On why Bidyut Sarkar decided to do this biography on Ray he had told me, “I had been keeping notes on Ray for years but the idea to write this book came up much later. In fact, I got the inspiration when Ray told his biographer Andrew Robinson to learn Bengali. That struck me since I had the advantage of knowing Bengali.”
Sarkar had also detailed the lesser-known aspects to Ray, “Only two women appeared to have influenced him – his mother and his wife. His mother, a remarkable woman who was widowed early in life, played a key role in Ray’s growth. Bijoya, his wife, took over the role so far as Ray’s artistic development was concerned.”
Even in his leading actresses, Ray never looked for dolled-up glamour but for the intelligent beauty. Madhabi Mukherjee, Sharmila Tagore, and in his last three films, Mamata Shankar, best fitted that description.
In fact, Ray’s biographer Andrew Robinson throws more light on the pains Ray took to project the actress Madhabi Mukherjee, as aesthetically as possible in Charulata. To quote, “Madhabi had bad teeth, as she was addicted to eating ‘pan’ (just as Charulata) which destroys the gums over a long enough period, as well as staining the teeth black…I had to photograph her very carefully, not to show that side of her,” recalls Ray. “It’s the lower set that are bad. I had to put the camera at low angle so that even when she spoke, the lower set of teeth wouldn’t show. I suggested taking out her teeth but her mother objected, it was too early for that. But I knew the camera would manage that. Madhabi accepted that.”
Says Sarkar, whose book focuses on among other aspects on Ray’s early childhood, “Ray was shy as a boy, particularly in nervous situations. Once he was petrified on seeing a train compartment full of English men and women. He quietly sat down on the floor, realizing that even if they had offered him a seat he could not have conversed in their language. But lack of self-confidence did not hold him back in life. In fact, it seems to have made him more resolute in applying himself to the challenges and overcoming his sense of diffidence.”
Sarkar also writes on Ray’s love for music. To quote Ray himself, “Music has been my first love for many, many years. I used to play the gramophone regularly. Once there was a knock on the door and when I opened it there was an embarrassed-looking GI (US army man ) standing outside who said that it was such an unexpected sound coming from a Bengali house. It was Beethoven’s Ninth, I think…” (His home in Ballygunge was close to the wartime military hutments that had come up there).
