The Master that is Satyajit Ray

Years ago, as a college going student in Thiruvananthapuram, I got to associate myself with a film society which had periodic screenings of great films from India and abroad. The Chithralekha Film Society started by Adoor Gopalakrishnan had set the film aficionados craving for more, and film festivals became the rage of those years. The classics from masters enthralled the young and the old alike and many like me got an opportunity to see some of the best films ever made.

One day, our Film Society that we called Suvarnarekha decided to have a festival of Satyajit Ray films. We were all greatly enthusiastic about screening the Ray classics. I, for one, was especially excited at the prospect of seeing the master's best. No wonder, the first to be screened was Pather Panchali.

It is said that when we have very high expectations, we are likely to feel let down eventually - unless it happens to be something special like the Taj or a Satyajit Ray classic. The first of the Appu trilogy had made Ray a worldwide celebrity; naturally, we were all eagerly awaiting the screening.

Years later, I feel the same excitement when I think of that small hall in Thiruvananthapuram that evening where we experienced Appu and his life in the magical hands of Satyajit Ray. I too had heard many times over of the sheer beauty of those shots where Appu and Durga wade through the grass uphill to see the train chugging past their village. What is it that makes this one scene so special and memorable is something that I can't comprehend yet ' and that is, perhaps, the beauty of it: that one shot is etched in one's memory forever!

If creativity has a synonym, it is Satyajit Ray!

Manikda, as his contemporaries affectionately called him, was a creative genius who strode the world of cinema like a colossus ' literally and figuratively. The intensity of Ray, the person, itself is legendary: his very physical presence captured everyone's attention. Tall for an Indian, with chiseled features, penetrating and intense eyes, baritone voice, striding elegantly and gracefully, Ray seemed aloof and withdrawn to lesser mortals. But he carried his genius lightly on his broad shoulders.

It is as though creativity was partial to the Ray family. His father Sukumar Ray himself was a legend in his own lifetime; a brief description of Sukumar Ray reads: poet, author, illustrator, scientist, humorist, photographer, social reformer .. Satyajit naturally had his genes right.

The world acknowledges Satyajit Ray as a master craftsman in the medium of cinema. Yet, his first love was music and the third drawing! In fact, he was so much enamoured by drawing that he took lessons from none other than Nandlal Bose. It is the cinema's gain that Ray went after his second love; yet, he blended his first and third love so elegantly with his second love.

The uniqueness of Satyajit Ray is something unparalleled in the world of the genius. His very first film ' what else, but Pather Panchali ' is still celebrated as one of his finest. I remember scouring through the classics section in a video library in distant Boston once. Within the classics section, they had a sub-category, `the best films ever made'. My eyes welled up with pride when I saw at least three of Satyajit Ray's films there.

From Pather Panchali to Agantuk, in a span of nearly four decades, Ray made 28 films, besides 2 short films and 5 documentaries. Many of his films are set in the typical Bengali milieu: the greatness of Ray lies in the fact that the native Bengali setting transcended the borders of continents and oceans.

Never one to miss out on subtlety, Ray once said that `the best technique is one that's not noticeable'. Who else but Ray could personify it! More than fifty years after Pather Panchali was made, the classic evokes the same intensity in us as it did five decades ago. To single out any one film of Ray, except, of course, the saga of Appu, will be an injustice to his many wonderful creations. What is important is that Ray elevated film making to dizzyingly sublime heights.

Ray's characters breathed life as only he could have made them to. Socially sensitive as he was, Ray brought to bear his intensity into each one of his creations, and in the process universalized them to audiences across the world.

What distinguished Ray from his contemporaries was the complete control he had on the contents and contours of his films: from the beginning till the end, his long and masterly fingers weaved magic. He had to overcome many challenges on the road to glory which could have made many others drop out on the way, but he persisted because: "To me, it is the inexorable rhythm of its creative powers that makes film-making so exciting in spite of the hardships and the frustrations". And the world of cinema will ever be grateful to Ray that he stayed - and not strayed.

When one talks of Satyajit Ray, one is not talking of a person ' Ray was a phenomenon, an institution, a rare one at that. Who else but Satyajit ' not even his father Sukumar - could have combined in himself, so gracefully, the highest attributes of a universally acclaimed director, outstanding cameraman, master story teller, exceptional composer, renowned graphic artist, eminent designer of costumes, film sets, credit titles, publicity material, posters, book jackets, illustrator and typographer! If there are limits to creativity and genius, Satyajit Ray breached them ever so gracefully and sublimely.

Ray's words had the same telling effect as the strokes of his brush, and he articulated his thoughts on many issues with the same dexterity as he would his creations. He once wrote: "In the immense complexity of its creative process, the cinema combines in various measures the functions of poetry, music, painting, drama, architecture and a host of other arts, major and minor. It also combines the cold logic of science and the subtlest abstractions of the human imagination." Ray's life and his many contributions to the world of cinema remain a testimony to his own perceptive words.

The Bharat Ratna was a signal honour by a grateful nation to this legendary Indian.  The many awards he received from around the world, including the Legion de Honneur and the Lifetime Achievement Oscar ' sat lightly on him; his life and times were beyond honours and awards: he towered over the many recognitions that came his way from far and wide. It was a great moment, typically intense as a Ray classic, when he received the Lifetime Achievement Oscar, reclining in his hospital bed, the image screened live in the convention hall in far-away US. The baritone voice of Ray, despite his illness, echoed in the hall; and the standing ovation to the master craftsman that erupted there said it all beyond any words or honours.

One cannot compare Satyajit Ray to Thomas Jefferson: such comparison will be too odious by any stretch of imagination. Yet, every time I think of Ray, I am reminded of the opening lines of President Kennedy's address when he hosted a dinner at the White House for all the Nobel laureates of the Western Hemisphere: many eminent men and women from fields as diverse as medicine, physics, chemistry, literature, economics and peace initiatives. Kennedy, in his memorable words, said: "I want to tell you how welcome you are to the White House. I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."

When we talk of the many-splendoured personality of Satyajit Ray, I can only think of this analogy.

If mastery and mutifacetedness have a synonym, it is Satyajit Ray.

One of his contemporaries, the legendary Japanese filmmaker, Akiro Kurosawa, paid a sterling tribute to Ray when he said: "Not to have seen the cinema of Ray means existing in the world without seeing the sun or the moon"!

I am happy I have seen the sun and the moon, and more importantly, the cinema of Satyajit Ray.