) and Apur Sansar (1959), the three films form The Apu Trilogy. Ray did the scripting, casting, scoring, cinematography, art direction, editing and designed his own credit titles and publicity material. Ray received many major awards in his career, including 32 Indian National Film Awards, a number of awards at international film festivals and award ceremonies, and an Academy Honorary Award in 1992.
Contents [hide]
1 Early life and background
2 The Apu Years (1950–1959)
3 From Devi to Charulata (1959–1964)
4 New directions (1965–1982)
5 The last phase (1983–1992)
6 Film craft
7 Literary works
8 Critical and popular response
9 Legacy
10 Awards, honours and recognitions
11 Notes
12 See also
13 References
14 External links
[edit]Early life and background
Satyajit Ray, 1932
Satyajit Ray's ancestry can be traced back for at least ten generations.[2] Ray's grandfather, Upendrakishore Ray was a writer, illustrator, philosopher, publisher, amateur astronomer and a leader of the Brahmo Samaj, a religious and social movement in nineteenth century Bengal. Sukumar Ray, Upendrakishore's son, was a pioneering Bengali writer of nonsense rhyme and children's literature, an illustrator and a critic. Ray was born to Sukumar and Suprabha Ray in Kolkata. Sukumar Ray died when Satyajit was barely three, and the family survived on Suprabha Ray's meager income. Ray studied at Ballygunge Government High School, Calcutta, and then completed his B.A. (Hons.) in economics at Presidency College of the University of Calcutta, though his interest was always in fine arts. In 1940, his mother insisted that he study at the Visva-Bharati University at Santiniketan, founded by Rabindranath Tagore. Ray was reluctant due to his love of Kolkata, and due to the generally low opinion of the intellectual life at Santiniketan.[3] His mother's persuasion and his respect for Tagore finally convinced him to try this route. In Santiniketan, Ray came to appreciate oriental art. He later admitted that he learnt much from the famous painters Nandalal Bose[4] and Benode Behari Mukherjee on whom Ray later produced a documentary film, "The Inner Eye". With visits to Ajanta, Ellora and Elephanta, Ray developed an admiration for Indian art.[5]
He joined as a "junior visualiser", earning just eighty rupees a month. Although on the one hand, visual design was something close to Ray's heart and, for the most part, he was treated well, there was palpable tension between the British and Indian employees of the firm (the former were much better paid), and Ray felt that "the clients were generally stupid".[6] Around 1943, Ray became involved with Signet Press, a new publishing house started up by D. K. Gupta. Gupta asked Ray to create cover designs for books published from Signet Press and gave him complete artistic freedom. Ray designed covers for many books, including Jim Corbett's Maneaters of Kumaon, and Jawaharlal Nehru's Discovery of India. He also worked on a children's version of Pather Panchali, a classic Bengali novel by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay, renamed as Am Antir Bhepu (The mango-seed whistle). Ray was deeply influenced by the work, which became the subject of his first film. In addition to designing the cover, he illustrated the book; many of his illustrations ultimately found their place as shots in his groundbreaking film.[7]
Along with Chidananda Dasgupta and others, Ray founded the Calcutta Film Society in 1947, through which he was exposed to many foreign films. Throughout this time, Ray continued to watch and study films seriously. He befriended the American GIs stationed in Kolkata during World War II, who would inform him of the latest American films showing in the city. He came to know a RAF employee, Norman Clare, who shared Ray's passion of films, chess and western classical music.[8]
In 1949, Ray married Bijoya Das, his first cousin and longtime sweetheart.[9] The couple had a son, Sandip, who is now a film director. In the same year, Jean Renoir came to Kolkata to shoot his film The River. Ray helped him to find locations in the countryside. It was then that Ray told Renoir about his idea of filming Pather Panchali, which had been on his mind for some time, and Renoir encouraged him to proceed.[10] In 1950, Ray was sent to London by D.J. Keymer to work at its head office. During his three months in London, he watched 99 films. Among these was the neorealist film Ladri di biciclette Bicycle Thieves (1948) by Vittorio De Sica which had a profound impact on him. Ray later said that he came out of the theater determined to become a filmmaker.[11]
[edit]The Apu Years (1950–1959)
See also: The Apu Trilogy and Filmography of Satyajit Ray
Ray during his years at Santiniketan.
Ray had now decided that Pather Panchali, the classic bildungsroman of Bengali literature, published in 1928 by Bibhutibhusan Bandopadhyay, would be the subject matter for his first film. This semi-autobiographical novel describes the growing up of Apu, a small boy in a Bengal village.
Ray gathered an inexperienced crew, although both his cameraman Subrata Mitra and art director Bansi Chandragupta went on to achieve great acclaim. The cast consisted of mostly amateur artists. Shooting started in late 1952, using Ray's personal savings. He had hoped once the initial shots had been completed, he would be able to obtain funds to support the project; however, such funding was not forthcoming.[12] Pather Panchali was shot over the unusually long period of three years, because shooting was possible only from time to time, when Ray or production manager Anil Chowdhury could arrange further money.[12] With a loan from the West Bengal government, the film was finally completed and released in 1955 to great critical and popular success, sweeping up numerous prizes and having long runs in both India and abroad. During the making of the film, Ray refused funding from sources who demanded a change in script or the supervision of the producer, and ignored advice from the government (which finally funded the film anyway) to incorporate a happy ending in having Apu's family join a "development project".[13] Even greater help than Renoir's encouragement occurred when Ray showed a sequence to John Huston who was in India scouting locations for The Man Who Would Be King. The sequence is the remarkable vision Apu and his sister have of the train running through the countryside. It was the only sequence Ray had filmed due to his small budget. Huston notified Monroe Wheeler at the New York Museum of Modern Art that a major talent was on the horizon.
Wide open eyes, a continual motif in The Apu Trilogy
In India, the reaction to the film was enthusiastic, The Times of India wrote that "It is absurd to compare it with any other Indian cinema [...] Pather Panchali is pure cinema".[14] In the United Kingdom, Lindsay Anderson wrote a glowing review of the film.[14] However, the reaction was not uniformly positive. After watching the movie, François Truffaut is reported to have said, "I don’t want to see a movie of peasants eating with their hands."[15] Bosley Crowther, then the most influential critic of The New York Times, wrote a scathing review of the film that its distributor Ed Harrison thought would kill off the film when it got released in the United States, but instead it enjoyed an exceptionally long run.
Ray's international career started in earnest after the success of his next film, Aparajito (The Unvanquished).[16] This film shows the eternal struggle between the ambitions of a young man, Apu, and the mother who loves him.[16] Many critics, notably Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak, rank it even higher than the first film.[16] Aparajito won the Golden Lion in Venice. Before the completion of The Apu Trilogy, Ray completed two other films. The first is the comic Parash Pathar (The Philosopher's Stone), which was followed by Jalsaghar (The Music Room), a film about the decadence of the Zamindars, considered one of his most important works.[17]
Ray had not thought about a trilogy while making Aparajito, and it occurred to him only after being asked about the idea in Venice.[18] The final installation of the series, Apur Sansar (The World of Apu) was made in 1959. Just like the two previous films, a number of critics find this to be the supreme achievement of the trilogy (Robin Wood, Aparna Sen). Ray introduced two of his favourite actors Soumitra Chatterjee and Sharmila Tagore in this film. The film finds Apu living in a nondescript Kolkata house in near-poverty. He becomes involved in an unusual marriage with Aparna, the scenes of their life together forming "one of the cinema's classic affirmative depiction of married life",[19] but tragedy ensues. After Apur Sansar was harshly criticised by a Bengali critic, Ray wrote an article defending it—a rare event in Ray's film making career (the other major instance involved the film Charulata, Ray's personal favourite).[20] His success had little influence on his personal life in the years to come. Ray continued to live with his mother, uncle and other members of his extended family in a rented house.[21]
[edit]From Devi to Charulata (1959–1964)
Reversal of the gaze, Charulata looking at Amal
During this period, Ray composed films on the British Raj period (such as Devi), a documentary on Tagore, a comic film (Mahapurush) and his first film from an original screenplay (Kanchenjungha). He also made a series of films that, taken together, are considered by critics among the most deeply felt portrayal of Indian women on screen.[22]
Ray followed Apur Sansar with Devi (The Goddess), a film in which are studied the superstitions in the Hindu society. Sharmila Tagore starred as Doyamoyee, a young wife who is deified by her father-in-law. Ray was worried that the censor board might block his film, or at least make him re-cut it, but Devi was spared. In 1961, on the insistence of Prime-minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Ray was commissioned to make a documentary on Rabindranath Tagore, on the occasion of the poet's birth centennial, a tribute to the person who probably influenced Ray most. Due to limited real footage of Tagore available, Ray faced the challenge of making a film out of mainly static material, and he remarked that it took as much work as three feature films.[23] In the same year, together with Subhas Mukhopadhyay and others, Ray was able to revive Sandesh, the children's magazine his grandfather once published. Ray had been saving money for some years now to make this possible.[24] A duality in the name (Sandesh means both "news" in Bengali and also a sweet desert popular in Bengal) set the tone of the magazine (both educational and entertaining), and Ray soon found himself illustrating the magazine, and writing stories and essays for children. Writing became his major source of income in the years to come.
In 1962, Ray directed Kanchenjungha, which was his first original screenplay and colour film. The film tells the story of an upper-class family spending an afternoon in Darjeeling, a picturesque hill town in West Bengal, where the family tries to engage their youngest daughter to a highly-paid engineer educated in London. The film was first conceived to take place in a large mansion, but Ray later decided to film it in the famous hill town, using the many shades of light and mist to reflect the tension in the drama. An amused Ray noted that while his script allowed shooting to be possible under any lighting conditions, a commercial film contingent present at the same time in Darjeeling failed to shoot a single shot as they only wanted to do so in sunshine.[25]
In the sixties, Ray visited Japan and took particular pleasure in meeting filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, for whom he had very high regard. While at home, he would take an occasional break from the hectic city life by going to places like Darjeeling or Puri to complete a script in isolation.
In 1964 Ray made Charulata (The Lonely Wife), the culmination of this period of work, and regarded by many critics as his most accomplished film.[26] Based on Nastanirh, a short story of Tagore, the film tells the tale of a lonely wife, Charu, in 19th century Bengal, and her growing feelings for her brother in law, Amal. Often referred to as Ray's Mozartian masterpiece, Ray himself famously said the film contained least flaws among his work, and his only work, that given a chance, he would make exactly the same way.[27] Madhabi Mukherjee's performance as Charu, and the work of both Subrata Mitra and Bansi Chandragupta in the film have been highly praised. Other films in this period include Mahanagar (The Big City), Teen Kanya (Three Daughters), Abhijan (The Expedition) and Kapurush o Mahapurush (The Coward and the Holy Man).
[edit]New directions (1965–1982)
In the post-Charulata period, Ray took on projects of increasing variety, ranging from fantasy to science fiction to detective films to historical drama. Ray also made considerable formal experimentation during this period, and also took closer notice to the contemporary issues of Indian life, responding to a perceived lack of these issues in his films. The first major film in this period is Nayak (The Hero), the story of a screen hero traveling in a train where he meets a young sympathetic female journalist. Starring Uttam Kumar and Sharmila Tagore, the film explores, in the twenty-four hours of the journey, the inner conflict of the apparently highly successful matinée idol. In spite of receiving a Critics prize in Berlin, the reaction to this film was generally muted.[28]
In 1967, Ray wrote a script for a film to be called The Alien, based on his short story Bankubabur Bandhu ("Banku Babu's Friend") which he wrote in 1962 for Sandesh, the Ray family magazine. The Alien had Columbia Pictures as producer for this planned U.S.-India co-production, and Peter Sellers and Marlon Brando as the leading actors. However, Ray was surprised to find that the script he had written had already been copyrighted and the fee appropriated by Mike Wilson. Wilson had initially approached Ray as an acquaintance of a mutual friend, Arthur C. Clarke, to represent him in Hollywood. The script Wilson had copyrighted was credited as Mike Wilson & Satyajit Ray, despite the fact that he only contributed a single word in it. Ray later stated that he never received a penny for the script.[29] Brando later dropped out of the project, and though an attempt was made to replace him with James Coburn, Ray became disillusioned and returned to Kolkata.[29][30] Columbia expressed interest in reviving the project several times in the 1970s and 1980s, but nothing came of it. When E.T. was released in 1982, Clarke and Ray saw similarities in the film to the earlier Alien script—Ray discussed the collapse of the project in a 1980 Sight & Sound feature, with further details revealed by Ray's biographer Andrew Robinson (in The Inner Eye, 1989). Ray believed that Spielberg's film would not have been possible without his script of The Alien being available throughout America in mimeographed copies (a charge Spielberg denies).[31] Besides The Alien, two other unrealized projects Ray intended to direct were theatrical adaptations of the ancient Indian epic, the Mahābhārata, and E. M. Forster's 1924 novel A Passage to India.[32]
In 1969, Ray made what would be commercially the most successful of his films. Based on a children's story written by his grandfather, Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne (The Adventures of Goopy and Bagha) is a musical fantasy. Goopy the singer and Bagha the drummer, equipped by three boons allowed by the King of Ghosts, set out on a fantastic journey in which they try to stop an impending war between two neighbouring kingdoms. Among his most expensive enterprises, it turned out to be very hard to finance; Ray abandoned his desire to shoot it in colour, turning down an offer that would have forced him to cast a certain Bollywood actor as the lead.[33] Ray next made a film from a novel by the young poet and writer, Sunil Gangopadhyay. Featuring a musical structure acclaimed as even more complex than Charulata,[34] Aranyer Din Ratri (Days and Nights in the Forest) traces four urban young men going to the forests for a vacation, trying to leave their petty urban existence behind. All but one of them get engaged into revealing encounters with women, which critics consider a revealing study of the Indian middle class. Ray cast Bombay-based actress Simi Garewal as a tribal woman, who was pleasantly surprised to find that Ray could envision someone as urban as her in that role.
After Aranyer, Ray made a foray into contemporary Bengali reality, which was then in state of continuous flux due to the leftist Naxalite movement. He completed the so-called Calcutta trilogy: Pratidwandi (1970), Seemabaddha (1971), and Jana Aranya (1975), three films which were conceived separately, but whose thematic connections form a loose trilogy.[35] Pratidwandi (The Adversary) is about an idealist young graduate; if disillusioned, still uncorrupted at the end of film, Jana Aranya (The Middleman) about how a young man gives in to the culture of corruption to make a living, and Seemabaddha (Company Limited) about an already successful man giving up morals for further gains. Of these, the first, Pratidwandi, uses an elliptical narrative style previously unseen in Ray films, such as scenes in negative, dream sequences and abrupt flashbacks.[35] In the 1970s, Ray also adapted two of his popular stories as detective films. Though mainly targeted towards children and young adults, both Sonar Kella (The Golden Fortress) and Joy Baba Felunath (The Elephant God) found some critical following.[36]
Ray considered making a film on the Bangladesh Liberation War but later abandoned the idea, commenting that as a filmmaker he was more interested in the travails and journeys of the refugees and not politics.[37] In 1977, Ray completed Shatranj Ke Khiladi (The Chess Players), an Urdu film based on a story by Munshi Premchand, set in Lucknow in the state of Oudh, a year before the Indian rebellion of 1857. A commentary on the circumstances that led to the colonization of India by the British, this was Ray's first feature film in a language other than Bengali. This is also his most expensive and star-studded film, featuring likes of Sanjeev Kumar, Saeed Jaffrey, Amjad Khan, Shabana Azmi, Victor Bannerjee and Richard Attenborough. Ray made a sequel to Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne in 1980, a somewhat overtly political Hirak Rajar Deshe (Kingdom of Diamonds) — where the kingdom of the evil Diamond King or Hirok Raj is an allusion to India during Indira Gandhi's emergency period.[38] Along with his acclaimed short film Pikoo (Pikoo's Day) and hour long Hindi film Sadgati this was the culmination of his work in this period.
[edit]The last phase (1983–1992)
Sukumar Ray, on whom Ray made a documentary in 1987
In 1983, while working on Ghare Baire (Home and the World), Ray suffered a heart attack that would severely limit his output in the remaining 9 years of his life. Ghare Baire was completed in 1984 with the help of Ray's son (who would operate the camera from then on) because of his health condition. He wanted to film this Tagore novel on the dangers of fervent nationalism for a long time, and even wrote a (weak, by his own admission) script for it in the 1940s.[39] In spite of rough patches due to his illness, the film did receive some critical acclaim, and it contained the first full-blown kiss in Ray's films. In 1987, he made a documentary on his father, Sukumar Ray.
Ray's last three films, made after his recovery and with medical strictures in place, were shot mostly indoors, have a distinctive style. They are more verbose than his earlier films and are often regarded as inferior to his earlier body of work.[40] The first, Ganashatru (An Enemy of the People) is an adaptation of the famous Ibsen play, and considered the weakest of the three.[41] Ray recovered some of his form in his 1990 film Shakha Proshakha (Branches of the Tree).[42] In it, an old man, who has lived a life of honesty, comes to learn of the corruption three of his sons indulge in with the final scene shows him finding solace only in the companionship of the fourth, uncorrupted but mentally ill son. After Shakha Prashakha, Ray's swan song Agantuk (The Stranger) is lighter in mood, but not in theme. A long lost uncle's sudden visit to his niece's house in Kolkata raises suspicion as to his motive and far-ranging questions about civilization.[43]
In 1992, Ray's health deteriorated due to heart complications. He was admitted to a hospital, and would never recover. An honorary Oscar was awarded to him weeks before his death, which he received in a gravely ill condition. He died on 23 April 1992.
[edit]Film craft
Satyajit Ray considered script-writing to be an integral part of direction. This is one reason why he initially refused to make a film in any language other than Bengali. In his two non-Bengali feature films, he wrote the script in English, which translators then interpreted in Hindi or Urdu under Ray's supervision. Ray's own eye for detail was matched by that of his art director Bansi Chandragupta, whose influence on the early Ray films were so important that Ray would always write scripts in English before creating a Bengali version, so that the non-Bengali Chandragupta would be able to read it. Camera work in Ray's early films garnered high regard for the craft of Subrata Mitra, whose (bitter) departure from Ray's crew, according to a number of critics, lowered the quality of cinematography in his films.[28] Though Ray openly praised Mitra, his single-mindedness made him take over operation of the camera since Charulata, causing Mitra to stop working for Ray after 1966. Pioneering works of Subrata Mitra included development of "bounce lighting", a technique of bouncing light off cloth to create a diffused realistic light even on a set. Ray also acknowledged debt to Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut of the French New Wave for introducing new technical and cinematic innovations.[44]
Though Ray had a regular editor in Dulal Datta, he usually dictated the editing while Datta did the actual work. In fact, because of financial reasons and Ray's meticulous planning, his films were mostly cut "on the camera" (apart from Pather Panchali). At the beginning of his career, Ray worked with Indian classical musicians, including Ravi Shankar, Vilayat Khan and Ali Akbar Khan. However, the experience was painful for him as he found that their first loyalty was to musical traditions, and not to his film; also, his greater grasp of western classical forms, which he regarded as essential, especially for his films set in an urban milieu, stood in the way.[45] This led him to compose his own scores starting from Teen Kanya. Ray used actors of diverse backgrounds, from famous film stars to people who have never seen a film (such as in Aparajito).[46] Robin Wood and others have lauded him as the best director of children, pointing out memorable performances including Apu and Durga (Pather Panchali), Ratan (Postmaster) and Mukul (Sonar Kella). Depending on the talent or experience of the actor Ray's direction would vary from virtually nothing (actors like Utpal Dutt) to using the actor as "a puppet"[47] (Subir Banerjee as young Apu or Sharmila Tagore as Aparna). According to actors working for Ray, his customary trust in the actors would occasionally be tempered by his ability to treat incompetence with "total contempt".[48]
[edit]Literary works
Main article: Literary creations of Satyajit Ray
Cover of a collection of Satyajit Ray's short stories
Ray created two very popular characters in Bengali children's literature—Feluda, a sleuth, and Professor Shonku, a scientist. He was a prominent writer of science fiction in Bengali or any Indian language for that matter. He also wrote short stories which were published as volumes of 12 stories, always with names playing on the word twelve (for example Aker pitthe dui, or literally "Two on top of one"). Ray's interest in puzzles and puns is reflected in his stories, Feluda often has to solve a puzzle to get to the bottom of a case. The Feluda stories are narrated by Topshe, his cousin, something of a Watson to Feluda's Holmes. The science fictions of Shonku are presented as a diary discovered after the scientist himself had mysteriously disappeared. Ray's short stories give full reign to his interest in the macabre, in suspense and other aspects that he avoided in film, making for an interesting psychological study.[49] Most of his writings have now been translated into English, and are finding a new group of readers.
Most of his screenplays have also been published in Bengali in the literary journal Eksan. Ray wrote his autobiography encompassing his childhood years, Jakhan Choto Chilam (1982) and essays on film: Our Films, Their Films (1976), along with Bishoy Chalachchitra (1976), Ekei Bole Shooting (1979). During the mid-1990s, Ray's film essays and an anthology of short stories were also published in the West. Our Films, Their Films is an anthology of film criticism by Ray. The book contains articles and personal journal excerpts. The book is presented in two sections—Ray first discusses Indian film, before turning his attention towards Hollywood and specific international filmmakers (Charlie Chaplin, Akira Kurosawa) and movements like Italian neorealism. His book Bishoy Chalachchitra was translated in 2006 as Speaking of Films, and contains a compact description of his philosophy of different aspects of the cinema. Ray also wrote a collection of nonsense verse named Today Bandha Ghorar Dim, which includes a translation of Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky". He also authored a collection of humorous stories of Mullah Nasiruddin in Bengali.
Satyajit Ray designed four typefaces for roman script named Ray Roman, Ray Bizarre, Daphnis, and Holiday Script, apart from numerous Bengali ones for the Sandesh magazine.[50][51] Ray Roman and Ray Biazarre won an international competition in 1971.[52] In certain circles of Kolkata, Ray continued to be known as an eminent graphic designer, well into his film career. Ray illustrated all his books and designed covers for them, as well as creating all publicity material for his films. He also designed covers of several books by other authors.[53]
[edit]Critical and popular response
Ray's work has been described as reverberating with humanism and universality, and of deceptive simplicity with deep underlying complexity.[54][55] Praise has often been heaped on his work by many, including Akira Kurosawa, who declared, "Not to have seen the cinema of Ray means existing in the world without seeing the sun or the moon."[56] But his detractors find his films glacially slow, moving like a "majestic snail."[26] Some find his humanism simple-minded, and his work anti-modern and claim that they lack new modes of expression or experimentation found in works of Ray's contemporaries like Jean-Luc Godard.[57] As Stanley Kauffman wrote, some critics believe that Ray "assumes [viewers] can be interested in a film that simply dwells in its characters, rather than one that imposes dramatic patterns on their lives."[58] Ray himself commented that this slowness is something he can do nothing about. Kurosawa defended him by saying that Ray's films were not slow at all, "His work can be described as flowing composedly, like a big river".[59]
Critics have often compared Ray to artists in the cinema and other media, such as Anton Chekhov, Renoir, De Sica, Howard Hawks or Mozart. Shakespeare has also been invoked,[19][60] for example by the writer V. S. Naipaul, who compared a scene in Shatranj Ki Khiladi to a Shakespearian play, as "only three hundred words are spoken but goodness! – terrific things happen."[61] It is generally acknowledged, even by those who were not impressed by the aesthetics of Ray's films, that he was virtually peerless in that his films encompass a whole culture with all its nuances, a sentiment expressed in Ray's obituary in The Independent, which exclaimed, "Who else can compete?"[62]
Early in 1980, Ray was openly criticized by an Indian M.P. and former actress Nargis Dutt, who accused Ray of "exporting poverty," demanding he make films to represent "Modern India."[63] On the other hand, a common accusation levelled against him by advocates of socialism across India was that he was not "committed" to the cause of the nation's downtrodden classes, with some commentators accusing Ray of glorifying poverty in Pather Panchali and Asani Sanket through lyricism and aesthetics. They also accused him of providing no solution to conflicts in the stories, and being unable to overcome his bourgeoisie background. Agitations during the naxalite movements in the 1970s once came close to causing physical harm to his son, Sandip.[64] In a public debate during the 1960s, Ray and the openly Marxist filmmaker Mrinal Sen engaged in an argument. Sen criticized him for casting a matinée idol like Uttam Kumar, which he considered a compromise,[65] while Ray shot back by saying that Sen only attacks "easy targets", i.e. the Bengali middle-classes. His private life was never a subject of media scrutiny.
[edit]Legacy
Ray with his Academy Award just days before his death.
Satyajit Ray is a cultural icon in India and in Bengali communities worldwide.[66] Following his death, the city of Kolkata came to a virtual standstill, as hundreds of thousands of people gathered around his house to pay him their last respects.[67] Satyajit Ray's influence has been widespread and deep in Bengali cinema; a number of Bengali directors including Aparna Sen, Rituparno Ghosh and Gautam Ghose in India, Tareq Masud and Tanvir Mokammel in Bangladesh, and Aneel Ahmad in England, have been influenced by his film craft. Across the spectrum, filmmakers such as Budhdhadeb Dasgupta, Mrinal Sen[68] and Adoor Gopalakrishnan have acknowledged his seminal contribution to Indian cinema. Beyond India, filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese,[69][70] James Ivory,[71] Abbas Kiarostami, Elia Kazan, François Truffaut,[72] Carlos Saura,[73] Isao Takahata[74] and Danny Boyle[75] have been influenced by his cinematic style, with many others such as Akira Kurosawa praising his work.[56] Ira Sachs's 2005 work Forty Shades of Blue was a loose remake of Charulata, and in Gregory Nava's 1995 film My Family, the final scene is duplicated from the final scene of Apur Sansar. Similar references to Ray films are found, for example, in recent works such as Sacred Evil,[76] the Elements trilogy of Deepa Mehta and even in films of Jean-Luc Godard.[77] According to Michael Sragow of The Atlantic Monthly, the "youthful coming-of-age dramas that have flooded art houses since the mid-fifties owe a tremendous debt to the Apu trilogy".[78]
The character Apu Nahasapeemapetilon in the American animated television series The Simpsons was named in homage to Ray's popular character from The Apu Trilogy. Ray along with Madhabi Mukherjee, was the first Indian film personality to feature in a foreign stamp (Dominica). Many literary works include references to Ray or his work, including Saul Bellow's Herzog and J. M. Coetzee's Youth. Salman Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories contains fish characters named Goopy and Bagha, a tribute to Ray's fantasy film. In 1993, UC Santa Cruz established the Satyajit Ray Film and Study collection, and in 1995, the Government of India set up Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute for studies related to film. In 2007, British Broadcasting Corporation declared that two Feluda stories would be made into radio programs.[79] During the London Film Festival, a regular "Satyajit Ray Award" is given to first-time feature director whose film best captures "the artistry, compassion and humanity of Ray's vision". Wes Anderson has claimed Ray as an influence on his work; his most recent live-action film, The Darjeeling Limited, set in India, is dedicated to Ray.
[edit]Awards, honours and recognitions
Further information: List of awards conferred on Satyajit Ray
Numerous awards were bestowed on Ray throughout his lifetime, including 32 National Film Awards by the Government of India, in addition to awards at international film festivals. At the Berlin Film Festival, he was one of only three filmmakers to win the Silver Bear for Best Director more than once[80] and holds the record for the most number of Golden Bear nominations, with seven. At the Venice Film Festival, where he had previously won a Golden Lion for Aparajito (1956), he was awarded the Golden Lion Honorary Award in 1982.[81] That same year, he received an honorary "Hommage à Satyajit Ray" award at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival.[82]
Ray is the second film personality after Chaplin to have been awarded honorary doctorates by Oxford University.[83] He was awarded the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 1985 and the Legion of Honor by the President of France in 1987.[84] The Government of India awarded him the highest civilian honour, Bharat Ratna shortly before his death.[84] The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded Ray an honorary Oscar in 1992 for Lifetime Achievement. It was one of his favourite actresses, Audrey Hepburn, who represented the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on that day in Calcutta. In 1992 he was posthumously awarded the Akira Kurosawa Award for Lifetime Achievement in Directing at the San Francisco International Film Festival; it was accepted on his behalf by actress Sharmila Tagore.[85]
In 1992, the Sight & Sound Critics' Top Ten Poll ranked Ray at #7 in its list of "Top 10 Directors" of all time, making him the highest-ranking Asian filmmaker in the poll.[86] In 2002, the Sight & Sound critics' and directors' poll ranked Ray at #22 in its list of all-time greatest directors,[87] thus making him the fourth highest-ranking Asian filmmaker in the poll.[87] In 1996, Entertainment Weekly magazine ranked Ray at #25 in its "50 Greatest Directors" list.[88] In 2007, Total Film magazine included Ray in its "100 Greatest Film Directors Ever" list.[89]
[edit]Notes
^ Santas 2002, p. 18
^ Seton 1971, p. 36
^ Robinson 2003, p. 46
^ Seton 1971, p. 70
^ Seton 1971, pp. 71–72
^ Robinson 2003, pp. 56–58
^ Robinson 2005, p. 38
^ Robinson 2005, pp. 40–43
^ "Satyajit Ray had an unconventional marriage. He married Bijoya (born 1917), youngest daughter of his eldest maternal uncle, Charuchandra Das, in 1948 in a secret ceremony in Bombay after a long romantic relationship that had begun around the time he left college in 1940. The marriage was reconfirmed in Calcutta the next year at a traditional religious ceremony.", "Ties that Bind" by Arup Kr De, The Statesman, Kolkata, 27th.April.2008
^ Robinson 2005, pp. 42–44
^ Robinson 2005, p. 48
^ a b Robinson 2003, pp. 74–90
^ Seton 1971, p. 95
^ a b Seton 1971, pp. 112–15
^ "Filmi Funda Pather Panchali (1955)". The Telegraph. 2005-04-20. Retrieved 2006-04-29.
^ a b c Robinson 2003, pp. 91–106
^ Malcolm D. "Satyajit Ray: The Music Room". guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 2006-06-19.
^ Wood 1972, p. 61
^ a b Wood 1972
^ Ray mentions this in Ray 1993, p. 13
^ Robinson 2003, p. 5
^ Palopoli S. "Ghost 'World'". metroactive.com. Retrieved 2006-06-19.
^ Robinson 2003, p. 277
^ Seton 1971, p. 189
^ Robinson 2003, p. 142
^ a b Robinson 2003, p. 157
^ Antani J. "Charulata". Slant magazine. Retrieved 2006-06-19.
^ a b Dasgupta 1996, p. 91
^ a b Ray, Satyajit. "Ordeals of the Alien". The Unmade Ray. Satyajit Ray Society. Retrieved 2008-04-21.
^ Neumann P. "Biography for Satyajit Ray". Internet Movie Database Inc. Retrieved 2006-04-29.
^ Newman J (2001-09-17). "Satyajit Ray Collection receives Packard grant and lecture endowment". UC Santa Cruz Currents online. Retrieved 2006-04-29.
^ C. J. Wallia (1996). "IndiaStar book review: Satyajit Ray by Surabhi Banerjee". Retrieved 2009-05-31.
^ Seton 1971, pp. 291–297
^ Wood 1972, p. 13
^ a b Robinson 2003, pp. 200–220
^ Rushdie 1992
^ Robinson 2003, p. 206
^ Robinson 2003, pp. 188–189
^ Robinson 2003, pp. 66–67
^ Robinson 2003, pp. 339–364
^ Dasgupta 1996, p. 134
^ Robinson 2003, p. 353
^ Robinson 2003, pp. 353–364
^ Sen A. "Western Influences on Satyajit Ray". Parabaas. Retrieved 2006-04-29.
^ Robinson 2003, pp. 315–318
^ Ray 1994, p. 100
^ Robinson 2003, p. 78
^ Robinson 2003, p. 307
^ Nandy 1995
^ Datta, Sudipta (19 January 2008). "The Ray show goes on". The Financial Express (Indian Express Newspapers (Mumbai) Ltd). Retrieved 2008-04-10.
^ "Ray Typography". Retrieved 2008-07-07.
^ Robinson 2003, p. 57
^ Robinson 2003, p. 57–59
^ Malcolm D. "The universe in his backyard". guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 2007-02-15.
^ Swagrow M. "An Art Wedded to Truth". The Atlantic Monthly. Retrieved 2007-02-15.
^ a b Robinson 2003, p. 96
^ Robinson 2003, pp. 306–318
^ Robinson 2003, pp. 352–353
^ Robinson 2003, pp. 314–315
^ Ebert R. "The Music Room (1958)". suntimes.com. Retrieved 2006-04-29.
^ Robinson 2003, p. 246
^ Robinson 2005, pp. 13–14
^ Robinson 2003, pp. 327–328
^ Robinson 2003, p. 205
^ Robinson 2003, p. 177
^ Tankha, Madhur (1 December 2007). "Returning to the classics of Ray". The Hindu. Retrieved 2008-05-01.
^ Amitav Ghosh. "Satyajit Ray". Doom Online. Retrieved 2006-06-19.
^ Mrinal Sen. "Our lives, their lives". Little Magazine. Retrieved 2006-06-29.
^ Chris Ingui. "Martin Scorsese hits DC, hangs with the Hachet". Hatchet. Retrieved 2009-06-06.
^ Jay Antani (2004). "Raging Bull: A film review". Filmcritic.com. Retrieved 2009-05-04.
^ Sheldon Hall. "Ivory, James (1928-)". Screen Online. Retrieved 2007-02-12.
^ Dave Kehr (5 May 1995). "THE 'WORLD' OF SATYAJIT RAY: LEGACY OF INDIA'S PREMIER FILM MAKER ON DISPLAY". Daily News. Retrieved 2009-06-06.
^ Suchetana Ray (11 March 2008). "Satyajit Ray is this Spanish director's inspiration". CNN-IBN. Retrieved 2009-06-06.
^ Daniel Thomas (20 January 2003). "Film Reviews: Grave of the Fireflies (Hotaru no Haka)". Retrieved 2009-05-30.
^ Alkarim Jivani (February 2009). "Mumbai rising". Sight & Sound. Retrieved 2009-02-01.
^ SK Jha. "Sacred Ray". Telegraph India. Retrieved 2006-06-29.
^ André Habib. "Before and After: Origins and Death in the Work of Jean-Luc Godard". Senses of Cinema. Retrieved 2006-06-29.
^ Sragow, Michael (1994), "An Art Wedded to Truth", The Atlantic Monthly (University of California, Santa Cruz), retrieved 2009-05-11
^ Datta S. "Feluda goes global, via radio". Financial Express. Retrieved 2007-02-12.
^ "Silver Bear winners (directors)". listal. 24 November 2008. Retrieved 2009-04-19.
^ "Awards for Satyajit Ray". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 2009-04-19.
^ "Personal Awards". Satyajit Ray official site. Retrieved 2009-04-19.
^ Robinson 2003, p. 1
^ a b "Personal Awards". Awards. satyajitray.org. Retrieved 2008-04-09.
^ "Awards and Tributes: Satyajit Ray". San Francisco International Film Festival: The First to Fifty. San Francisco Film Society. Retrieved 2008-04-08.
^ "Sight and Sound Poll 1992: Critics". California Institute of Technology. Retrieved 2009-05-29.
^ a b Kevin Lee (2002-09-05). "A Slanted Canon". Asian American Film Commentary. Retrieved 2009-04-24.
^ "Greatest Film Directors and Their Best Films". Filmsite.org. Retrieved 2009-04-19.
^ "The Greatest Directors Ever by Total Film Magazine". Filmsite.org. Retrieved 2009-04-19.
Ray directed thirty-seven films, including feature films, documentaries and shorts. He was also a fiction writer, publisher, illustrator, graphic designer and film critic. Ray's first film, Pather Panchali (1955), won eleven international prizes, including Best Human Document at the Cannes film festival. Alongside Aparajito (1956) and Apur Sansar (1959), the three films form The Apu Trilogy. Ray did the scripting, casting, scoring, cinematography, art direction, editing and designed his own credit titles and publicity material. Ray received many major awards in his career, including 32 Indian National Film Awards, a number of awards at international film festivals and award ceremonies, and an Academy Honorary Award in 1992.
Contents [hide]
1 Early life and background
2 The Apu Years (1950–1959)
3 From Devi to Charulata (1959–1964)
4 New directions (1965–1982)
5 The last phase (1983–1992)
6 Film craft
7 Literary works
8 Critical and popular response
9 Legacy
10 Awards, honours and recognitions
11 Notes
12 See also
13 References
14 External links
[edit]Early life and background
Satyajit Ray, 1932
Satyajit Ray's ancestry can be traced back for at least ten generations.[2] Ray's grandfather, Upendrakishore Ray was a writer, illustrator, philosopher, publisher, amateur astronomer and a leader of the Brahmo Samaj, a religious and social movement in nineteenth century Bengal. Sukumar Ray, Upendrakishore's son, was a pioneering Bengali writer of nonsense rhyme and children's literature, an illustrator and a critic. Ray was born to Sukumar and Suprabha Ray in Kolkata. Sukumar Ray died when Satyajit was barely three, and the family survived on Suprabha Ray's meager income. Ray studied at Ballygunge Government High School, Calcutta, and then completed his B.A. (Hons.) in economics at Presidency College of the University of Calcutta, though his interest was always in fine arts. In 1940, his mother insisted that he study at the Visva-Bharati University at Santiniketan, founded by Rabindranath Tagore. Ray was reluctant due to his love of Kolkata, and due to the generally low opinion of the intellectual life at Santiniketan.[3] His mother's persuasion and his respect for Tagore finally convinced him to try this route. In Santiniketan, Ray came to appreciate oriental art. He later admitted that he learnt much from the famous painters Nandalal Bose[4] and Benode Behari Mukherjee on whom Ray later produced a documentary film, "The Inner Eye". With visits to Ajanta, Ellora and Elephanta, Ray developed an admiration for Indian art.[5]
He joined as a "junior visualiser", earning just eighty rupees a month. Although on the one hand, visual design was something close to Ray's heart and, for the most part, he was treated well, there was palpable tension between the British and Indian employees of the firm (the former were much better paid), and Ray felt that "the clients were generally stupid".[6] Around 1943, Ray became involved with Signet Press, a new publishing house started up by D. K. Gupta. Gupta asked Ray to create cover designs for books published from Signet Press and gave him complete artistic freedom. Ray designed covers for many books, including Jim Corbett's Maneaters of Kumaon, and Jawaharlal Nehru's Discovery of India. He also worked on a children's version of Pather Panchali, a classic Bengali novel by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay, renamed as Am Antir Bhepu (The mango-seed whistle). Ray was deeply influenced by the work, which became the subject of his first film. In addition to designing the cover, he illustrated the book; many of his illustrations ultimately found their place as shots in his groundbreaking film.[7]
Along with Chidananda Dasgupta and others, Ray founded the Calcutta Film Society in 1947, through which he was exposed to many foreign films. Throughout this time, Ray continued to watch and study films seriously. He befriended the American GIs stationed in Kolkata during World War II, who would inform him of the latest American films showing in the city. He came to know a RAF employee, Norman Clare, who shared Ray's passion of films, chess and western classical music.[8]
In 1949, Ray married Bijoya Das, his first cousin and longtime sweetheart.[9] The couple had a son, Sandip, who is now a film director. In the same year, Jean Renoir came to Kolkata to shoot his film The River. Ray helped him to find locations in the countryside. It was then that Ray told Renoir about his idea of filming Pather Panchali, which had been on his mind for some time, and Renoir encouraged him to proceed.[10] In 1950, Ray was sent to London by D.J. Keymer to work at its head office. During his three months in London, he watched 99 films. Among these was the neorealist film Ladri di biciclette Bicycle Thieves (1948) by Vittorio De Sica which had a profound impact on him. Ray later said that he came out of the theater determined to become a filmmaker.[11]
[edit]The Apu Years (1950–1959)
See also: The Apu Trilogy and Filmography of Satyajit Ray
Ray during his years at Santiniketan.
Ray had now decided that Pather Panchali, the classic bildungsroman of Bengali literature, published in 1928 by Bibhutibhusan Bandopadhyay, would be the subject matter for his first film. This semi-autobiographical novel describes the growing up of Apu, a small boy in a Bengal village.
Ray gathered an inexperienced crew, although both his cameraman Subrata Mitra and art director Bansi Chandragupta went on to achieve great acclaim. The cast consisted of mostly amateur artists. Shooting started in late 1952, using Ray's personal savings. He had hoped once the initial shots had been completed, he would be able to obtain funds to support the project; however, such funding was not forthcoming.[12] Pather Panchali was shot over the unusually long period of three years, because shooting was possible only from time to time, when Ray or production manager Anil Chowdhury could arrange further money.[12] With a loan from the West Bengal government, the film was finally completed and released in 1955 to great critical and popular success, sweeping up numerous prizes and having long runs in both India and abroad. During the making of the film, Ray refused funding from sources who demanded a change in script or the supervision of the producer, and ignored advice from the government (which finally funded the film anyway) to incorporate a happy ending in having Apu's family join a "development project".[13] Even greater help than Renoir's encouragement occurred when Ray showed a sequence to John Huston who was in India scouting locations for The Man Who Would Be King. The sequence is the remarkable vision Apu and his sister have of the train running through the countryside. It was the only sequence Ray had filmed due to his small budget. Huston notified Monroe Wheeler at the New York Museum of Modern Art that a major talent was on the horizon.
Wide open eyes, a continual motif in The Apu Trilogy
In India, the reaction to the film was enthusiastic, The Times of India wrote that "It is absurd to compare it with any other Indian cinema [...] Pather Panchali is pure cinema".[14] In the United Kingdom, Lindsay Anderson wrote a glowing review of the film.[14] However, the reaction was not uniformly positive. After watching the movie, François Truffaut is reported to have said, "I don’t want to see a movie of peasants eating with their hands."[15] Bosley Crowther, then the most influential critic of The New York Times, wrote a scathing review of the film that its distributor Ed Harrison thought would kill off the film when it got released in the United States, but instead it enjoyed an exceptionally long run.
Ray's international career started in earnest after the success of his next film, Aparajito (The Unvanquished).[16] This film shows the eternal struggle between the ambitions of a young man, Apu, and the mother who loves him.[16] Many critics, notably Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak, rank it even higher than the first film.[16] Aparajito won the Golden Lion in Venice. Before the completion of The Apu Trilogy, Ray completed two other films. The first is the comic Parash Pathar (The Philosopher's Stone), which was followed by Jalsaghar (The Music Room), a film about the decadence of the Zamindars, considered one of his most important works.[17]
Ray had not thought about a trilogy while making Aparajito, and it occurred to him only after being asked about the idea in Venice.[18] The final installation of the series, Apur Sansar (The World of Apu) was made in 1959. Just like the two previous films, a number of critics find this to be the supreme achievement of the trilogy (Robin Wood, Aparna Sen). Ray introduced two of his favourite actors Soumitra Chatterjee and Sharmila Tagore in this film. The film finds Apu living in a nondescript Kolkata house in near-poverty. He becomes involved in an unusual marriage with Aparna, the scenes of their life together forming "one of the cinema's classic affirmative depiction of married life",[19] but tragedy ensues. After Apur Sansar was harshly criticised by a Bengali critic, Ray wrote an article defending it—a rare event in Ray's film making career (the other major instance involved the film Charulata, Ray's personal favourite).[20] His success had little influence on his personal life in the years to come. Ray continued to live with his mother, uncle and other members of his extended family in a rented house.[21]
[edit]From Devi to Charulata (1959–1964)
Reversal of the gaze, Charulata looking at Amal
During this period, Ray composed films on the British Raj period (such as Devi), a documentary on Tagore, a comic film (Mahapurush) and his first film from an original screenplay (Kanchenjungha). He also made a series of films that, taken together, are considered by critics among the most deeply felt portrayal of Indian women on screen.[22]
Ray followed Apur Sansar with Devi (The Goddess), a film in which are studied the superstitions in the Hindu society. Sharmila Tagore starred as Doyamoyee, a young wife who is deified by her father-in-law. Ray was worried that the censor board might block his film, or at least make him re-cut it, but Devi was spared. In 1961, on the insistence of Prime-minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Ray was commissioned to make a documentary on Rabindranath Tagore, on the occasion of the poet's birth centennial, a tribute to the person who probably influenced Ray most. Due to limited real footage of Tagore available, Ray faced the challenge of making a film out of mainly static material, and he remarked that it took as much work as three feature films.[23] In the same year, together with Subhas Mukhopadhyay and others, Ray was able to revive Sandesh, the children's magazine his grandfather once published. Ray had been saving money for some years now to make this possible.[24] A duality in the name (Sandesh means both "news" in Bengali and also a sweet desert popular in Bengal) set the tone of the magazine (both educational and entertaining), and Ray soon found himself illustrating the magazine, and writing stories and essays for children. Writing became his major source of income in the years to come.
In 1962, Ray directed Kanchenjungha, which was his first original screenplay and colour film. The film tells the story of an upper-class family spending an afternoon in Darjeeling, a picturesque hill town in West Bengal, where the family tries to engage their youngest daughter to a highly-paid engineer educated in London. The film was first conceived to take place in a large mansion, but Ray later decided to film it in the famous hill town, using the many shades of light and mist to reflect the tension in the drama. An amused Ray noted that while his script allowed shooting to be possible under any lighting conditions, a commercial film contingent present at the same time in Darjeeling failed to shoot a single shot as they only wanted to do so in sunshine.[25]
In the sixties, Ray visited Japan and took particular pleasure in meeting filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, for whom he had very high regard. While at home, he would take an occasional break from the hectic city life by going to places like Darjeeling or Puri to complete a script in isolation.
In 1964 Ray made Charulata (The Lonely Wife), the culmination of this period of work, and regarded by many critics as his most accomplished film.[26] Based on Nastanirh, a short story of Tagore, the film tells the tale of a lonely wife, Charu, in 19th century Bengal, and her growing feelings for her brother in law, Amal. Often referred to as Ray's Mozartian masterpiece, Ray himself famously said the film contained least flaws among his work, and his only work, that given a chance, he would make exactly the same way.[27] Madhabi Mukherjee's performance as Charu, and the work of both Subrata Mitra and Bansi Chandragupta in the film have been highly praised. Other films in this period include Mahanagar (The Big City), Teen Kanya (Three Daughters), Abhijan (The Expedition) and Kapurush o Mahapurush (The Coward and the Holy Man).
[edit]New directions (1965–1982)
In the post-Charulata period, Ray took on projects of increasing variety, ranging from fantasy to science fiction to detective films to historical drama. Ray also made considerable formal experimentation during this period, and also took closer notice to the contemporary issues of Indian life, responding to a perceived lack of these issues in his films. The first major film in this period is Nayak (The Hero), the story of a screen hero traveling in a train where he meets a young sympathetic female journalist. Starring Uttam Kumar and Sharmila Tagore, the film explores, in the twenty-four hours of the journey, the inner conflict of the apparently highly successful matinée idol. In spite of receiving a Critics prize in Berlin, the reaction to this film was generally muted.[28]
In 1967, Ray wrote a script for a film to be called The Alien, based on his short story Bankubabur Bandhu ("Banku Babu's Friend") which he wrote in 1962 for Sandesh, the Ray family magazine. The Alien had Columbia Pictures as producer for this planned U.S.-India co-production, and Peter Sellers and Marlon Brando as the leading actors. However, Ray was surprised to find that the script he had written had already been copyrighted and the fee appropriated by Mike Wilson. Wilson had initially approached Ray as an acquaintance of a mutual friend, Arthur C. Clarke, to represent him in Hollywood. The script Wilson had copyrighted was credited as Mike Wilson & Satyajit Ray, despite the fact that he only contributed a single word in it. Ray later stated that he never received a penny for the script.[29] Brando later dropped out of the project, and though an attempt was made to replace him with James Coburn, Ray became disillusioned and returned to Kolkata.[29][30] Columbia expressed interest in reviving the project several times in the 1970s and 1980s, but nothing came of it. When E.T. was released in 1982, Clarke and Ray saw similarities in the film to the earlier Alien script—Ray discussed the collapse of the project in a 1980 Sight & Sound feature, with further details revealed by Ray's biographer Andrew Robinson (in The Inner Eye, 1989). Ray believed that Spielberg's film would not have been possible without his script of The Alien being available throughout America in mimeographed copies (a charge Spielberg denies).[31] Besides The Alien, two other unrealized projects Ray intended to direct were theatrical adaptations of the ancient Indian epic, the Mahābhārata, and E. M. Forster's 1924 novel A Passage to India.[32]
In 1969, Ray made what would be commercially the most successful of his films. Based on a children's story written by his grandfather, Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne (The Adventures of Goopy and Bagha) is a musical fantasy. Goopy the singer and Bagha the drummer, equipped by three boons allowed by the King of Ghosts, set out on a fantastic journey in which they try to stop an impending war between two neighbouring kingdoms. Among his most expensive enterprises, it turned out to be very hard to finance; Ray abandoned his desire to shoot it in colour, turning down an offer that would have forced him to cast a certain Bollywood actor as the lead.[33] Ray next made a film from a novel by the young poet and writer, Sunil Gangopadhyay. Featuring a musical structure acclaimed as even more complex than Charulata,[34] Aranyer Din Ratri (Days and Nights in the Forest) traces four urban young men going to the forests for a vacation, trying to leave their petty urban existence behind. All but one of them get engaged into revealing encounters with women, which critics consider a revealing study of the Indian middle class. Ray cast Bombay-based actress Simi Garewal as a tribal woman, who was pleasantly surprised to find that Ray could envision someone as urban as her in that role.
After Aranyer, Ray made a foray into contemporary Bengali reality, which was then in state of continuous flux due to the leftist Naxalite movement. He completed the so-called Calcutta trilogy: Pratidwandi (1970), Seemabaddha (1971), and Jana Aranya (1975), three films which were conceived separately, but whose thematic connections form a loose trilogy.[35] Pratidwandi (The Adversary) is about an idealist young graduate; if disillusioned, still uncorrupted at the end of film, Jana Aranya (The Middleman) about how a young man gives in to the culture of corruption to make a living, and Seemabaddha (Company Limited) about an already successful man giving up morals for further gains. Of these, the first, Pratidwandi, uses an elliptical narrative style previously unseen in Ray films, such as scenes in negative, dream sequences and abrupt flashbacks.[35] In the 1970s, Ray also adapted two of his popular stories as detective films. Though mainly targeted towards children and young adults, both Sonar Kella (The Golden Fortress) and Joy Baba Felunath (The Elephant God) found some critical following.[36]
Ray considered making a film on the Bangladesh Liberation War but later abandoned the idea, commenting that as a filmmaker he was more interested in the travails and journeys of the refugees and not politics.[37] In 1977, Ray completed Shatranj Ke Khiladi (The Chess Players), an Urdu film based on a story by Munshi Premchand, set in Lucknow in the state of Oudh, a year before the Indian rebellion of 1857. A commentary on the circumstances that led to the colonization of India by the British, this was Ray's first feature film in a language other than Bengali. This is also his most expensive and star-studded film, featuring likes of Sanjeev Kumar, Saeed Jaffrey, Amjad Khan, Shabana Azmi, Victor Bannerjee and Richard Attenborough. Ray made a sequel to Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne in 1980, a somewhat overtly political Hirak Rajar Deshe (Kingdom of Diamonds) — where the kingdom of the evil Diamond King or Hirok Raj is an allusion to India during Indira Gandhi's emergency period.[38] Along with his acclaimed short film Pikoo (Pikoo's Day) and hour long Hindi film Sadgati this was the culmination of his work in this period.
[edit]The last phase (1983–1992)
Sukumar Ray, on whom Ray made a documentary in 1987
In 1983, while working on Ghare Baire (Home and the World), Ray suffered a heart attack that would severely limit his output in the remaining 9 years of his life. Ghare Baire was completed in 1984 with the help of Ray's son (who would operate the camera from then on) because of his health condition. He wanted to film this Tagore novel on the dangers of fervent nationalism for a long time, and even wrote a (weak, by his own admission) script for it in the 1940s.[39] In spite of rough patches due to his illness, the film did receive some critical acclaim, and it contained the first full-blown kiss in Ray's films. In 1987, he made a documentary on his father, Sukumar Ray.
Ray's last three films, made after his recovery and with medical strictures in place, were shot mostly indoors, have a distinctive style. They are more verbose than his earlier films and are often regarded as inferior to his earlier body of work.[40] The first, Ganashatru (An Enemy of the People) is an adaptation of the famous Ibsen play, and considered the weakest of the three.[41] Ray recovered some of his form in his 1990 film Shakha Proshakha (Branches of the Tree).[42] In it, an old man, who has lived a life of honesty, comes to learn of the corruption three of his sons indulge in with the final scene shows him finding solace only in the companionship of the fourth, uncorrupted but mentally ill son. After Shakha Prashakha, Ray's swan song Agantuk (The Stranger) is lighter in mood, but not in theme. A long lost uncle's sudden visit to his niece's house in Kolkata raises suspicion as to his motive and far-ranging questions about civilization.[43]
In 1992, Ray's health deteriorated due to heart complications. He was admitted to a hospital, and would never recover. An honorary Oscar was awarded to him weeks before his death, which he received in a gravely ill condition. He died on 23 April 1992.
[edit]Film craft
Satyajit Ray considered script-writing to be an integral part of direction. This is one reason why he initially refused to make a film in any language other than Bengali. In his two non-Bengali feature films, he wrote the script in English, which translators then interpreted in Hindi or Urdu under Ray's supervision. Ray's own eye for detail was matched by that of his art director Bansi Chandragupta, whose influence on the early Ray films were so important that Ray would always write scripts in English before creating a Bengali version, so that the non-Bengali Chandragupta would be able to read it. Camera work in Ray's early films garnered high regard for the craft of Subrata Mitra, whose (bitter) departure from Ray's crew, according to a number of critics, lowered the quality of cinematography in his films.[28] Though Ray openly praised Mitra, his single-mindedness made him take over operation of the camera since Charulata, causing Mitra to stop working for Ray after 1966. Pioneering works of Subrata Mitra included development of "bounce lighting", a technique of bouncing light off cloth to create a diffused realistic light even on a set. Ray also acknowledged debt to Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut of the French New Wave for introducing new technical and cinematic innovations.[44]
Though Ray had a regular editor in Dulal Datta, he usually dictated the editing while Datta did the actual work. In fact, because of financial reasons and Ray's meticulous planning, his films were mostly cut "on the camera" (apart from Pather Panchali). At the beginning of his career, Ray worked with Indian classical musicians, including Ravi Shankar, Vilayat Khan and Ali Akbar Khan. However, the experience was painful for him as he found that their first loyalty was to musical traditions, and not to his film; also, his greater grasp of western classical forms, which he regarded as essential, especially for his films set in an urban milieu, stood in the way.[45] This led him to compose his own scores starting from Teen Kanya. Ray used actors of diverse backgrounds, from famous film stars to people who have never seen a film (such as in Aparajito).[46] Robin Wood and others have lauded him as the best director of children, pointing out memorable performances including Apu and Durga (Pather Panchali), Ratan (Postmaster) and Mukul (Sonar Kella). Depending on the talent or experience of the actor Ray's direction would vary from virtually nothing (actors like Utpal Dutt) to using the actor as "a puppet"[47] (Subir Banerjee as young Apu or Sharmila Tagore as Aparna). According to actors working for Ray, his customary trust in the actors would occasionally be tempered by his ability to treat incompetence with "total contempt".[48]
[edit]Literary works
Main article: Literary creations of Satyajit Ray
Cover of a collection of Satyajit Ray's short stories
Ray created two very popular characters in Bengali children's literature—Feluda, a sleuth, and Professor Shonku, a scientist. He was a prominent writer of science fiction in Bengali or any Indian language for that matter. He also wrote short stories which were published as volumes of 12 stories, always with names playing on the word twelve (for example Aker pitthe dui, or literally "Two on top of one"). Ray's interest in puzzles and puns is reflected in his stories, Feluda often has to solve a puzzle to get to the bottom of a case. The Feluda stories are narrated by Topshe, his cousin, something of a Watson to Feluda's Holmes. The science fictions of Shonku are presented as a diary discovered after the scientist himself had mysteriously disappeared. Ray's short stories give full reign to his interest in the macabre, in suspense and other aspects that he avoided in film, making for an interesting psychological study.[49] Most of his writings have now been translated into English, and are finding a new group of readers.
Most of his screenplays have also been published in Bengali in the literary journal Eksan. Ray wrote his autobiography encompassing his childhood years, Jakhan Choto Chilam (1982) and essays on film: Our Films, Their Films (1976), along with Bishoy Chalachchitra (1976), Ekei Bole Shooting (1979). During the mid-1990s, Ray's film essays and an anthology of short stories were also published in the West. Our Films, Their Films is an anthology of film criticism by Ray. The book contains articles and personal journal excerpts. The book is presented in two sections—Ray first discusses Indian film, before turning his attention towards Hollywood and specific international filmmakers (Charlie Chaplin, Akira Kurosawa) and movements like Italian neorealism. His book Bishoy Chalachchitra was translated in 2006 as Speaking of Films, and contains a compact description of his philosophy of different aspects of the cinema. Ray also wrote a collection of nonsense verse named Today Bandha Ghorar Dim, which includes a translation of Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky". He also authored a collection of humorous stories of Mullah Nasiruddin in Bengali.
Satyajit Ray designed four typefaces for roman script named Ray Roman, Ray Bizarre, Daphnis, and Holiday Script, apart from numerous Bengali ones for the Sandesh magazine.[50][51] Ray Roman and Ray Biazarre won an international competition in 1971.[52] In certain circles of Kolkata, Ray continued to be known as an eminent graphic designer, well into his film career. Ray illustrated all his books and designed covers for them, as well as creating all publicity material for his films. He also designed covers of several books by other authors.[53]
[edit]Critical and popular response
Ray's work has been described as reverberating with humanism and universality, and of deceptive simplicity with deep underlying complexity.[54][55] Praise has often been heaped on his work by many, including Akira Kurosawa, who declared, "Not to have seen the cinema of Ray means existing in the world without seeing the sun or the moon."[56] But his detractors find his films glacially slow, moving like a "majestic snail."[26] Some find his humanism simple-minded, and his work anti-modern and claim that they lack new modes of expression or experimentation found in works of Ray's contemporaries like Jean-Luc Godard.[57] As Stanley Kauffman wrote, some critics believe that Ray "assumes [viewers] can be interested in a film that simply dwells in its characters, rather than one that imposes dramatic patterns on their lives."[58] Ray himself commented that this slowness is something he can do nothing about. Kurosawa defended him by saying that Ray's films were not slow at all, "His work can be described as flowing composedly, like a big river".[59]
Critics have often compared Ray to artists in the cinema and other media, such as Anton Chekhov, Renoir, De Sica, Howard Hawks or Mozart. Shakespeare has also been invoked,[19][60] for example by the writer V. S. Naipaul, who compared a scene in Shatranj Ki Khiladi to a Shakespearian play, as "only three hundred words are spoken but goodness! – terrific things happen."[61] It is generally acknowledged, even by those who were not impressed by the aesthetics of Ray's films, that he was virtually peerless in that his films encompass a whole culture with all its nuances, a sentiment expressed in Ray's obituary in The Independent, which exclaimed, "Who else can compete?"[62]
Early in 1980, Ray was openly criticized by an Indian M.P. and former actress Nargis Dutt, who accused Ray of "exporting poverty," demanding he make films to represent "Modern India."[63] On the other hand, a common accusation levelled against him by advocates of socialism across India was that he was not "committed" to the cause of the nation's downtrodden classes, with some commentators accusing Ray of glorifying poverty in Pather Panchali and Asani Sanket through lyricism and aesthetics. They also accused him of providing no solution to conflicts in the stories, and being unable to overcome his bourgeoisie background. Agitations during the naxalite movements in the 1970s once came close to causing physical harm to his son, Sandip.[64] In a public debate during the 1960s, Ray and the openly Marxist filmmaker Mrinal Sen engaged in an argument. Sen criticized him for casting a matinée idol like Uttam Kumar, which he considered a compromise,[65] while Ray shot back by saying that Sen only attacks "easy targets", i.e. the Bengali middle-classes. His private life was never a subject of media scrutiny.
[edit]Legacy
Ray with his Academy Award just days before his death.
Satyajit Ray is a cultural icon in India and in Bengali communities worldwide.[66] Following his death, the city of Kolkata came to a virtual standstill, as hundreds of thousands of people gathered around his house to pay him their last respects.[67] Satyajit Ray's influence has been widespread and deep in Bengali cinema; a number of Bengali directors including Aparna Sen, Rituparno Ghosh and Gautam Ghose in India, Tareq Masud and Tanvir Mokammel in Bangladesh, and Aneel Ahmad in England, have been influenced by his film craft. Across the spectrum, filmmakers such as Budhdhadeb Dasgupta, Mrinal Sen[68] and Adoor Gopalakrishnan have acknowledged his seminal contribution to Indian cinema. Beyond India, filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese,[69][70] James Ivory,[71] Abbas Kiarostami, Elia Kazan, François Truffaut,[72] Carlos Saura,[73] Isao Takahata[74] and Danny Boyle[75] have been influenced by his cinematic style, with many others such as Akira Kurosawa praising his work.[56] Ira Sachs's 2005 work Forty Shades of Blue was a loose remake of Charulata, and in Gregory Nava's 1995 film My Family, the final scene is duplicated from the final scene of Apur Sansar. Similar references to Ray films are found, for example, in recent works such as Sacred Evil,[76] the Elements trilogy of Deepa Mehta and even in films of Jean-Luc Godard.[77] According to Michael Sragow of The Atlantic Monthly, the "youthful coming-of-age dramas that have flooded art houses since the mid-fifties owe a tremendous debt to the Apu trilogy".[78]
The character Apu Nahasapeemapetilon in the American animated television series The Simpsons was named in homage to Ray's popular character from The Apu Trilogy. Ray along with Madhabi Mukherjee, was the first Indian film personality to feature in a foreign stamp (Dominica). Many literary works include references to Ray or his work, including Saul Bellow's Herzog and J. M. Coetzee's Youth. Salman Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories contains fish characters named Goopy and Bagha, a tribute to Ray's fantasy film. In 1993, UC Santa Cruz established the Satyajit Ray Film and Study collection, and in 1995, the Government of India set up Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute for studies related to film. In 2007, British Broadcasting Corporation declared that two Feluda stories would be made into radio programs.[79] During the London Film Festival, a regular "Satyajit Ray Award" is given to first-time feature director whose film best captures "the artistry, compassion and humanity of Ray's vision". Wes Anderson has claimed Ray as an influence on his work; his most recent live-action film, The Darjeeling Limited, set in India, is dedicated to Ray.
[edit]Awards, honours and recognitions
Further information: List of awards conferred on Satyajit Ray
Numerous awards were bestowed on Ray throughout his lifetime, including 32 National Film Awards by the Government of India, in addition to awards at international film festivals. At the Berlin Film Festival, he was one of only three filmmakers to win the Silver Bear for Best Director more than once[80] and holds the record for the most number of Golden Bear nominations, with seven. At the Venice Film Festival, where he had previously won a Golden Lion for Aparajito (1956), he was awarded the Golden Lion Honorary Award in 1982.[81] That same year, he received an honorary "Hommage à Satyajit Ray" award at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival.[82]
Ray is the second film personality after Chaplin to have been awarded honorary doctorates by Oxford University.[83] He was awarded the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 1985 and the Legion of Honor by the President of France in 1987.[84] The Government of India awarded him the highest civilian honour, Bharat Ratna shortly before his death.[84] The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded Ray an honorary Oscar in 1992 for Lifetime Achievement. It was one of his favourite actresses, Audrey Hepburn, who represented the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on that day in Calcutta. In 1992 he was posthumously awarded the Akira Kurosawa Award for Lifetime Achievement in Directing at the San Francisco International Film Festival; it was accepted on his behalf by actress Sharmila Tagore.[85]
In 1992, the Sight & Sound Critics' Top Ten Poll ranked Ray at #7 in its list of "Top 10 Directors" of all time, making him the highest-ranking Asian filmmaker in the poll.[86] In 2002, the Sight & Sound critics' and directors' poll ranked Ray at #22 in its list of all-time greatest directors,[87] thus making him the fourth highest-ranking Asian filmmaker in the poll.[87] In 1996, Entertainment Weekly magazine ranked Ray at #25 in its "50 Greatest Directors" list.[88] In 2007, Total Film magazine included Ray in its "100 Greatest Film Directors Ever" list.[89]
[edit]Notes
^ Santas 2002, p. 18
^ Seton 1971, p. 36
^ Robinson 2003, p. 46
^ Seton 1971, p. 70
^ Seton 1971, pp. 71–72
^ Robinson 2003, pp. 56–58
^ Robinson 2005, p. 38
^ Robinson 2005, pp. 40–43
^ "Satyajit Ray had an unconventional marriage. He married Bijoya (born 1917), youngest daughter of his eldest maternal uncle, Charuchandra Das, in 1948 in a secret ceremony in Bombay after a long romantic relationship that had begun around the time he left college in 1940. The marriage was reconfirmed in Calcutta the next year at a traditional religious ceremony.", "Ties that Bind" by Arup Kr De, The Statesman, Kolkata, 27th.April.2008
^ Robinson 2005, pp. 42–44
^ Robinson 2005, p. 48
^ a b Robinson 2003, pp. 74–90
^ Seton 1971, p. 95
^ a b Seton 1971, pp. 112–15
^ "Filmi Funda Pather Panchali (1955)". The Telegraph. 2005-04-20. Retrieved 2006-04-29.
^ a b c Robinson 2003, pp. 91–106
^ Malcolm D. "Satyajit Ray: The Music Room". guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 2006-06-19.
^ Wood 1972, p. 61
^ a b Wood 1972
^ Ray mentions this in Ray 1993, p. 13
^ Robinson 2003, p. 5
^ Palopoli S. "Ghost 'World'". metroactive.com. Retrieved 2006-06-19.
^ Robinson 2003, p. 277
^ Seton 1971, p. 189
^ Robinson 2003, p. 142
^ a b Robinson 2003, p. 157
^ Antani J. "Charulata". Slant magazine. Retrieved 2006-06-19.
^ a b Dasgupta 1996, p. 91
^ a b Ray, Satyajit. "Ordeals of the Alien". The Unmade Ray. Satyajit Ray Society. Retrieved 2008-04-21.
^ Neumann P. "Biography for Satyajit Ray". Internet Movie Database Inc. Retrieved 2006-04-29.
^ Newman J (2001-09-17). "Satyajit Ray Collection receives Packard grant and lecture endowment". UC Santa Cruz Currents online. Retrieved 2006-04-29.
^ C. J. Wallia (1996). "IndiaStar book review: Satyajit Ray by Surabhi Banerjee". Retrieved 2009-05-31.
^ Seton 1971, pp. 291–297
^ Wood 1972, p. 13
^ a b Robinson 2003, pp. 200–220
^ Rushdie 1992
^ Robinson 2003, p. 206
^ Robinson 2003, pp. 188–189
^ Robinson 2003, pp. 66–67
^ Robinson 2003, pp. 339–364
^ Dasgupta 1996, p. 134
^ Robinson 2003, p. 353
^ Robinson 2003, pp. 353–364
^ Sen A. "Western Influences on Satyajit Ray". Parabaas. Retrieved 2006-04-29.
^ Robinson 2003, pp. 315–318
^ Ray 1994, p. 100
^ Robinson 2003, p. 78
^ Robinson 2003, p. 307
^ Nandy 1995
^ Datta, Sudipta (19 January 2008). "The Ray show goes on". The Financial Express (Indian Express Newspapers (Mumbai) Ltd). Retrieved 2008-04-10.
^ "Ray Typography". Retrieved 2008-07-07.
^ Robinson 2003, p. 57
^ Robinson 2003, p. 57–59
^ Malcolm D. "The universe in his backyard". guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 2007-02-15.
^ Swagrow M. "An Art Wedded to Truth". The Atlantic Monthly. Retrieved 2007-02-15.
^ a b Robinson 2003, p. 96
^ Robinson 2003, pp. 306–318
^ Robinson 2003, pp. 352–353
^ Robinson 2003, pp. 314–315
^ Ebert R. "The Music Room (1958)". suntimes.com. Retrieved 2006-04-29.
^ Robinson 2003, p. 246
^ Robinson 2005, pp. 13–14
^ Robinson 2003, pp. 327–328
^ Robinson 2003, p. 205
^ Robinson 2003, p. 177
^ Tankha, Madhur (1 December 2007). "Returning to the classics of Ray". The Hindu. Retrieved 2008-05-01.
^ Amitav Ghosh. "Satyajit Ray". Doom Online. Retrieved 2006-06-19.
^ Mrinal Sen. "Our lives, their lives". Little Magazine. Retrieved 2006-06-29.
^ Chris Ingui. "Martin Scorsese hits DC, hangs with the Hachet". Hatchet. Retrieved 2009-06-06.
^ Jay Antani (2004). "Raging Bull: A film review". Filmcritic.com. Retrieved 2009-05-04.
^ Sheldon Hall. "Ivory, James (1928-)". Screen Online. Retrieved 2007-02-12.
^ Dave Kehr (5 May 1995). "THE 'WORLD' OF SATYAJIT RAY: LEGACY OF INDIA'S PREMIER FILM MAKER ON DISPLAY". Daily News. Retrieved 2009-06-06.
^ Suchetana Ray (11 March 2008). "Satyajit Ray is this Spanish director's inspiration". CNN-IBN. Retrieved 2009-06-06.
^ Daniel Thomas (20 January 2003). "Film Reviews: Grave of the Fireflies (Hotaru no Haka)". Retrieved 2009-05-30.
^ Alkarim Jivani (February 2009). "Mumbai rising". Sight & Sound. Retrieved 2009-02-01.
^ SK Jha. "Sacred Ray". Telegraph India. Retrieved 2006-06-29.
^ André Habib. "Before and After: Origins and Death in the Work of Jean-Luc Godard". Senses of Cinema. Retrieved 2006-06-29.
^ Sragow, Michael (1994), "An Art Wedded to Truth", The Atlantic Monthly (University of California, Santa Cruz), retrieved 2009-05-11
^ Datta S. "Feluda goes global, via radio". Financial Express. Retrieved 2007-02-12.
^ "Silver Bear winners (directors)". listal. 24 November 2008. Retrieved 2009-04-19.
^ "Awards for Satyajit Ray". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 2009-04-19.
^ "Personal Awards". Satyajit Ray official site. Retrieved 2009-04-19.
^ Robinson 2003, p. 1
^ a b "Personal Awards". Awards. satyajitray.org. Retrieved 2008-04-09.
^ "Awards and Tributes: Satyajit Ray". San Francisco International Film Festival: The First to Fifty. San Francisco Film Society. Retrieved 2008-04-08.
^ "Sight and Sound Poll 1992: Critics". California Institute of Technology. Retrieved 2009-05-29.
^ a b Kevin Lee (2002-09-05). "A Slanted Canon". Asian American Film Commentary. Retrieved 2009-04-24.
^ "Greatest Film Directors and Their Best Films". Filmsite.org. Retrieved 2009-04-19.
^ "The Greatest Directors Ever by Total Film Magazine". Filmsite.org. Retrieved 2009-04-19.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Siliguri
Siliguri pronunciation (Bengali: শিলিগুড়ি) is a Metropolitan city in the Indian state of West Bengal. It is located in the Siliguri Corridor or Chicken's Neck — a very narrow strip of land linking mainland India to its north eastern states. It is also the transit point for air, road and rail traffic to the neighboring countries of Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh. The town hosts over 500,000 domestic and 15,000 foreign visitors annually. It is the commercial nerve center of North Bengal.
Siliguri is situated in Darjeeling district, and though it is the district's largest city, the district headquarters is located at Darjeeling. Siliguri is a unique city as 15 out of 47 wards of Siliguri Municipal Corporation falls in neighbouring Jalpaiguri district. The Indian army, Border Security Force (BSF), Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Shashatra Seema Bal (SSB) and the Assam Rifles have bases around the city. The Bagdogra Airport is located within the Indian Air Force (IAF) cantonment area. Siliguri has an Indian Oil Corporation Ltd. (IOC) oil depot near the southern edge of the town. Siliguri is the second largest city of West Bengal after Kolkata and second largest urban agglomeration after Kolkata.
Geography
Siliguri is situated at the base of the Himalaya mountains in the plains. It is the largest city in the area (North Bengal) and second largest city in West Bengal and connects the hill station towns of Gangtok, Rangpo, Kalimpong, Kurseong, Mirik and Darjeeling with the rest of India. The Mahananda River flows past Siliguri. Siliguri has three main seasons summer, winter and monsoon. Dense fog,a characteristic of Siliguri till a decade ago,is a rare occurrence nowadays. During the monsoons between June and September, the town is lashed by moderate to heavy rains often cutting access to the hill stations and Sikkim. The climate is suitable for growing tea and the surrounding region has many tea gardens. The ancient Baikunthapur Forest is nearby. The region is also a huge producer of Tea. Siliguri is one of the fastest growing cities of India.
Economy
Flyover
Siliguri is described as the gateway to the North East of India. The strategic location of the city makes it a base for essential supplies to the region. Siliguri has gradually developed as a profitable centre for a variety of businesses. As a central hub, many national companies and organizations have set up their offices here. The Hong Kong market near Khudirampally is a chief hub for buying low cost Chinese goods and imported goods, nearby Seth Srilal Market, Sevoke Road and Hill Cart Road is a prominent place to buy daily use goods, and is very popular among people from nearby areas. 4 "T" s - Tea, Timber, Tourism and Transport are the main businesses of Siliguri. Recently many hotels had mushroomed up & a very good increment had been seen in this sector at past. Siliguri is the headquarters of FOCIN (Federation of Chamber of Commerce and Industry of North Bengal). The latest development is the development of malls like COSMOS and ORBIT. The city recently also witnessed the arrival of its first set of multiplexes,CINEMAX in early Dec'09 and INOX at ORBIT on Christmas of 2009.
The rapidly growing city also has showrooms of numerous automobile companies such as Maruti Suzuki, Honda Siel, Toyota Kirloskar, Ford, Tata, JCB, Mahindra & Mahindra, Hyundai,Skoda, General Motors. There are numerous two wheeler showrooms also of companies : Hero Honda, Kinetic, Honda scooters, Yamaha, Tvs, Suzuki, Bajaj, LML.
With the growing economic transactions there has opened up some major banks in the city namely Standard Chartered, HDFC, ICICI, Allahabad, State Bank of India, Axis Bank, UCO, Vijaya, IDBI and UBKG bank. There are also some other banks such as Bank of Maharastra, Bank of Baroda, Canara Bank, Andhra Bank, Sonali Bank.
In a recent gesture of international co-operation and friendliness the road network of Siliguri is being used by the government of Nepal and Bangladesh so as to facilitate easy transportation of essential and urgent commodities (like rice etc.). The Silk Route of India i.e trade route between India and China is accessible only after crossing Siliguri (Nathula and Jelepla). Thus making it important for international trade between India and other countries and also among other countries.There also are business routes to Bhutan and security manned border with Bangladesh.
Demographics
A house in Siliguri
Siliguri is experiencing a rapid expansion of its population. In a 2001 India census,[1] the number of residents was 1,220,275. According to estimates for 2008, 1,559,275 people live in the city.[2]. Males constitute 53% of the population and females 47%. Siliguri has an average literacy rate of 70%, higher than the national average of 66.0%; male literacy is 75%, and female literacy is 65%. In Siliguri, 12% of the population is under six years of age.
Siliguri is a metropolitan city with Marwari, Bengali and Nepali people living peacefully. Marwaris are a majority followed by Bengalis, Nepali speaking communities.
Siliguri has seen waves of massive immigration over the years. Most prominent being the migrants from Bangladesh, Assam, Nepal and Bihar. In addition, people from Jharkhand and other parts of India are also coming to the city in search of livelihood. The influx has led to an abnormally high population growth.[3]
Transport
Hasmi
Local public transport include city buses, cycle rickshaws-often paddled by illegal Bangladesh immigrants and auto rickshaws,buses,and Mahindra/Ape tempos. There is no metered vehicular transport. While 6-seater City Autos ply between two fixed destinations of about 10–15 km away, one can hire petrol-driven auto rickshaws from auto-stands at a rate fixed by the Municipal Authorities.A total of 6000 rickshaws of the Municipal Corporation area and an additional 15000 unlicensed ones ply in the increasingly congested city.
Rail
Railway crossing
Siliguri has three important railway stations:
1. Siliguri Town - This is the oldest station in the area. Opened on 23 Aug, 1880 during the British Raj, this station used to be the terminus for the trains coming from Kolkata, and the starting point for the world-famous Darjeeling Himalayan Railway for journey to Darjeeling. It is this station where such world-renowned personalities as Rabindranath Tagore, Chittaranjan Das and Subhash Chandra Bose set their feet on their way to Darjeeling and other places.
2. Siliguri Junction - This station opened in 1949, and used to be the point of departure of all trains to the north-eastern states, until the broad gauge was extended to Dibrugarh. Siliguri Junction is the only station[4] in India with tracks of all the three gauges used in India.
3. New Jalpaiguri - Opened in 1961 as a totally greenfield project 6 km south of Siliguri. Initially named New Siliguri (but, later renamed New Jalpaiguri as it is located in Jalpaiguri District) this is now the most important station in the region. It is also known as NJP. This station connects Siliguri to every nook and corner of the country by railway. The city has now been expanded and included New Jalpaiguri as one of its ward of Siliguri Municipal Corporation. The Darjeeling Himalayan Toy train is the main attraction of this station.
With the extension of broad-gauge railway track to the Siliguri Junction station, people can now travel directly to the heart of the city without having to alight at New Jalpaiguri. This new broad-gauge track extends to the old Dooars metre-gauge track up to Alipurduar and beyond. Travelling over this railway line is a beautiful experience as it passes through the picturesque tea gardens of the Dooars area in the backdrop of Darjeeling and Bhutan hills.
Air
Bagdogra airport, situated about 15 km away is a International airport in the region. The airport, since falls within Air Force area (having some restrictions over length of runways and time of flight, etc.), is not well connected to most Indian cities. However, daily flights are available for the state capital Kolkata, New Delhi, Guwahati,Mumbai, Chennai, Bangkok and Paro.
Bus
Siliguri
The Tenzing Norgay Central Bus Terminus situated next to the Siliguri Junction Railway Station is a major stop for most private and state-owned buses in the region. The Royal Government of Bhutan also operates buses from Siliguri to its border town Phuentsholing. Jeeps also link Siliguri to neighbouring hill towns like Darjeeling, Gangtok, Kurseong, Kalimpong, Mirik, Jorethang, Namchi.
The Sikkim Government buses run to various destinations of Sikkim from the Sikkim Nationalised Transport (SNT) bus station near the Tenzing Norgay Bus Terminus. There is another Bus Terminus named P C Mittal Bus Stand on Sevoke Road. All Buses heading for the Dooars region via the Sevoke Coronation Bridge originate here.
Road
City Auto
A new four-lane road, named Vivekananda Road, has been rebuilt connecting Burdwan Road to Mahabirsthan bringing much relief to the chaotic section of the city and bifurcation of Nivedita road is also going on.The major roads-Hill Cart Rd,Bidhan Road and Sevoke Rd were historically rail routes of the trains "Toy Trains" that went towards Sevoke/Darjeeling.Street lighting and bifurcation of Hill Cart Road took place only in 1988 during the Nehru Cup football tournament. The Mahabirsthan area recently got a fly-over the first of its kind in the city.
National Highway no. 31 and 31A passes through Siliguri. In a recent national level project of building a golden quadrangle linking the major cities of India the NH 31 has been converted into a four way expressway.
The neighbouring countries like Nepal, Bhutan and border region of Bangladesh are also connected through the road network.
Education
Siliguri has always been the hub of education in the Terrai as well as the Dooars region. Apart from the residents of the town, students from states like Sikkim, Nagaland and Assam come here to pursue education. The region also sees an influx of students from the neighbouring countries of Bhutan, Nepal and Bangladesh. While previously there had been just a handful of schools, of late there has been a spurt of growth in numbers with most catering to the CISCE,CBSE and West Bengal Secondary and Higher Secondary board(s).
In and around Siliguri, there are a number of colleges, viz., Siliguri College, Siliguri College of Commerce, Siliguri Women’s College, Surya Sen College. All these deliver general degrees as well as specialization (Honours) in the fields available under the University of North Bengal.
The University of North Bengal, located in a serene backdrop of the Terai foothills and tea gardens, was established in 1962, 10 km away from the main Siliguri town, in Raja Rammohan Pur. Approximately 80 colleges are affiliated to the University, with approximately 36,000 and 1,500 students enrolled in graduate and post graduate courses respectively, every year. A sprawling campus, this University boasts having the second largest campus in the country. Huge stretches of green, in the form of quite-dense vegetation, lakes, and seasonal flowers are woven in between the buildings housing the departments.
Siliguri Institute of Technology
The North Bengal Medical College, located in Sushrutnagar is the sole medical college in the region and is connected to the main city through the 3rd Mahananda Bridge. Students from across the state as well from neighboring sates come to study here, after having cleared the West Bengal Joint Entrance Examinations for engineering and medicine. The recently set up Siliguri Institute Of Technology (SIT)[5] located at Sukna, a few kilometers away from the city has fast become one of the major and regular centres for the state’s corporate houses to recruit fresh engineers.
Sports
Table Tennis, cricket, taekwon-Do, chess and football (soccer) are the five most popular sports here. People are football crazy and support the local clubs. The Kanchenjungha Stadium is the city's only outdoor stadium and matches are regularly held here. The Stadium houses the Sports Authority of India (SAI) sports hostel for athletes. There is an indoor stadium at Deshbandhupara in the southern part of the city. This new stadium has facilities for lawn tennis, badminton and table tennis as well as other indoor sports. However, the city is best known for being the training grounds for many Table Tennis players. Siliguri has produced quite a few National Champions like Maantu Ghosh, the Gold Medal winner in the 1996 and 1999 SAF Games, Subhajit Saha (2007), Nandita Saha (Juniors, 2000). In recent years the close proximity of the Teesta river has made Siliguri a destination for the adventure sports (White Water Rafting) enthusiasts. Wriddhiman Saha (cricketer) celebrated his first class debut for Bengal with a century on debut in the Ranji Trophy against Hyderabad. This wicket-keeper from Saktigarh, Siliguri in North Bengal possesses an extremely safe pair of hands and his performances for Bengal have been rewarded with a place in the East Zone teme. He has also been selected for Kolkata Knight Riders in the Indian Premier League. Bikes / Motorcycles too are a favorite sports of the young generation of Siliguri. To cater the needs, xKmph.com, an Indian Bikers community runs an offline base to bring all the bikers from all over Siliguri and neignbouring cities together and spread the news of biking.
Media
English language newspapers in Siliguri include the Times of India (Kolkata editions), The Economic Times, The Statesman and The Telegraph are widely circulated. Several Hindi, Nepali and Bengali newspapers, including Uttarbanga Sambad, Anandabazar Patrika, Bartaman, Ganashakti, Aajkal, Sunchari Samachar, Nepali daily Purbanchal Bharat Darpan, Dainik Jagran, Ganadabi and Janpath Samachar , Samvad Sanjaal are also available.
In addition to All India Radio, Siliguri has four private FM radio stations: Radio High 92.7FM, Radio Misty 94.3, FM 91.9. and Red FM 93.5.
Siliguri receives almost all the television channels that are received by the rest of the country. Apart from the state-owned terrestrial network Doordarshan, cable television serves most of the homes in the town, while satellite television is common in the outlying areas and in wealthier households. Besides mainstream Indian channels, the town also receives Nepali Television Channels and Bangladesh Television Channels. Local news broadcasts, sporting events, and concerts are broadcast live or delayed via cable to many households. DTH services both by Government and private companies are also available like Tata sky, Dish tv, Digital tv - Airtel, Big tv - Reliance.
Internet cafés are well established in the main market area, served through broadband services provided by BSNL and other private companies like MetroNET[Orange Networks] & Sinet (CCN).
The area is serviced by cell phone companies such as Vodafone, Airtel, Aircel, BSNL, Reliance Communications, Tata Indicom, MTS, Tata Docomo and Virgin Mobile. The major number of subscribers of mobile service are that of BSNL. With the improved service of quality Airtel and Vodafone are also gaining a huge market. The most popular and preferred connection among the Business class is BSNL, Airtel, Vodafone whereas for the Youth is Smart - Reliance GSM Service.
Siliguri is situated in Darjeeling district, and though it is the district's largest city, the district headquarters is located at Darjeeling. Siliguri is a unique city as 15 out of 47 wards of Siliguri Municipal Corporation falls in neighbouring Jalpaiguri district. The Indian army, Border Security Force (BSF), Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Shashatra Seema Bal (SSB) and the Assam Rifles have bases around the city. The Bagdogra Airport is located within the Indian Air Force (IAF) cantonment area. Siliguri has an Indian Oil Corporation Ltd. (IOC) oil depot near the southern edge of the town. Siliguri is the second largest city of West Bengal after Kolkata and second largest urban agglomeration after Kolkata.
Geography
Siliguri is situated at the base of the Himalaya mountains in the plains. It is the largest city in the area (North Bengal) and second largest city in West Bengal and connects the hill station towns of Gangtok, Rangpo, Kalimpong, Kurseong, Mirik and Darjeeling with the rest of India. The Mahananda River flows past Siliguri. Siliguri has three main seasons summer, winter and monsoon. Dense fog,a characteristic of Siliguri till a decade ago,is a rare occurrence nowadays. During the monsoons between June and September, the town is lashed by moderate to heavy rains often cutting access to the hill stations and Sikkim. The climate is suitable for growing tea and the surrounding region has many tea gardens. The ancient Baikunthapur Forest is nearby. The region is also a huge producer of Tea. Siliguri is one of the fastest growing cities of India.
Economy
Flyover
Siliguri is described as the gateway to the North East of India. The strategic location of the city makes it a base for essential supplies to the region. Siliguri has gradually developed as a profitable centre for a variety of businesses. As a central hub, many national companies and organizations have set up their offices here. The Hong Kong market near Khudirampally is a chief hub for buying low cost Chinese goods and imported goods, nearby Seth Srilal Market, Sevoke Road and Hill Cart Road is a prominent place to buy daily use goods, and is very popular among people from nearby areas. 4 "T" s - Tea, Timber, Tourism and Transport are the main businesses of Siliguri. Recently many hotels had mushroomed up & a very good increment had been seen in this sector at past. Siliguri is the headquarters of FOCIN (Federation of Chamber of Commerce and Industry of North Bengal). The latest development is the development of malls like COSMOS and ORBIT. The city recently also witnessed the arrival of its first set of multiplexes,CINEMAX in early Dec'09 and INOX at ORBIT on Christmas of 2009.
The rapidly growing city also has showrooms of numerous automobile companies such as Maruti Suzuki, Honda Siel, Toyota Kirloskar, Ford, Tata, JCB, Mahindra & Mahindra, Hyundai,Skoda, General Motors. There are numerous two wheeler showrooms also of companies : Hero Honda, Kinetic, Honda scooters, Yamaha, Tvs, Suzuki, Bajaj, LML.
With the growing economic transactions there has opened up some major banks in the city namely Standard Chartered, HDFC, ICICI, Allahabad, State Bank of India, Axis Bank, UCO, Vijaya, IDBI and UBKG bank. There are also some other banks such as Bank of Maharastra, Bank of Baroda, Canara Bank, Andhra Bank, Sonali Bank.
In a recent gesture of international co-operation and friendliness the road network of Siliguri is being used by the government of Nepal and Bangladesh so as to facilitate easy transportation of essential and urgent commodities (like rice etc.). The Silk Route of India i.e trade route between India and China is accessible only after crossing Siliguri (Nathula and Jelepla). Thus making it important for international trade between India and other countries and also among other countries.There also are business routes to Bhutan and security manned border with Bangladesh.
Demographics
A house in Siliguri
Siliguri is experiencing a rapid expansion of its population. In a 2001 India census,[1] the number of residents was 1,220,275. According to estimates for 2008, 1,559,275 people live in the city.[2]. Males constitute 53% of the population and females 47%. Siliguri has an average literacy rate of 70%, higher than the national average of 66.0%; male literacy is 75%, and female literacy is 65%. In Siliguri, 12% of the population is under six years of age.
Siliguri is a metropolitan city with Marwari, Bengali and Nepali people living peacefully. Marwaris are a majority followed by Bengalis, Nepali speaking communities.
Siliguri has seen waves of massive immigration over the years. Most prominent being the migrants from Bangladesh, Assam, Nepal and Bihar. In addition, people from Jharkhand and other parts of India are also coming to the city in search of livelihood. The influx has led to an abnormally high population growth.[3]
Transport
Hasmi
Local public transport include city buses, cycle rickshaws-often paddled by illegal Bangladesh immigrants and auto rickshaws,buses,and Mahindra/Ape tempos. There is no metered vehicular transport. While 6-seater City Autos ply between two fixed destinations of about 10–15 km away, one can hire petrol-driven auto rickshaws from auto-stands at a rate fixed by the Municipal Authorities.A total of 6000 rickshaws of the Municipal Corporation area and an additional 15000 unlicensed ones ply in the increasingly congested city.
Rail
Railway crossing
Siliguri has three important railway stations:
1. Siliguri Town - This is the oldest station in the area. Opened on 23 Aug, 1880 during the British Raj, this station used to be the terminus for the trains coming from Kolkata, and the starting point for the world-famous Darjeeling Himalayan Railway for journey to Darjeeling. It is this station where such world-renowned personalities as Rabindranath Tagore, Chittaranjan Das and Subhash Chandra Bose set their feet on their way to Darjeeling and other places.
2. Siliguri Junction - This station opened in 1949, and used to be the point of departure of all trains to the north-eastern states, until the broad gauge was extended to Dibrugarh. Siliguri Junction is the only station[4] in India with tracks of all the three gauges used in India.
3. New Jalpaiguri - Opened in 1961 as a totally greenfield project 6 km south of Siliguri. Initially named New Siliguri (but, later renamed New Jalpaiguri as it is located in Jalpaiguri District) this is now the most important station in the region. It is also known as NJP. This station connects Siliguri to every nook and corner of the country by railway. The city has now been expanded and included New Jalpaiguri as one of its ward of Siliguri Municipal Corporation. The Darjeeling Himalayan Toy train is the main attraction of this station.
With the extension of broad-gauge railway track to the Siliguri Junction station, people can now travel directly to the heart of the city without having to alight at New Jalpaiguri. This new broad-gauge track extends to the old Dooars metre-gauge track up to Alipurduar and beyond. Travelling over this railway line is a beautiful experience as it passes through the picturesque tea gardens of the Dooars area in the backdrop of Darjeeling and Bhutan hills.
Air
Bagdogra airport, situated about 15 km away is a International airport in the region. The airport, since falls within Air Force area (having some restrictions over length of runways and time of flight, etc.), is not well connected to most Indian cities. However, daily flights are available for the state capital Kolkata, New Delhi, Guwahati,Mumbai, Chennai, Bangkok and Paro.
Bus
Siliguri
The Tenzing Norgay Central Bus Terminus situated next to the Siliguri Junction Railway Station is a major stop for most private and state-owned buses in the region. The Royal Government of Bhutan also operates buses from Siliguri to its border town Phuentsholing. Jeeps also link Siliguri to neighbouring hill towns like Darjeeling, Gangtok, Kurseong, Kalimpong, Mirik, Jorethang, Namchi.
The Sikkim Government buses run to various destinations of Sikkim from the Sikkim Nationalised Transport (SNT) bus station near the Tenzing Norgay Bus Terminus. There is another Bus Terminus named P C Mittal Bus Stand on Sevoke Road. All Buses heading for the Dooars region via the Sevoke Coronation Bridge originate here.
Road
City Auto
A new four-lane road, named Vivekananda Road, has been rebuilt connecting Burdwan Road to Mahabirsthan bringing much relief to the chaotic section of the city and bifurcation of Nivedita road is also going on.The major roads-Hill Cart Rd,Bidhan Road and Sevoke Rd were historically rail routes of the trains "Toy Trains" that went towards Sevoke/Darjeeling.Street lighting and bifurcation of Hill Cart Road took place only in 1988 during the Nehru Cup football tournament. The Mahabirsthan area recently got a fly-over the first of its kind in the city.
National Highway no. 31 and 31A passes through Siliguri. In a recent national level project of building a golden quadrangle linking the major cities of India the NH 31 has been converted into a four way expressway.
The neighbouring countries like Nepal, Bhutan and border region of Bangladesh are also connected through the road network.
Education
Siliguri has always been the hub of education in the Terrai as well as the Dooars region. Apart from the residents of the town, students from states like Sikkim, Nagaland and Assam come here to pursue education. The region also sees an influx of students from the neighbouring countries of Bhutan, Nepal and Bangladesh. While previously there had been just a handful of schools, of late there has been a spurt of growth in numbers with most catering to the CISCE,CBSE and West Bengal Secondary and Higher Secondary board(s).
In and around Siliguri, there are a number of colleges, viz., Siliguri College, Siliguri College of Commerce, Siliguri Women’s College, Surya Sen College. All these deliver general degrees as well as specialization (Honours) in the fields available under the University of North Bengal.
The University of North Bengal, located in a serene backdrop of the Terai foothills and tea gardens, was established in 1962, 10 km away from the main Siliguri town, in Raja Rammohan Pur. Approximately 80 colleges are affiliated to the University, with approximately 36,000 and 1,500 students enrolled in graduate and post graduate courses respectively, every year. A sprawling campus, this University boasts having the second largest campus in the country. Huge stretches of green, in the form of quite-dense vegetation, lakes, and seasonal flowers are woven in between the buildings housing the departments.
Siliguri Institute of Technology
The North Bengal Medical College, located in Sushrutnagar is the sole medical college in the region and is connected to the main city through the 3rd Mahananda Bridge. Students from across the state as well from neighboring sates come to study here, after having cleared the West Bengal Joint Entrance Examinations for engineering and medicine. The recently set up Siliguri Institute Of Technology (SIT)[5] located at Sukna, a few kilometers away from the city has fast become one of the major and regular centres for the state’s corporate houses to recruit fresh engineers.
Sports
Table Tennis, cricket, taekwon-Do, chess and football (soccer) are the five most popular sports here. People are football crazy and support the local clubs. The Kanchenjungha Stadium is the city's only outdoor stadium and matches are regularly held here. The Stadium houses the Sports Authority of India (SAI) sports hostel for athletes. There is an indoor stadium at Deshbandhupara in the southern part of the city. This new stadium has facilities for lawn tennis, badminton and table tennis as well as other indoor sports. However, the city is best known for being the training grounds for many Table Tennis players. Siliguri has produced quite a few National Champions like Maantu Ghosh, the Gold Medal winner in the 1996 and 1999 SAF Games, Subhajit Saha (2007), Nandita Saha (Juniors, 2000). In recent years the close proximity of the Teesta river has made Siliguri a destination for the adventure sports (White Water Rafting) enthusiasts. Wriddhiman Saha (cricketer) celebrated his first class debut for Bengal with a century on debut in the Ranji Trophy against Hyderabad. This wicket-keeper from Saktigarh, Siliguri in North Bengal possesses an extremely safe pair of hands and his performances for Bengal have been rewarded with a place in the East Zone teme. He has also been selected for Kolkata Knight Riders in the Indian Premier League. Bikes / Motorcycles too are a favorite sports of the young generation of Siliguri. To cater the needs, xKmph.com, an Indian Bikers community runs an offline base to bring all the bikers from all over Siliguri and neignbouring cities together and spread the news of biking.
Media
English language newspapers in Siliguri include the Times of India (Kolkata editions), The Economic Times, The Statesman and The Telegraph are widely circulated. Several Hindi, Nepali and Bengali newspapers, including Uttarbanga Sambad, Anandabazar Patrika, Bartaman, Ganashakti, Aajkal, Sunchari Samachar, Nepali daily Purbanchal Bharat Darpan, Dainik Jagran, Ganadabi and Janpath Samachar , Samvad Sanjaal are also available.
In addition to All India Radio, Siliguri has four private FM radio stations: Radio High 92.7FM, Radio Misty 94.3, FM 91.9. and Red FM 93.5.
Siliguri receives almost all the television channels that are received by the rest of the country. Apart from the state-owned terrestrial network Doordarshan, cable television serves most of the homes in the town, while satellite television is common in the outlying areas and in wealthier households. Besides mainstream Indian channels, the town also receives Nepali Television Channels and Bangladesh Television Channels. Local news broadcasts, sporting events, and concerts are broadcast live or delayed via cable to many households. DTH services both by Government and private companies are also available like Tata sky, Dish tv, Digital tv - Airtel, Big tv - Reliance.
Internet cafés are well established in the main market area, served through broadband services provided by BSNL and other private companies like MetroNET[Orange Networks] & Sinet (CCN).
The area is serviced by cell phone companies such as Vodafone, Airtel, Aircel, BSNL, Reliance Communications, Tata Indicom, MTS, Tata Docomo and Virgin Mobile. The major number of subscribers of mobile service are that of BSNL. With the improved service of quality Airtel and Vodafone are also gaining a huge market. The most popular and preferred connection among the Business class is BSNL, Airtel, Vodafone whereas for the Youth is Smart - Reliance GSM Service.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Suchitra Sen
Suchitra Sen (born 6 April 1931) [1](Bangla: সুচিত্রা সেন, Hindi: सुचित्रा सेन) or Roma Dasgupta is a Indian actress who appeared in Bengali cinema films. In particular, the movies in which she paired opposite another legend in Bangla films, Uttam Kumar, are all-time classics in Bengali cinema. She now lives a life of a recluse rarely making any public appearances. When she left movies, she was slowly but steadily losing the position of leading lady of Bengali silver screen.
She is the first Indian actress to be awarded in an international film festival (Best Actress award for the movie Saat Paake Bandha in 1963 Moscow film festival). Her films with Uttam Kumar are still shown as re-runs on Bengali TV channels such as ETV Bangla, Aakash Bangla, DD7 Bangla and so forth; many of them are available on video CD. Notably, she allegedly refused the Dadasaheb Phalke Award (the Indian equivalent of a lifetime Oscar) in 2005, preferring to live in seclusion out of the public eye.
Contents [hide]
1 Personal life and education
2 Career
3 Selected Bengali filmography
4 Selected Hindi filmography
5 Biographies
6 References
7 External links
[edit]Personal life and education
Sen was born in Pabna, British India (now Bangladesh). Her father Karunamoy Dasgupta was the head master of the local school and her mother's name was Indira Dasgupta. She was their fifth child and third daughter. She had formal education in Pabna.
She married Dibanath Sen, son of a wealthy Bengali industrialist, Adinath Sen, in 1947 and had one child, Moon Moon Sen, a noted actress.
Sen made a successful entry after marriage into Bengali films circa 1952, and then a less successful transition to the Bollywood film industry. According to some unconfirmed but persistent reports in the Bengali press, her marriage was severely strained by her success in the film industry.
[edit]Career
Sen made her debut in films with Shesh Kothaay in 1952, but the film was never released. The following year saw her act opposite Uttam Kumar in Sharey Chuattor. The film became a box-office hit and it was remembered for launching Uttam-Suchitra as a leading pair. They went on to become the icons for Bengali dramas for more than 20 years, becoming almost a genre to themselves.
She received a Best Actress Award for the film Devdas (1955), which was her first Hindi movie. Her patented Bengali melodramas and romances especially with Uttam Kumar, made her the most famous Bengali actress ever. Her films ran through the 1960s and the 1970s. Her husband died, but she continued to act in films, such as the Hindi hit film Aandhi (1974), where she played a politician. Aandhi was inspired by India's Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Sen received a Filmfare nomination as Best Actress, while Sanjeev Kumar, who essayed the role of her husband, won the Filmfare as Best Actor.
Her international success came in the year of 1963, when she won the best actress award in Moscow Film Festival for the movie Saat Paake Bandha. In fact, she is the first female to receive an international film award.
She refused Satyajit Ray's offer due to date problem, as a result Ray never made the film Devi Chawdhurani. She also refused Raj Kapoor's offer for a film under RK banner. She retired from the screen in 1978 after a career of over 25 years to a life of quiet seclusion. She has avoided the public gaze after her retirement and has devoted her time to the Ramakrishna Mission.[1] Suchitra Sen was a contender for the Dadasaheb Phalke Award for the year 2005, provided she was ready to accept it in person. Her refusal to go to New Delhi and personally receive the award from the President of India deprived her of that award.
[edit]Selected Bengali filmography
Year Movie Director Co-stars
1953 Saat Number Kayedi Sukumar Dasgupta Samar Roy
1953 Bhagaban Srikrishna Chaitanya Debaki Bose Basanta Choudhuri
1953 Saare Chuattor Nirmal Dey Uttam Kumar
1953 Kajori Niren Lahiri
1954 Sadanander Mela Sukumar Dasgupta Uttam Kumar
1954 Agnipariksha Agradoot Uttam Kumar
1954 Ora Thaake Odhare Sukumar Dasgupta Uttam Kumar
1954 Grihaprabesh Ajay Kar Uttam Kumar
1954 Atom Bomb Taru Mukherjee Robin Majumdar
1954 Dhuli Pinaki Mukherjee Prasanta Kumar
1954 Maraner Parey Satish Dasgupta Uttam Kumar
1954 Balaygraas Pinaki Mukherjee Uttam Kumar
1954 Annapurnar Mandir Naresh Mitra Uttam Kumar
1955 Shapmochan Sudhir Mukherjee Uttam Kumar
1955 Sabar Uparey Agradoot Uttam Kumar
1955 Snaajhghar Ajay Kar Bikash Roy
1955 Devdas (Hindi) Bimal Roy Dilip Kumar
1955 Snaajher Pradeep Sudhangshu Mukherjee Uttam Kumar
1955 Mejo Bou Debnarayan Gupta Bikash Roy
1955 Bhalabaasa Debaki Bose Bikash Roy
1956 Sagarika Agragami Uttam Kumar
1956 Trijama Agradoot Uttam Kumar
1956 Amar Bou Khagen Roy Bikash Roy
1956 Shilpi Agragami Uttam Kumar
1956 Ekti Raat Chitto Bose Uttam Kumar
1956 Subharaatri Sushil Majumdar Basanta Choudhury
1957 Harano Sur Ajay Kar Uttam Kumar
1957 Pathe Holo Deri Agradoot Uttam Kumar
1957 Jeeban Trishna Asit Sen Uttam Kumar
1957 Chandranath Kartick Chatterjee Uttam Kumar
1957 Musafir (Hindi) Hrishikesh Mukherjee Dilip Kumar
1957 Champakali (Hindi) Nandlal Jaswantlal Bharat Bhushan
1958 Rajlakshmi O Srikanta Haridas Bhattacharya Uttam Kumar
1958 SuryaToran Agradoot Uttam Kumar
1958 Indrani Niren Lahiri Uttam Kumar
1959 Deep Jwele Jaai Asit Sen Basanta Choudhury
1959 Chaaowa Pawoa Jatrik Uttam Kumar
1960 Hospital Sushil Majumdar Ashok Kumar
1960 Smriti Tuku Thaak Jatrik Asitbaran
1960 Bombai Kaa Babu (Hindi) Raj Khosla Dev Anand
1960 Sarhad (Hindi) Shankar Mukherjee Dev Anand
1961 Saptapadi Ajay Kar Uttam Kumar
1961 Saathihara Sukumar Dasgupta Uttam Kumar
1962 Bipasha Agradoot Uttam Kumar
1963 Saat Paake Badha Ajay Kar Soumitra Chatterjee
1963 Uttar Phalguni Asit Sen Bikash Roy, Dilip Mukherjee
1964 Sandhya Deeper Sikha Haridas Bhattacharya Bikash Roy
1966 Mamta (Hindi) Asit Sen Ashok Kumar, Dharmendra
1967 Grihadaha Subodh Mitra Uttam Kumar
1969 Kamallata Harisadhan Dasgupta
1970 Megh Kalo Sushil Mukherjee Basanta Choudhury
1971 Fariyaad Bijoy Bose Utpal Dutta
1971 Nabaraag Bijoy Bose Uttam Kumar
1972 Alo Amaar Alo Pinaki Mukherjee Uttam Kumar
1972 Haar Maana Haar Salil Sen Uttam Kumar
1974 Devi Chaudhurani Dinen Gupta Ranjit Mallick
1974 Srabana Sandhya Chitra Sarathi Samar Roy
1975 Priyo Bandhabi Hiren Nag Uttam Kumar
1975 Aandhi (Hindi) Gulzar Sanjeev Kumar
1976 Datta Ajay Kar Soumitra Chatterjee
1978 Pranoy Pasha Mangal Chakrabarty Soutmitra Chatterjee
[edit]Selected Hindi filmography
Devdas (1955), co-starring Dilip Kumar;
Musafir (1957), co-starring Dev Anand;
Champakali (1957)
Bombay ka Babu (1960),co-starring Dev Anand;
Mamta (1966) (a remake of her Bengali film Uttor Falguni) co-starring Dharmendra and Ashok Kumar
Aandhi (1975), co-starring Sanjeev Kumar; this film was banned for a while, because it was felt to portray Indira Gandhi[1]
[edit]Biographies
1. Suchitra Sen : A Legend in Her Lifetime by Shoma A. Chatterji. New Delhi, Rupa & Co., 2002, 80 p., photographs, ISBN 81-7167998-6.[2] 2. Suchitra Sen autobiography
[edit]References
^ a b Deb, Alok Kumar. "APRIL BORN a few PERSONALITIES". www.tripurainfo.com. Retrieved 2008-10-23.
^ Books on Cinema: Bollywood, Indian Cinema
She is the first Indian actress to be awarded in an international film festival (Best Actress award for the movie Saat Paake Bandha in 1963 Moscow film festival). Her films with Uttam Kumar are still shown as re-runs on Bengali TV channels such as ETV Bangla, Aakash Bangla, DD7 Bangla and so forth; many of them are available on video CD. Notably, she allegedly refused the Dadasaheb Phalke Award (the Indian equivalent of a lifetime Oscar) in 2005, preferring to live in seclusion out of the public eye.
Contents [hide]
1 Personal life and education
2 Career
3 Selected Bengali filmography
4 Selected Hindi filmography
5 Biographies
6 References
7 External links
[edit]Personal life and education
Sen was born in Pabna, British India (now Bangladesh). Her father Karunamoy Dasgupta was the head master of the local school and her mother's name was Indira Dasgupta. She was their fifth child and third daughter. She had formal education in Pabna.
She married Dibanath Sen, son of a wealthy Bengali industrialist, Adinath Sen, in 1947 and had one child, Moon Moon Sen, a noted actress.
Sen made a successful entry after marriage into Bengali films circa 1952, and then a less successful transition to the Bollywood film industry. According to some unconfirmed but persistent reports in the Bengali press, her marriage was severely strained by her success in the film industry.
[edit]Career
Sen made her debut in films with Shesh Kothaay in 1952, but the film was never released. The following year saw her act opposite Uttam Kumar in Sharey Chuattor. The film became a box-office hit and it was remembered for launching Uttam-Suchitra as a leading pair. They went on to become the icons for Bengali dramas for more than 20 years, becoming almost a genre to themselves.
She received a Best Actress Award for the film Devdas (1955), which was her first Hindi movie. Her patented Bengali melodramas and romances especially with Uttam Kumar, made her the most famous Bengali actress ever. Her films ran through the 1960s and the 1970s. Her husband died, but she continued to act in films, such as the Hindi hit film Aandhi (1974), where she played a politician. Aandhi was inspired by India's Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Sen received a Filmfare nomination as Best Actress, while Sanjeev Kumar, who essayed the role of her husband, won the Filmfare as Best Actor.
Her international success came in the year of 1963, when she won the best actress award in Moscow Film Festival for the movie Saat Paake Bandha. In fact, she is the first female to receive an international film award.
She refused Satyajit Ray's offer due to date problem, as a result Ray never made the film Devi Chawdhurani. She also refused Raj Kapoor's offer for a film under RK banner. She retired from the screen in 1978 after a career of over 25 years to a life of quiet seclusion. She has avoided the public gaze after her retirement and has devoted her time to the Ramakrishna Mission.[1] Suchitra Sen was a contender for the Dadasaheb Phalke Award for the year 2005, provided she was ready to accept it in person. Her refusal to go to New Delhi and personally receive the award from the President of India deprived her of that award.
[edit]Selected Bengali filmography
Year Movie Director Co-stars
1953 Saat Number Kayedi Sukumar Dasgupta Samar Roy
1953 Bhagaban Srikrishna Chaitanya Debaki Bose Basanta Choudhuri
1953 Saare Chuattor Nirmal Dey Uttam Kumar
1953 Kajori Niren Lahiri
1954 Sadanander Mela Sukumar Dasgupta Uttam Kumar
1954 Agnipariksha Agradoot Uttam Kumar
1954 Ora Thaake Odhare Sukumar Dasgupta Uttam Kumar
1954 Grihaprabesh Ajay Kar Uttam Kumar
1954 Atom Bomb Taru Mukherjee Robin Majumdar
1954 Dhuli Pinaki Mukherjee Prasanta Kumar
1954 Maraner Parey Satish Dasgupta Uttam Kumar
1954 Balaygraas Pinaki Mukherjee Uttam Kumar
1954 Annapurnar Mandir Naresh Mitra Uttam Kumar
1955 Shapmochan Sudhir Mukherjee Uttam Kumar
1955 Sabar Uparey Agradoot Uttam Kumar
1955 Snaajhghar Ajay Kar Bikash Roy
1955 Devdas (Hindi) Bimal Roy Dilip Kumar
1955 Snaajher Pradeep Sudhangshu Mukherjee Uttam Kumar
1955 Mejo Bou Debnarayan Gupta Bikash Roy
1955 Bhalabaasa Debaki Bose Bikash Roy
1956 Sagarika Agragami Uttam Kumar
1956 Trijama Agradoot Uttam Kumar
1956 Amar Bou Khagen Roy Bikash Roy
1956 Shilpi Agragami Uttam Kumar
1956 Ekti Raat Chitto Bose Uttam Kumar
1956 Subharaatri Sushil Majumdar Basanta Choudhury
1957 Harano Sur Ajay Kar Uttam Kumar
1957 Pathe Holo Deri Agradoot Uttam Kumar
1957 Jeeban Trishna Asit Sen Uttam Kumar
1957 Chandranath Kartick Chatterjee Uttam Kumar
1957 Musafir (Hindi) Hrishikesh Mukherjee Dilip Kumar
1957 Champakali (Hindi) Nandlal Jaswantlal Bharat Bhushan
1958 Rajlakshmi O Srikanta Haridas Bhattacharya Uttam Kumar
1958 SuryaToran Agradoot Uttam Kumar
1958 Indrani Niren Lahiri Uttam Kumar
1959 Deep Jwele Jaai Asit Sen Basanta Choudhury
1959 Chaaowa Pawoa Jatrik Uttam Kumar
1960 Hospital Sushil Majumdar Ashok Kumar
1960 Smriti Tuku Thaak Jatrik Asitbaran
1960 Bombai Kaa Babu (Hindi) Raj Khosla Dev Anand
1960 Sarhad (Hindi) Shankar Mukherjee Dev Anand
1961 Saptapadi Ajay Kar Uttam Kumar
1961 Saathihara Sukumar Dasgupta Uttam Kumar
1962 Bipasha Agradoot Uttam Kumar
1963 Saat Paake Badha Ajay Kar Soumitra Chatterjee
1963 Uttar Phalguni Asit Sen Bikash Roy, Dilip Mukherjee
1964 Sandhya Deeper Sikha Haridas Bhattacharya Bikash Roy
1966 Mamta (Hindi) Asit Sen Ashok Kumar, Dharmendra
1967 Grihadaha Subodh Mitra Uttam Kumar
1969 Kamallata Harisadhan Dasgupta
1970 Megh Kalo Sushil Mukherjee Basanta Choudhury
1971 Fariyaad Bijoy Bose Utpal Dutta
1971 Nabaraag Bijoy Bose Uttam Kumar
1972 Alo Amaar Alo Pinaki Mukherjee Uttam Kumar
1972 Haar Maana Haar Salil Sen Uttam Kumar
1974 Devi Chaudhurani Dinen Gupta Ranjit Mallick
1974 Srabana Sandhya Chitra Sarathi Samar Roy
1975 Priyo Bandhabi Hiren Nag Uttam Kumar
1975 Aandhi (Hindi) Gulzar Sanjeev Kumar
1976 Datta Ajay Kar Soumitra Chatterjee
1978 Pranoy Pasha Mangal Chakrabarty Soutmitra Chatterjee
[edit]Selected Hindi filmography
Devdas (1955), co-starring Dilip Kumar;
Musafir (1957), co-starring Dev Anand;
Champakali (1957)
Bombay ka Babu (1960),co-starring Dev Anand;
Mamta (1966) (a remake of her Bengali film Uttor Falguni) co-starring Dharmendra and Ashok Kumar
Aandhi (1975), co-starring Sanjeev Kumar; this film was banned for a while, because it was felt to portray Indira Gandhi[1]
[edit]Biographies
1. Suchitra Sen : A Legend in Her Lifetime by Shoma A. Chatterji. New Delhi, Rupa & Co., 2002, 80 p., photographs, ISBN 81-7167998-6.[2] 2. Suchitra Sen autobiography
[edit]References
^ a b Deb, Alok Kumar. "APRIL BORN a few PERSONALITIES". www.tripurainfo.com. Retrieved 2008-10-23.
^ Books on Cinema: Bollywood, Indian Cinema
Bengali Cinema
Bengali cinema refers to the Bengali language filmmaking industries in the Bengal region of South Asia. There are two major filmmaking hubs in the region: one in Kolkata, West Bengal, India and one in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
The history of cinema in Bengal dates back to the 1890s, when the first "bioscopes" were shown in theatres in Kolkata. Within a decade, the first seeds of the industry was sown by Hiralal Sen, considered a stalwart of Victorian era cinema [1] when he set up the Royal Bioscope Company, producing scenes from the stage productions of a number of popular shows[1] at the Star Theatre, Minerva Theatre , Classic Theatre. Following a long gap after Sen's works,[2] Dhirendra Nath Ganguly (Known as D.G) established Indo British Film Co, the first Bengali owned production company, in 1918. However, the first Bengali Feature film, Billwamangal, was produced in 1919, under the banner of Madan Theatre. Bilat Ferat was the IBFC's first production in 1921. The Madan Theatre production of Jamai Shashthi (1931), under Amar Chauduri's direction was the first Bengali talkie [3][4] A long history has been traversed since then, with stalwarts such as Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak and others having earned international acclaim and securing their place in the movie history.
On the other side of the border, Mukh O Mukhosh was released on 3 August 1956, written and directed by Abdul Jabbar Khan, based on his drama scrip Dacoit, produced by Nuruz Zaman and Shahidul Alam, distributed by Iqbal Films and acted by Inam Ahmed and Zahrat Azra.
Contents [hide]
1 Two film industries
2 Early history
3 West Bengal film industry
4 Bangladeshi film industry
5 See also
6 References
7 External links
[edit]Two film industries
Today, there are two Bengali-language film industries: the one in Kolkata, West Bengal, India (the Cinema of West Bengal, sometimes called Tollywood, a portmanteau of the words Tollygunge and Hollywood),[5][6] is one of many centres for Indian regional filmmaking; and the other one in Dhaka, Bangladesh (the Cinema of Bangladesh, sometimes called Dhallywood, a portmanteau of the words Dhaka and Hollywood), is the mainstream national film industry of Bangladesh.
[edit]Early history
Hiralal Sen is credited as one of Bengal's, and India's first directors. However, these were all silent films. Hiralal Sen is also credited as one of the pioneers of advertisement films in India. The first Bengali-language movie was the silent feature Billwamangal, produced by the Madan Theatre Company of Calcutta and released on 8 November 1919, only six years after the first full-length Indian feature film, Raja Harish Chandra, was released.[7]
The early beginnings of the "talking film" industry go back to the early 1930s, when it came to British India, and to Calcutta. The movies were originally made in Urdu or Persian as to accommodate a specific elite market. One of the earliest known studios was the East India Film Company. The first Bengali film to be made as a talkie was Jamai Shashthi, released in 1931. It was at this time that the early heroes of the Bengali film industry like Pramathesh Barua and Debaki Bose were at the peak of their popularity. Barua also directed a number of movies, exploring new dimension in Indian cinema. Debaki Bose directed Chandidas in 1932; this film is noted for its breakthrough in recording sound. Sound recordist Mukul Bose found out solution to the problem of spacing out dialogue and frequency modulation.
The 'Parallel Cinema' movement of Indian cinema began in the Bengali film industry during the 1950s, and then gained prominence in the other film industries of India.
[edit]West Bengal film industry
Main article: Cinema of West Bengal
The contribution of Bengali film industry to Indian film is quite significant. Based in Tollygunge, an area of South Kolkata, West Bengal and is more elite and artistically-inclined than the usual musical cinema fare in India. In the past, it enjoyed a large, even disproportionate, representation in Indian cinema, and produced film directors like Satyajit Ray, who was an Academy Honorary Award winner, and the recipient of India and France's greatest civilian honours, the Bharat Ratna and Legion of Honor respectively, and Mrinal Sen, who is the recipient of the French distinction of Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters and the Russian Order of Friendship. The early nickname for the Tollygunge film industry, "Tollywood", was also the very first Hollywood-inspired name, dating back to a 1932 article in the American Cinematographer by Wilford E. Deming (due to Tollygunge rhyming with Hollywood) and went on to inspire the name "Bollywood" and other similar names.[8]
Other prominent film makers in the Bengali film industry are Bimal Roy, Ritwik Ghatak, and Aparna Sen. The Bengali film industry has produced classics such as Nagarik (1952) The Apu Trilogy (1955–1959), Jalsaghar (1958), Ajantrik (1958), Neel Akasher Neechey (1959), Devdas, Devi (1960), Meghe Dhaka Tara (1960), the Calcutta trilogies (1971–1976), etc. In particular, The Apu Trilogy is now frequently listed among the greatest films of all time.[9][10][11][12]
The most well known Bengali actor to date has been Uttam Kumar; he and co-star Suchitra Sen were known as The Eternal Pair in the early 1950s. Soumitra Chatterjee is a notable actor, having acted in several Satyajit Ray films, and considered as a rival to Uttam Kumar in the 1960s but not at the level of Uttam Kumar. He is famous for the characterization of Feluda in Sonar Kella (1974) and Joy Baba Felunath (1978), written and directed by Ray. He also played the adult version of Apu in The World of Apu (1959), also directed by Ray. One of the most well known Bengali actresses was Sharmila Tagore, who debuted in Ray's The World of Apu, and became a major actress in Bengali cinema as well as Bollywood.
The pioneers in Bengali film music include Raichand Boral, Pankaj Mullick and K. C. Dey, all associated with New Theatres Calcutta [13]. Other famous playback singers in Bengali film music were Hemanta Mukherjee, Manna Dey, Sandhya Mukhopadhyay and Kishore Kumar.
In the 1980s, however, the Bengal film industry went through a period of turmoil, with a shift from its traditional artistic and emotional inclinations to an approach more imitating the increasingly more popular Hindi films, along with a decline in the audience and critical appreciation, with notable exceptions of the works of directors like Gautam Ghose. However, even at this time, a number of actors and actresses enjoyed popularity, including Tapas Pal, Prosenjit, Chiranjit, Rituparna Sengupta and others. However, toward the end of the 90s, with the a number of directors coming increasingly into prominence, including Rituparno Ghosh, Gautam Ghose, Aparna Sen, Sandip Ray among others, a number of popular and critically acclaimed movies have come out of the Bengali film industry in recent years. These include, Unishe April, Titli, Mr. and Mrs. Iyer, Bombaiyer Bombete, etc and signal a resurgence of the Bengali film industry.Now after 2000 their rise another group of actor (Jeet, Dev, Parambrata, Rudranil), actress(Koel Mallik, Paoli Dam), Director(Anirudha Roychodhury, Raj chackrobarty), musicians (Jeet Ganguly).
Jahar Kanungo’s 'Nisshabd' made in 2005 has been critically acclaimed for its originality in the treatment of image and sound.
The market for Bengali films has expanded to a 340-million-strong Bengali audience in Bangladesh, West Bengal, Tripura and Assam. The industry could truly flourish if films from this state have a proper distribution network. While around 50 films are produced in West Bengal every year, only 30 make it to the theatres.[14]
[edit]Bangladeshi film industry
Main article: Cinema of Bangladesh
The Bangladeshi film industry is based in Dhaka. As of 2004, it produced approximately 100 movies a year. The average movie budget was about 12 crore Bangladeshi taka.[15]
Although the majority of the films made in Bangladesh are strictly commercial in nature, a handful of directors from Bangladesh have attained critical acclaim for their outstanding work. Zahir Raihan, Khan Ataur Rahman, Salahuddin, Alamgir Kabir, Amjad Hussain, Moshiuddin Shaker, Sheikh Niyamat Ali, Humayun Ahmed, Morshedul Islam, Tanvir Mokammel, Tareque Masud are among those prominent directors. One of the first films produced in Bangladesh after independence was Titash Ekti Nadir Naam (A River Called Titas) in 1973 by acclaimed director Ritwik Ghatak, whose stature in Bengali cinema is comparable to that of Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen.
Bangladesh has been officially submitting nominations for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film from 2003. Masud's Matir Moina (The Clay Bird) was the first film to be submitted, and won a number of other international awards from the Edinburgh, Palm Springs, Montreal, Marrakech, Cairo and Cannes Film Festivals. Another internationally acclaimed filmmaker from Bangladesh is Morshedul Islam, who won major awards at the International Filmfestival Mannheim-Heidelberg and other international film festivals.
[edit]See also
Bengal portal
Bengali Cinema
South Asian cinema
List of Bengali films
Cinema of Bangladesh
Cinema of India
Cinema of West Bengal
Parallel Cinema
Asian cinema
World cinema
[edit]References
^ a b Who's Who of Victorian Cinema. Hiralal Sen
^ Pioneers of Bangladeshi Cinema
^ Gokulsing, K.; Wimal Dissanayake (2004). Indian popular cinema: a narrative of cultural change. Trentham Books. p. 24. ISBN 1858563291.
^ IMDB page on Jamai Shashthi
^ http://www.indfy.com/kolkata/special-attractions/tollywood-trip.html
^ http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1251462050.cms
^ BANGLAPEDIA: Film, Feature, accessed 27-VII-2006
^ Sarkar, Bhaskar (2008), "The Melodramas of Globalization", Cultural Dynamics 20: 31–51 [34]
^ "The Sight & Sound Top Ten Poll: 1992". Sight & Sound. British Film Institute. Retrieved 2008-05-20.
^ "Take One: The First Annual Village Voice Film Critics' Poll". The Village Voice. 1999. Archived from the original on 2007-08-26. Retrieved 2006-07-27.
^ The Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made By THE FILM CRITICS OF THE NEW YORK TIMES, New York Times, 2002.
^ "All-time 100 Movies". Time. Time Inc.. 2005. Retrieved 2008-05-19.
^ New Theatres Calcutta
^ http://www.screenindia.com/news/Bengali-cinema-in-independent-India/347909/
^ Bangladeshis reject "smutty" Bengali films, AFP/Helen Rowe, accessed 27-VII-2006
The history of cinema in Bengal dates back to the 1890s, when the first "bioscopes" were shown in theatres in Kolkata. Within a decade, the first seeds of the industry was sown by Hiralal Sen, considered a stalwart of Victorian era cinema [1] when he set up the Royal Bioscope Company, producing scenes from the stage productions of a number of popular shows[1] at the Star Theatre, Minerva Theatre , Classic Theatre. Following a long gap after Sen's works,[2] Dhirendra Nath Ganguly (Known as D.G) established Indo British Film Co, the first Bengali owned production company, in 1918. However, the first Bengali Feature film, Billwamangal, was produced in 1919, under the banner of Madan Theatre. Bilat Ferat was the IBFC's first production in 1921. The Madan Theatre production of Jamai Shashthi (1931), under Amar Chauduri's direction was the first Bengali talkie [3][4] A long history has been traversed since then, with stalwarts such as Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak and others having earned international acclaim and securing their place in the movie history.
On the other side of the border, Mukh O Mukhosh was released on 3 August 1956, written and directed by Abdul Jabbar Khan, based on his drama scrip Dacoit, produced by Nuruz Zaman and Shahidul Alam, distributed by Iqbal Films and acted by Inam Ahmed and Zahrat Azra.
Contents [hide]
1 Two film industries
2 Early history
3 West Bengal film industry
4 Bangladeshi film industry
5 See also
6 References
7 External links
[edit]Two film industries
Today, there are two Bengali-language film industries: the one in Kolkata, West Bengal, India (the Cinema of West Bengal, sometimes called Tollywood, a portmanteau of the words Tollygunge and Hollywood),[5][6] is one of many centres for Indian regional filmmaking; and the other one in Dhaka, Bangladesh (the Cinema of Bangladesh, sometimes called Dhallywood, a portmanteau of the words Dhaka and Hollywood), is the mainstream national film industry of Bangladesh.
[edit]Early history
Hiralal Sen is credited as one of Bengal's, and India's first directors. However, these were all silent films. Hiralal Sen is also credited as one of the pioneers of advertisement films in India. The first Bengali-language movie was the silent feature Billwamangal, produced by the Madan Theatre Company of Calcutta and released on 8 November 1919, only six years after the first full-length Indian feature film, Raja Harish Chandra, was released.[7]
The early beginnings of the "talking film" industry go back to the early 1930s, when it came to British India, and to Calcutta. The movies were originally made in Urdu or Persian as to accommodate a specific elite market. One of the earliest known studios was the East India Film Company. The first Bengali film to be made as a talkie was Jamai Shashthi, released in 1931. It was at this time that the early heroes of the Bengali film industry like Pramathesh Barua and Debaki Bose were at the peak of their popularity. Barua also directed a number of movies, exploring new dimension in Indian cinema. Debaki Bose directed Chandidas in 1932; this film is noted for its breakthrough in recording sound. Sound recordist Mukul Bose found out solution to the problem of spacing out dialogue and frequency modulation.
The 'Parallel Cinema' movement of Indian cinema began in the Bengali film industry during the 1950s, and then gained prominence in the other film industries of India.
[edit]West Bengal film industry
Main article: Cinema of West Bengal
The contribution of Bengali film industry to Indian film is quite significant. Based in Tollygunge, an area of South Kolkata, West Bengal and is more elite and artistically-inclined than the usual musical cinema fare in India. In the past, it enjoyed a large, even disproportionate, representation in Indian cinema, and produced film directors like Satyajit Ray, who was an Academy Honorary Award winner, and the recipient of India and France's greatest civilian honours, the Bharat Ratna and Legion of Honor respectively, and Mrinal Sen, who is the recipient of the French distinction of Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters and the Russian Order of Friendship. The early nickname for the Tollygunge film industry, "Tollywood", was also the very first Hollywood-inspired name, dating back to a 1932 article in the American Cinematographer by Wilford E. Deming (due to Tollygunge rhyming with Hollywood) and went on to inspire the name "Bollywood" and other similar names.[8]
Other prominent film makers in the Bengali film industry are Bimal Roy, Ritwik Ghatak, and Aparna Sen. The Bengali film industry has produced classics such as Nagarik (1952) The Apu Trilogy (1955–1959), Jalsaghar (1958), Ajantrik (1958), Neel Akasher Neechey (1959), Devdas, Devi (1960), Meghe Dhaka Tara (1960), the Calcutta trilogies (1971–1976), etc. In particular, The Apu Trilogy is now frequently listed among the greatest films of all time.[9][10][11][12]
The most well known Bengali actor to date has been Uttam Kumar; he and co-star Suchitra Sen were known as The Eternal Pair in the early 1950s. Soumitra Chatterjee is a notable actor, having acted in several Satyajit Ray films, and considered as a rival to Uttam Kumar in the 1960s but not at the level of Uttam Kumar. He is famous for the characterization of Feluda in Sonar Kella (1974) and Joy Baba Felunath (1978), written and directed by Ray. He also played the adult version of Apu in The World of Apu (1959), also directed by Ray. One of the most well known Bengali actresses was Sharmila Tagore, who debuted in Ray's The World of Apu, and became a major actress in Bengali cinema as well as Bollywood.
The pioneers in Bengali film music include Raichand Boral, Pankaj Mullick and K. C. Dey, all associated with New Theatres Calcutta [13]. Other famous playback singers in Bengali film music were Hemanta Mukherjee, Manna Dey, Sandhya Mukhopadhyay and Kishore Kumar.
In the 1980s, however, the Bengal film industry went through a period of turmoil, with a shift from its traditional artistic and emotional inclinations to an approach more imitating the increasingly more popular Hindi films, along with a decline in the audience and critical appreciation, with notable exceptions of the works of directors like Gautam Ghose. However, even at this time, a number of actors and actresses enjoyed popularity, including Tapas Pal, Prosenjit, Chiranjit, Rituparna Sengupta and others. However, toward the end of the 90s, with the a number of directors coming increasingly into prominence, including Rituparno Ghosh, Gautam Ghose, Aparna Sen, Sandip Ray among others, a number of popular and critically acclaimed movies have come out of the Bengali film industry in recent years. These include, Unishe April, Titli, Mr. and Mrs. Iyer, Bombaiyer Bombete, etc and signal a resurgence of the Bengali film industry.Now after 2000 their rise another group of actor (Jeet, Dev, Parambrata, Rudranil), actress(Koel Mallik, Paoli Dam), Director(Anirudha Roychodhury, Raj chackrobarty), musicians (Jeet Ganguly).
Jahar Kanungo’s 'Nisshabd' made in 2005 has been critically acclaimed for its originality in the treatment of image and sound.
The market for Bengali films has expanded to a 340-million-strong Bengali audience in Bangladesh, West Bengal, Tripura and Assam. The industry could truly flourish if films from this state have a proper distribution network. While around 50 films are produced in West Bengal every year, only 30 make it to the theatres.[14]
[edit]Bangladeshi film industry
Main article: Cinema of Bangladesh
The Bangladeshi film industry is based in Dhaka. As of 2004, it produced approximately 100 movies a year. The average movie budget was about 12 crore Bangladeshi taka.[15]
Although the majority of the films made in Bangladesh are strictly commercial in nature, a handful of directors from Bangladesh have attained critical acclaim for their outstanding work. Zahir Raihan, Khan Ataur Rahman, Salahuddin, Alamgir Kabir, Amjad Hussain, Moshiuddin Shaker, Sheikh Niyamat Ali, Humayun Ahmed, Morshedul Islam, Tanvir Mokammel, Tareque Masud are among those prominent directors. One of the first films produced in Bangladesh after independence was Titash Ekti Nadir Naam (A River Called Titas) in 1973 by acclaimed director Ritwik Ghatak, whose stature in Bengali cinema is comparable to that of Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen.
Bangladesh has been officially submitting nominations for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film from 2003. Masud's Matir Moina (The Clay Bird) was the first film to be submitted, and won a number of other international awards from the Edinburgh, Palm Springs, Montreal, Marrakech, Cairo and Cannes Film Festivals. Another internationally acclaimed filmmaker from Bangladesh is Morshedul Islam, who won major awards at the International Filmfestival Mannheim-Heidelberg and other international film festivals.
[edit]See also
Bengal portal
Bengali Cinema
South Asian cinema
List of Bengali films
Cinema of Bangladesh
Cinema of India
Cinema of West Bengal
Parallel Cinema
Asian cinema
World cinema
[edit]References
^ a b Who's Who of Victorian Cinema. Hiralal Sen
^ Pioneers of Bangladeshi Cinema
^ Gokulsing, K.; Wimal Dissanayake (2004). Indian popular cinema: a narrative of cultural change. Trentham Books. p. 24. ISBN 1858563291.
^ IMDB page on Jamai Shashthi
^ http://www.indfy.com/kolkata/special-attractions/tollywood-trip.html
^ http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1251462050.cms
^ BANGLAPEDIA: Film, Feature, accessed 27-VII-2006
^ Sarkar, Bhaskar (2008), "The Melodramas of Globalization", Cultural Dynamics 20: 31–51 [34]
^ "The Sight & Sound Top Ten Poll: 1992". Sight & Sound. British Film Institute. Retrieved 2008-05-20.
^ "Take One: The First Annual Village Voice Film Critics' Poll". The Village Voice. 1999. Archived from the original on 2007-08-26. Retrieved 2006-07-27.
^ The Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made By THE FILM CRITICS OF THE NEW YORK TIMES, New York Times, 2002.
^ "All-time 100 Movies". Time. Time Inc.. 2005. Retrieved 2008-05-19.
^ New Theatres Calcutta
^ http://www.screenindia.com/news/Bengali-cinema-in-independent-India/347909/
^ Bangladeshis reject "smutty" Bengali films, AFP/Helen Rowe, accessed 27-VII-2006
Uttam Kumar
Uttam Kumar (Bangla: উত্তম কুমার ) (3 September 1926 - 24 July 1980) born as Arun Kumar Chatterjee; was an eminent Bengali actor from India. He is fondly called the Mahanayak or the "Great Hero" of Bengali cinema. He was born Arun Kumar Chatterjee on 3 September 1926 in Kolkata.
He had been an actor, director and producer. Apart from acting in two films with Satyajit Ray, Nayak (The Hero) and Chiriyakhana (The Zoo, a thriller written by Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay, in which he played the famous Bengali detective Byomkesh Bakshi), he has acted in some Hindi films like "Chhoti si Mulaqat" (with Vyjayantimala Bali), Amanush (with Sharmila Tagore), Ananda Ashram(with Sharmila Tagore), Kitaab and Dooriyaan.
There is a theatre(Uttam Mancha)in his name in Kolkata.A life-size statue has been erected near Tollygunj metro station which has recently been renamed after the iconic actor by the central railway ministry.Besides,Shilpi Sansad,the actor's pet project of safegurading the artises especially the poor and the old, has still been active.There is a grapevine that the state government is planning to build a museum to preserve the memorabilia of the legend.
Contents [hide]
1 Early life
2 Film debut
3 Uttam-Suchitra
4 Branching out
5 Off screen romance(s)
6 Death
7 Family
8 Selected Filmography
9 12 Films With Highest Running Success At Release
10 Tributes
10.1 Awards
10.2 Quotes
11 External links
[edit]Early life
Uttam Kumar was born in Kolkata in his ancestral house in Girish Mukherjee Road, Bhowanipore. After his schooling in South Suburban School (Main), he went for higher studies in Goenka College of Commerce and Business Administration, an affiliated college of the University of Calcutta system. However, he couldn't complete his studies as he started working at the Kolkata Port as a clerk. During this period, he acted for amateur theater groups.
[edit]Film debut
Uttam's first released film was Drishtidan (The gift of sight) directed by Nitin Bose, though he worked in an earlier unreleased film called Mayador (Embrace of affection). He came into promonence in the film Basu Paribar and his breakthrough film was Sharey Chuattor (74 and a half) with a young actress called Suchitra Sen. This romantic comedy launched the career of the greatest romantic duo to grace the Bangla film industry.
[edit]Uttam-Suchitra
Uttam-Suchitra have ever since been a household name. Some of Uttam's famous films co-starring, with Suchitra include Saptapadi (Seven Steps), Pathe Holo Deri (Delay on the road), Harano Sur (Lost Music), Chaowa Paowa (Wish and Achievement), Bipasha (Bipasha), Jiban Trishna (Thirst for Life) and Sagarika (Sagarika). It is however debatable as whether on-screen chemistry between the two actors translated to off-screen romance.[citation needed]
[edit]Branching out
Uttam Kumar tried his hand at the popular Bombay/Hindi film with the oft-criticised box office bomb Chhoti Si Mulakat, a film he produced and starred in, among others that were better received. But his towering contribution was to Bengali cinema, or Tollywood (as it is primarily located in Tollygunge in South Kolkata). Many of his Bengali films were directed by notable directors or directing groups of the sixties and the seventies, such as Agradut, Agragami, and Yatrik. Arguably, one of his most lauded appearances was in Satyajit Ray's Nayak (film) (The Hero). It has been rumored that Ray wrote the script with Uttam in mind. Later in his career, Uttam branched out into producing and directing much-lauded films such as Bon Palashir Padaboli.
He had a huge phenomenal fan base which continues even to this day. Reruns of his films on television twenty nine years after his death is still eagerly watched. Uttam Kumars time is considered by many as the golden age of Bengali (West Bengal) cinema.
[edit]Off screen romance(s)
Uttam Kumar's affair with Supriya Debi was the only one that has been validated as they lived together for several years. Although his on-screen chemistry with Suchitra Sen is legendary, their alleged romance has never been substantiated. It is suspected that most of it was the figment of the public's and media's collective imagination. Sabitri Chatterjee, another of his heroines was treated like a very young little sister by Uttam. She has stated in numerous interviews that Uttam would scold her as if she were a little child.
[edit]Death
A strict workaholic, he was rumored to have said that his preferred demise would be on the floor of a studio, doing what he loved best, acting. Indeed, that is exactly how he died. While filming the Bengali film Ogo Bodhu Shundori in 1980, he died of a massive heart attack at the age of 55.
Uttam Kumar's funeral -- mourned by hundreds of thousands of Bengalis spilling into the streets as a slow-moving procession with his garlanded body moved along the major arteries of Calcutta -- was an elaborate, yet ultimately a simple affair. With his passing, Bengal marked the end of an era as Tollygunge (the area in Calcutta where most of the film studios are located) slowly but inexorably transformed itself into Tollywood (marked by an imitation of Bollywood).
As for actors -- to date, and arguably, there has appeared in Tollywood no adequate replacement with comparable star power, box office magnetism, as well as acting acumen. Some of his films like "NishiPadmo" were copied into Bollywood blockbusters like Amar Prem starring Rajesh Khanna and Sharmila Tagore.
In 1966, he turned in a much-lauded performance in the Satyajit Ray directed film Nayak. When the Indian Government instituted the National Awards for Best Actor and Actress in 1967, Uttam Kumar was the first ever recipient of the Best Actor Award for his performances in Chiriakhana directed by Satyajit Ray, and Antony Firingi (1967).
[edit]Family
Uttam Kumar was the eldest among three brothers. His second brother Barun Kumar Chatterjee died a decade back. However, his youngest brother Tarun Kumar Chatterjee (screen name Tarun Kumar) has acted in numerous Bengali feature films and considered a character actor of considerable repute. Tarun Kumar often paired onscreen with his real life wife, character actress Subrata Chatterjee. The films where Uttam Kumar and Tarun Kumar have starred together include Saptapadi, Mayamriga, Agnishwar, Deya Neya etc.
Uttam Kumar's only son Gautam (a businessman, who had no link with films) died of cancer. His grandson Gaurav is now an actor in Bengali movies, though he isn't as famous as the great man himself.
It is known that he was family to Pulak Bandyopadhyay, the famous lyricist. Bandhopadhyay was his uncle, according to records, and he is thus a member of the Salkia House.
[edit]Selected Filmography
See Filmography of Uttam Kumar
1948 ---- Drishtidan
1949 ---- Kamona
1950 ---- Marjada
1951 ---- Sahajatri
1951 ---- Nastanir
1951 ---- O re Jatri
1952 ---- Sanjeevani
1952 ---- Kaar Paape
1952 ---- Basu Paribar
1953 ---- Sharey Chuattor
1953 ---- Lakh Taka
1953 ---- Bou Thakuranir Haat
1953 ---- Nabin Jatra
1954 ---- Maraner Pare
1954 ---- Ora Thake Odhare
1954 ---- Chapadangar Bou
1954 ---- Annapurnar Mandir
1954 ---- Agnipariksha
1954 ---- Maner Mayur
1954 ---- Grihaprabesh
1954 ---- Bakul
1954 ---- Mantrashakti
1954 ---- Kalyani
1955 ---- Sabar Upare
1955 ---- Raikamal
1955 ---- Saajher Pradip
1955 ---- Debatra
1955 ---- Anupama
1956 ---- Saheb Bibi Golam
1956 ---- Sanakr Narayan Bank
1956 ---- Sagarika
1956 ---- Chirakumar Sabha
1956 ---- Ekti Raat
1956 ---- Shyamali
1956 ---- Lakshaheera
1956 ---- Trijama
1956 ---- Putrabadhu
1956 ---- Shilpi
1956 ---- Nabajanma
1957 ---- Haranu Sur
1957 ---- Prithibi Amare Chay
1957 ---- Baradidi
1957 ---- Surer Parash
1957 ---- Jatra Holo Suru
1957 ---- Tasher Ghar
1957 ---- Punarmilan
1957 ---- Chandranath
1957 ---- Abhayer Biye
1957 ---- Pathe Holo Deri
1957 ---- Harjeet
1957 ---- Jeeban Trishna
1958 ---- Indrani
1958 ---- Bandhu
1958 ---- Joutuk
1958 ---- Shikar
1958 ---- Suryatoran
1958 ---- Rajlakshmi O Srikanta
1958 ---- Manmoyee Girls School
1958 ---- Daktarbabu
1959 ---- Marutirtha Hinglaj
1959 ---- Chaowa Pawoa
1959 ---- Bicharak
1959 ---- Sonar Harin
1959 ---- Pushpadhanu
1959 ---- Gali Theke Rajpath
1959 ---- Khelaghar
1959 ---- Abak Prithibi
1960 ---- Khokababur Pratyabartan
1960 ---- Haat Baralei Bandhu
1960 ---- Mayamriga
1960 ---- Kuhak
1960 ---- Rajasaja
1960 ---- Sakher Chor
1960 ---- Uttar Megh
1960 ---- Saharer Itikatha
1960 ---- Shuno Baranari
1961 ---- Jhinder Bandi
1961 ---- Saptapadi
1961 ---- Dui Bhai
1961 ---- Saathihara
1961 ---- Agnisanskar
1961 ---- Neckless
1962 ---- Bipasha
1962 ---- Kanna
1962 ---- Siulibari
1963 ---- Bhrantibilas
1963 ---- Suryasikha
1963 ---- Deya Neya
1963 ---- Nisithe
1963 ---- Sesh Anka
1963 ---- Uttarayan
1964 ---- Jatugriha
1964 ---- Laal Pathar
1964 ---- Momer Alo
1964 ---- Bibhas
1964 ---- Natun Tirtha
1965 ---- Thana Theke Aaschhi
1965 ---- Raajkanya
1965 ---- Suryatapa
1966 ---- Nayak
1966 ---- Sankhabela
1966 ---- Kaal Tumi Aleya
1966 ---- Shudhu Ekti Bachhar
1966 ---- Rajadrohi
1967 ---- Naayika Sangbad
1967 ---- Chiriakhana
1967 ---- Anthoni Phiringi
1967 ---- Jeeban Mrityu
1968 ---- Teen Adhyay
1968 ---- Chowrangee
1968 ---- Kakhano Megh
1968 ---- Garh Nasimpur
1969 ---- Chirodiner
1969 ---- Sabarmati
1969 ---- Man Niye
1969 ---- Aparichito
1969 ---- Shuksari
1969 ---- Kamallata
1970 ---- Nishipadma
1970 ---- Bilambita Loy
1970 ---- Duti Mon
1970 ---- Rajkumari
1970 ---- Kalankita Nayak
1970 ---- Manjari Apera
1971 ---- Chhadmabesi
1971 ---- Joyjayanti
1971 ---- Ekhane Pinjor
1971 ---- Dhannyi Meye
1971 ---- Jiban Jiggasa
1971 ---- Nabaraag
1972 ---- Memsaheb
1972 ---- Andha Atit
1972 ---- Biraj Bou
1972 ---- Alo Amar Alo
1972 ---- Stree
1972 ---- Haar Mana Haar
1972 ---- Chhinnapatra
1973 ---- Sonar Khacha
1973 ---- Bonpalashir Padabali
1973 ---- Raudrachhaya
1973 ---- Raater Rajanigandha
1973 ---- Kayaheener Kaahini
1974 ---- Amanush
1974 ---- Bikele Bhorer Phul
1974 ---- Raktatilak
1974 ---- Jadi Jantem
1974 ---- Alor Thikana
1974 ---- Jadibangsha
1974 ---- Rodan Bhara Basanta
1975 ---- Agniswar
1975 ---- Mouchak
1975 ---- Kajallata
1975 ---- Ami Se O Sakha
1975 ---- Nagar Darparne
1975 ---- Priyo Bandhabi
1976 ---- Banhisikha
1976 ---- Nidhiram Sardar
1976 ---- Hotel Snow Fox
1976 ---- Sei Chokh
1976 ---- Anandamela
1976 ---- Mombati
1976 ---- Chander Kachhakaachhi
1977 ---- Ananda Ashram
1975 ---- Sannyasi Raja
1977 ---- Sabyasachi
1977 ---- Rajbangsha
1977 ---- Bhola Moyra
1977 ---- Sister
1978 ---- Dui Purush
1978 ---- Bandi
1978 ---- Nishan
1978 ---- Dhanraj Tamang
1979 ---- Debdas
1979 ---- Srikanter Will
1979 ---- Samadhan
1979 ---- Brajabuli
1979 ---- Sunayani
1979 ---- Naba Diganta
1980 ---- Dui Prithibi
1980 ---- Raja Saheb
1980 ---- Pakhhiraj
1980 ---- Darpachurna
1980 ---- Aaro Ekjon
1980 ---- Ogo Badhu Sundari
1980 ---- Khana Barah
1980 ---- Pratishodh
1980 ---- Kalankini Kankabati
1980 ---- Suryasakkhi
1981 ---- Iman Kalyan
[edit]12 Films With Highest Running Success At Release
1.Sagarika(1956 - 24 weeks
2.Mayamriga(1960) - 18 weeks
3.Nishipadma(1970 - 17 weeks
4.Chadmabeshi(1971) - 18 weeks
5.Stri(1972)- 24 weeks
6.Banpalashir Padabali(1973) - 17 weeks
7.Amanush(1974) - 32 weeks
8.Ami Se o Sakha(1975) - 26 weeks
9.Mouchak(1975) - 17 weeks
10.Sannyasi Raja(1975) - 18 weeks
11.Ananda Ashrama(1977) - 26 weeks
12.Ogo Badhu Sundori(1981) - 23 weeks
Late journalist Rintu Mukherjee in his " Khanojonma Uttam" did map out the incredible bankability of ths star. From 1947 to 1980, both in Bengali and Hindi, Uttam Kumar acted in 202 films. Among them 39 were blockbusters, 57 were superhits, 57 made profits above the average and the rest flop.
[edit]Tributes
"It is the demise of a leading light of the Bengali film industry…There isn't - there won't be another hero like him." -- Satyajit Ray
"I personally felt that the acting of Uttam Kumar could be compared to the best actor of any country. His great attribute is his diligence...Many are born with talent, but the talent gets eclipsed due to the lack of diligence. Uttam Kumar has both of them. Perhaps, that is the reason why he still sparkles." -- Tapan Sinha
"Uttam is my friend. In a word, he is a great,great artist. But still sometimes i feel as if he is not properly exploited." -- Suchitra Sen
"Uttam was a great human being...it can easily be underscored -- actor of his class is a rare kind" -- Shakti Samanta
"...slowly Uttam Kumar got popular. And a fairy tale was born. I was never bothered to know the individual self of the romantic hero of this fairy tale. I would never want to. What if the dream gets shattered! Let the beautiful spell be alive!Long live Uttam Kumar -- The evergreen romatic hero." -- Madhabi Mukherjee
" It feels good to see all praising one. Uttam is one such person...He never had any pose or pretension...God gave him everything but a friend." -- Kanan Devi
" Uttam Kumar,the numero uno hero of Bengal,the most loving." -- Samaresh Basu
" Sri Uttam Kumar is not merely the actor, I regard him as the creator of character.May be as the creator of character,he has achieved such stupendous popularity." -- Bimal Mitra
" He is the hero and life of many of my fictions." -- Ashutosh Mukhopadhyay
" Uttam!An extraordinary artist!The artistic self of Uttam Kumar never dies down!Oh God give him Uttam health,Uttam strength, Uttam longevity(in Sanskrit and in Bengali, 'Uttam' means 'good')-- Ashapoorna Devi
" In Uttam Kumar we have found a director who shows his brilliance on diverse levels." -- Hindustan Standard (on Uttam Kumar's directorial debut)
[edit]Awards
B.F.J.A Best Actor Award for Hrod(1955)
Recognition from the Government of India for Harano Sur(1957)
B.F.J.A Best Actor award for Saptopadi(1961). Uttam Kumar received the award from the legendary film-maker Debaki Bose.
B.F.J.A Best Actor award for Nayak(1966). Attended the Berlin Film Festicval as the distinguished guest.
The very first recipient of the 'Bharat' award in the Best Actor category for both 'Chiriyakhana' and 'Antony Firingi'(1967).
B.F.J.A Best Actor award for 'Grihadha'(1967).
B.F.J.A Best Actor award for 'Ekhane Pinjar'(1971).
Best Actor award from 'Prosad'magazine for 'Stri'(1973). He received the award from Kanan Devi.
B.F.J.A Best Actor award for 'Amanush'(1974).
Best Actor Filmfare Award for 'Amanush'(1975).
He received the Best Actor award for the same film from the Government of West Bengal on January 26,1975.The price was worth 5000 rupees. Uttam Kumar donated the whole sum to the impoverished artists'fund.
B.F.J.A Best Actor award for 'Bahnisikha'(1976).
Best Actor award both from the 'Prosad' magazine and Sanonskritik Sanbadik Sanostha for 'Ananda Ashram'(1977).
[edit]Quotes
" I prefer following my own ways of acting, like the ways we talk, get angry,that kind of natural spontaneous acting. More of portraying a character."
" Sometimes I got scared. So much of accolade -- would they last for long?And that is why I was not ready to get carried away in the waves of admiration. I desire for more work."
" I never fear work. Rather I derive pleasure out of work."
" Films,Shilpi Sansad,then there was the world of my own,my privacy:I was confused.As if my every moment has ben sold..."
" Whenever I set to work,one after the other death news hit me.Again I eased myself by realizing that death is the only truth."
He had been an actor, director and producer. Apart from acting in two films with Satyajit Ray, Nayak (The Hero) and Chiriyakhana (The Zoo, a thriller written by Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay, in which he played the famous Bengali detective Byomkesh Bakshi), he has acted in some Hindi films like "Chhoti si Mulaqat" (with Vyjayantimala Bali), Amanush (with Sharmila Tagore), Ananda Ashram(with Sharmila Tagore), Kitaab and Dooriyaan.
There is a theatre(Uttam Mancha)in his name in Kolkata.A life-size statue has been erected near Tollygunj metro station which has recently been renamed after the iconic actor by the central railway ministry.Besides,Shilpi Sansad,the actor's pet project of safegurading the artises especially the poor and the old, has still been active.There is a grapevine that the state government is planning to build a museum to preserve the memorabilia of the legend.
Contents [hide]
1 Early life
2 Film debut
3 Uttam-Suchitra
4 Branching out
5 Off screen romance(s)
6 Death
7 Family
8 Selected Filmography
9 12 Films With Highest Running Success At Release
10 Tributes
10.1 Awards
10.2 Quotes
11 External links
[edit]Early life
Uttam Kumar was born in Kolkata in his ancestral house in Girish Mukherjee Road, Bhowanipore. After his schooling in South Suburban School (Main), he went for higher studies in Goenka College of Commerce and Business Administration, an affiliated college of the University of Calcutta system. However, he couldn't complete his studies as he started working at the Kolkata Port as a clerk. During this period, he acted for amateur theater groups.
[edit]Film debut
Uttam's first released film was Drishtidan (The gift of sight) directed by Nitin Bose, though he worked in an earlier unreleased film called Mayador (Embrace of affection). He came into promonence in the film Basu Paribar and his breakthrough film was Sharey Chuattor (74 and a half) with a young actress called Suchitra Sen. This romantic comedy launched the career of the greatest romantic duo to grace the Bangla film industry.
[edit]Uttam-Suchitra
Uttam-Suchitra have ever since been a household name. Some of Uttam's famous films co-starring, with Suchitra include Saptapadi (Seven Steps), Pathe Holo Deri (Delay on the road), Harano Sur (Lost Music), Chaowa Paowa (Wish and Achievement), Bipasha (Bipasha), Jiban Trishna (Thirst for Life) and Sagarika (Sagarika). It is however debatable as whether on-screen chemistry between the two actors translated to off-screen romance.[citation needed]
[edit]Branching out
Uttam Kumar tried his hand at the popular Bombay/Hindi film with the oft-criticised box office bomb Chhoti Si Mulakat, a film he produced and starred in, among others that were better received. But his towering contribution was to Bengali cinema, or Tollywood (as it is primarily located in Tollygunge in South Kolkata). Many of his Bengali films were directed by notable directors or directing groups of the sixties and the seventies, such as Agradut, Agragami, and Yatrik. Arguably, one of his most lauded appearances was in Satyajit Ray's Nayak (film) (The Hero). It has been rumored that Ray wrote the script with Uttam in mind. Later in his career, Uttam branched out into producing and directing much-lauded films such as Bon Palashir Padaboli.
He had a huge phenomenal fan base which continues even to this day. Reruns of his films on television twenty nine years after his death is still eagerly watched. Uttam Kumars time is considered by many as the golden age of Bengali (West Bengal) cinema.
[edit]Off screen romance(s)
Uttam Kumar's affair with Supriya Debi was the only one that has been validated as they lived together for several years. Although his on-screen chemistry with Suchitra Sen is legendary, their alleged romance has never been substantiated. It is suspected that most of it was the figment of the public's and media's collective imagination. Sabitri Chatterjee, another of his heroines was treated like a very young little sister by Uttam. She has stated in numerous interviews that Uttam would scold her as if she were a little child.
[edit]Death
A strict workaholic, he was rumored to have said that his preferred demise would be on the floor of a studio, doing what he loved best, acting. Indeed, that is exactly how he died. While filming the Bengali film Ogo Bodhu Shundori in 1980, he died of a massive heart attack at the age of 55.
Uttam Kumar's funeral -- mourned by hundreds of thousands of Bengalis spilling into the streets as a slow-moving procession with his garlanded body moved along the major arteries of Calcutta -- was an elaborate, yet ultimately a simple affair. With his passing, Bengal marked the end of an era as Tollygunge (the area in Calcutta where most of the film studios are located) slowly but inexorably transformed itself into Tollywood (marked by an imitation of Bollywood).
As for actors -- to date, and arguably, there has appeared in Tollywood no adequate replacement with comparable star power, box office magnetism, as well as acting acumen. Some of his films like "NishiPadmo" were copied into Bollywood blockbusters like Amar Prem starring Rajesh Khanna and Sharmila Tagore.
In 1966, he turned in a much-lauded performance in the Satyajit Ray directed film Nayak. When the Indian Government instituted the National Awards for Best Actor and Actress in 1967, Uttam Kumar was the first ever recipient of the Best Actor Award for his performances in Chiriakhana directed by Satyajit Ray, and Antony Firingi (1967).
[edit]Family
Uttam Kumar was the eldest among three brothers. His second brother Barun Kumar Chatterjee died a decade back. However, his youngest brother Tarun Kumar Chatterjee (screen name Tarun Kumar) has acted in numerous Bengali feature films and considered a character actor of considerable repute. Tarun Kumar often paired onscreen with his real life wife, character actress Subrata Chatterjee. The films where Uttam Kumar and Tarun Kumar have starred together include Saptapadi, Mayamriga, Agnishwar, Deya Neya etc.
Uttam Kumar's only son Gautam (a businessman, who had no link with films) died of cancer. His grandson Gaurav is now an actor in Bengali movies, though he isn't as famous as the great man himself.
It is known that he was family to Pulak Bandyopadhyay, the famous lyricist. Bandhopadhyay was his uncle, according to records, and he is thus a member of the Salkia House.
[edit]Selected Filmography
See Filmography of Uttam Kumar
1948 ---- Drishtidan
1949 ---- Kamona
1950 ---- Marjada
1951 ---- Sahajatri
1951 ---- Nastanir
1951 ---- O re Jatri
1952 ---- Sanjeevani
1952 ---- Kaar Paape
1952 ---- Basu Paribar
1953 ---- Sharey Chuattor
1953 ---- Lakh Taka
1953 ---- Bou Thakuranir Haat
1953 ---- Nabin Jatra
1954 ---- Maraner Pare
1954 ---- Ora Thake Odhare
1954 ---- Chapadangar Bou
1954 ---- Annapurnar Mandir
1954 ---- Agnipariksha
1954 ---- Maner Mayur
1954 ---- Grihaprabesh
1954 ---- Bakul
1954 ---- Mantrashakti
1954 ---- Kalyani
1955 ---- Sabar Upare
1955 ---- Raikamal
1955 ---- Saajher Pradip
1955 ---- Debatra
1955 ---- Anupama
1956 ---- Saheb Bibi Golam
1956 ---- Sanakr Narayan Bank
1956 ---- Sagarika
1956 ---- Chirakumar Sabha
1956 ---- Ekti Raat
1956 ---- Shyamali
1956 ---- Lakshaheera
1956 ---- Trijama
1956 ---- Putrabadhu
1956 ---- Shilpi
1956 ---- Nabajanma
1957 ---- Haranu Sur
1957 ---- Prithibi Amare Chay
1957 ---- Baradidi
1957 ---- Surer Parash
1957 ---- Jatra Holo Suru
1957 ---- Tasher Ghar
1957 ---- Punarmilan
1957 ---- Chandranath
1957 ---- Abhayer Biye
1957 ---- Pathe Holo Deri
1957 ---- Harjeet
1957 ---- Jeeban Trishna
1958 ---- Indrani
1958 ---- Bandhu
1958 ---- Joutuk
1958 ---- Shikar
1958 ---- Suryatoran
1958 ---- Rajlakshmi O Srikanta
1958 ---- Manmoyee Girls School
1958 ---- Daktarbabu
1959 ---- Marutirtha Hinglaj
1959 ---- Chaowa Pawoa
1959 ---- Bicharak
1959 ---- Sonar Harin
1959 ---- Pushpadhanu
1959 ---- Gali Theke Rajpath
1959 ---- Khelaghar
1959 ---- Abak Prithibi
1960 ---- Khokababur Pratyabartan
1960 ---- Haat Baralei Bandhu
1960 ---- Mayamriga
1960 ---- Kuhak
1960 ---- Rajasaja
1960 ---- Sakher Chor
1960 ---- Uttar Megh
1960 ---- Saharer Itikatha
1960 ---- Shuno Baranari
1961 ---- Jhinder Bandi
1961 ---- Saptapadi
1961 ---- Dui Bhai
1961 ---- Saathihara
1961 ---- Agnisanskar
1961 ---- Neckless
1962 ---- Bipasha
1962 ---- Kanna
1962 ---- Siulibari
1963 ---- Bhrantibilas
1963 ---- Suryasikha
1963 ---- Deya Neya
1963 ---- Nisithe
1963 ---- Sesh Anka
1963 ---- Uttarayan
1964 ---- Jatugriha
1964 ---- Laal Pathar
1964 ---- Momer Alo
1964 ---- Bibhas
1964 ---- Natun Tirtha
1965 ---- Thana Theke Aaschhi
1965 ---- Raajkanya
1965 ---- Suryatapa
1966 ---- Nayak
1966 ---- Sankhabela
1966 ---- Kaal Tumi Aleya
1966 ---- Shudhu Ekti Bachhar
1966 ---- Rajadrohi
1967 ---- Naayika Sangbad
1967 ---- Chiriakhana
1967 ---- Anthoni Phiringi
1967 ---- Jeeban Mrityu
1968 ---- Teen Adhyay
1968 ---- Chowrangee
1968 ---- Kakhano Megh
1968 ---- Garh Nasimpur
1969 ---- Chirodiner
1969 ---- Sabarmati
1969 ---- Man Niye
1969 ---- Aparichito
1969 ---- Shuksari
1969 ---- Kamallata
1970 ---- Nishipadma
1970 ---- Bilambita Loy
1970 ---- Duti Mon
1970 ---- Rajkumari
1970 ---- Kalankita Nayak
1970 ---- Manjari Apera
1971 ---- Chhadmabesi
1971 ---- Joyjayanti
1971 ---- Ekhane Pinjor
1971 ---- Dhannyi Meye
1971 ---- Jiban Jiggasa
1971 ---- Nabaraag
1972 ---- Memsaheb
1972 ---- Andha Atit
1972 ---- Biraj Bou
1972 ---- Alo Amar Alo
1972 ---- Stree
1972 ---- Haar Mana Haar
1972 ---- Chhinnapatra
1973 ---- Sonar Khacha
1973 ---- Bonpalashir Padabali
1973 ---- Raudrachhaya
1973 ---- Raater Rajanigandha
1973 ---- Kayaheener Kaahini
1974 ---- Amanush
1974 ---- Bikele Bhorer Phul
1974 ---- Raktatilak
1974 ---- Jadi Jantem
1974 ---- Alor Thikana
1974 ---- Jadibangsha
1974 ---- Rodan Bhara Basanta
1975 ---- Agniswar
1975 ---- Mouchak
1975 ---- Kajallata
1975 ---- Ami Se O Sakha
1975 ---- Nagar Darparne
1975 ---- Priyo Bandhabi
1976 ---- Banhisikha
1976 ---- Nidhiram Sardar
1976 ---- Hotel Snow Fox
1976 ---- Sei Chokh
1976 ---- Anandamela
1976 ---- Mombati
1976 ---- Chander Kachhakaachhi
1977 ---- Ananda Ashram
1975 ---- Sannyasi Raja
1977 ---- Sabyasachi
1977 ---- Rajbangsha
1977 ---- Bhola Moyra
1977 ---- Sister
1978 ---- Dui Purush
1978 ---- Bandi
1978 ---- Nishan
1978 ---- Dhanraj Tamang
1979 ---- Debdas
1979 ---- Srikanter Will
1979 ---- Samadhan
1979 ---- Brajabuli
1979 ---- Sunayani
1979 ---- Naba Diganta
1980 ---- Dui Prithibi
1980 ---- Raja Saheb
1980 ---- Pakhhiraj
1980 ---- Darpachurna
1980 ---- Aaro Ekjon
1980 ---- Ogo Badhu Sundari
1980 ---- Khana Barah
1980 ---- Pratishodh
1980 ---- Kalankini Kankabati
1980 ---- Suryasakkhi
1981 ---- Iman Kalyan
[edit]12 Films With Highest Running Success At Release
1.Sagarika(1956 - 24 weeks
2.Mayamriga(1960) - 18 weeks
3.Nishipadma(1970 - 17 weeks
4.Chadmabeshi(1971) - 18 weeks
5.Stri(1972)- 24 weeks
6.Banpalashir Padabali(1973) - 17 weeks
7.Amanush(1974) - 32 weeks
8.Ami Se o Sakha(1975) - 26 weeks
9.Mouchak(1975) - 17 weeks
10.Sannyasi Raja(1975) - 18 weeks
11.Ananda Ashrama(1977) - 26 weeks
12.Ogo Badhu Sundori(1981) - 23 weeks
Late journalist Rintu Mukherjee in his " Khanojonma Uttam" did map out the incredible bankability of ths star. From 1947 to 1980, both in Bengali and Hindi, Uttam Kumar acted in 202 films. Among them 39 were blockbusters, 57 were superhits, 57 made profits above the average and the rest flop.
[edit]Tributes
"It is the demise of a leading light of the Bengali film industry…There isn't - there won't be another hero like him." -- Satyajit Ray
"I personally felt that the acting of Uttam Kumar could be compared to the best actor of any country. His great attribute is his diligence...Many are born with talent, but the talent gets eclipsed due to the lack of diligence. Uttam Kumar has both of them. Perhaps, that is the reason why he still sparkles." -- Tapan Sinha
"Uttam is my friend. In a word, he is a great,great artist. But still sometimes i feel as if he is not properly exploited." -- Suchitra Sen
"Uttam was a great human being...it can easily be underscored -- actor of his class is a rare kind" -- Shakti Samanta
"...slowly Uttam Kumar got popular. And a fairy tale was born. I was never bothered to know the individual self of the romantic hero of this fairy tale. I would never want to. What if the dream gets shattered! Let the beautiful spell be alive!Long live Uttam Kumar -- The evergreen romatic hero." -- Madhabi Mukherjee
" It feels good to see all praising one. Uttam is one such person...He never had any pose or pretension...God gave him everything but a friend." -- Kanan Devi
" Uttam Kumar,the numero uno hero of Bengal,the most loving." -- Samaresh Basu
" Sri Uttam Kumar is not merely the actor, I regard him as the creator of character.May be as the creator of character,he has achieved such stupendous popularity." -- Bimal Mitra
" He is the hero and life of many of my fictions." -- Ashutosh Mukhopadhyay
" Uttam!An extraordinary artist!The artistic self of Uttam Kumar never dies down!Oh God give him Uttam health,Uttam strength, Uttam longevity(in Sanskrit and in Bengali, 'Uttam' means 'good')-- Ashapoorna Devi
" In Uttam Kumar we have found a director who shows his brilliance on diverse levels." -- Hindustan Standard (on Uttam Kumar's directorial debut)
[edit]Awards
B.F.J.A Best Actor Award for Hrod(1955)
Recognition from the Government of India for Harano Sur(1957)
B.F.J.A Best Actor award for Saptopadi(1961). Uttam Kumar received the award from the legendary film-maker Debaki Bose.
B.F.J.A Best Actor award for Nayak(1966). Attended the Berlin Film Festicval as the distinguished guest.
The very first recipient of the 'Bharat' award in the Best Actor category for both 'Chiriyakhana' and 'Antony Firingi'(1967).
B.F.J.A Best Actor award for 'Grihadha'(1967).
B.F.J.A Best Actor award for 'Ekhane Pinjar'(1971).
Best Actor award from 'Prosad'magazine for 'Stri'(1973). He received the award from Kanan Devi.
B.F.J.A Best Actor award for 'Amanush'(1974).
Best Actor Filmfare Award for 'Amanush'(1975).
He received the Best Actor award for the same film from the Government of West Bengal on January 26,1975.The price was worth 5000 rupees. Uttam Kumar donated the whole sum to the impoverished artists'fund.
B.F.J.A Best Actor award for 'Bahnisikha'(1976).
Best Actor award both from the 'Prosad' magazine and Sanonskritik Sanbadik Sanostha for 'Ananda Ashram'(1977).
[edit]Quotes
" I prefer following my own ways of acting, like the ways we talk, get angry,that kind of natural spontaneous acting. More of portraying a character."
" Sometimes I got scared. So much of accolade -- would they last for long?And that is why I was not ready to get carried away in the waves of admiration. I desire for more work."
" I never fear work. Rather I derive pleasure out of work."
" Films,Shilpi Sansad,then there was the world of my own,my privacy:I was confused.As if my every moment has ben sold..."
" Whenever I set to work,one after the other death news hit me.Again I eased myself by realizing that death is the only truth."
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