Satyajit Ray: A modern man in the black and white age

When Satyajit Ray went to London in 1950 to work in an office, he was far removed from the world of film-making. He was a talented graphic designer, an adept illustrator, a testament to which can be found in his later works, but little did he know that fate had other plans for him. During his stay in London, Ray began to watch films voraciously, learning the nitty-gritty details of the art. Still, he did not think of himself as an aspiring director.

It all changed one day when he went to watch the film Bicycle Thieves, directed by Vittorio De Sica, a behemoth of Italian neorealism. It inspired Ray and moved him to such an extent that he decided to become a film-maker. The cinematic fraternity of the world had found another reason to thank De Sica.

It is well known that Ray would later go on to become a legendary director, not only in India but also on the canvas of world cinema. He would inspire the likes of Abbas Kiarostami, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese and Christopher Nolan, to name a few. He has left a legacy that is celebrated, revered, and often worshipped. And beneath the structure of his towering success lies an ethos that Ray showcased in his works throughout his life. He rose to the stature of immortality because he possessed that one trait that binds every great person: He was ahead of his time.

Ray defined modernity at a time when India was still coping with the bruises from the Partition. In an age when society was yet to liberate itself from the shackles of conservatism, Ray decided to brush aside obsolete thoughts of the past and herald a new era of liberalism, a free-thinking and progressive outlook. Indian cinema was taking baby steps when Ray arrived on the stage. By the time he left, the silver screen had enchanted the nation and the people had placed the medium and its heroes on a pedestal.

Ray's mastery can be understood by looking at some of his works. In his debut film Pather Panchali, based on a novel of the same name by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, Ray captured the essence of village life and the bond between a brother and a sister. He showed the intricacies of a rural setting, weaving the plot with a sense of innocence and nostalgia for a world that was about to be metamorphosed by the inevitability of change. And that was just a glimpse of the things to come. His next in the famous Apu trilogy, Aparajito (The Unvanquished), placed him on the global cinema map. It showed the struggles of young Apu, whose journey from his village to Kolkata changes his perception about the world, and along with it, his relationship with his mother. It was the first time that Ray dealt with the uncertainty of youth, a theme he would later explore in Pratidwandi (The Adversary), where a young Siddhartha battles an unemployment crisis that has gripped society. The film showcases the hegemony of the elite upper class and the constant struggles of the middle class to survive in a land ravaged by a crippled economy. In the other two films of the Calcutta Trilogy as well, Seemabaddha (Company Limited) and Jana Aranya (The Middleman), Ray highlighted the fragile morality of people and the difficulties faced by urban educated youth.

In Charulata (The Lonely Wife), Ray presented a 19th century Bengal that was going through a renaissance. Charu, the protagonist, defined the aspirations of contemporary women who peeked at the outside world from the solitary confines of their homes and were eager to participate in the cacophony that was hitherto barred to them. It was an attempt to deal with the theme of gender equality. His women characters in subsequent films, especially in Aranyer Din Ratri (Days and Nights in the Forest) and Ghare Baire (The Home and the World), represented a shift in the gender narrative. In Ghare Baire (based upon a novel by Rabindranath Tagore), Ray explored the idea of an extramarital affair, something that was considered sacrilegious in contemporary society. The intimacy between Bimla and her husband's friend Nikhilesh in the film establishes Ray as someone who was never hesitant to dismiss societal dogma with the exposition of abhorred truth.

He even dealt with the themes of dictatorship, autocracy, the revolution of the downtrodden and the futility of war in his Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne (The Adventures of Goopy and Bagha) and Hirak Rajar Deshe (Kingdom of Diamonds). Hirak Rajar Deshe, in particular, showed the plight of the destitute, the agony of farmers burdened by a rigorous tax system, and the resentment of the regime towards educational institutions.

In the end, these are merely minuscule examples that attempt to define the adroitness of the man. He was a genius with unfathomable dynamism and it is not possible to fully capture the essence of the man who was presented with the Honorary Academy Award in 1992 for his contribution to world cinema. Even to this day, he remains relevant and much discussed, inspiring moviegoers across the world with the excellence of his craft.

Satyajit Ray would have turned 99 today.