Soumitra Chatterjee is a legend, by no means forgotten

Indian Express

03-05-2025

I was a child when I witnessed the phenomenon known as Soumitra Chatterjee by watching his movies. It has remained a mystery to me how or why he was not that well-known outside Bengal, especially in today's world dominated by Bollywood stars. Sanghamitra Chakraborty's detailed and well-researched biography, Soumitra Chatterjee and His World, explores this, and like the eponymous character of Feluda, once played by the actor, tries to solve this mystery. Chakraborty went through the actor's writings — essays, diaries, letters, plays and poetry — and his interviews, as well as interviewed his children, and the people who knew him, to systematically put together his life story. As she mentions in the Introduction chapter, she was inspired by the message that actor-director Sisir Bhadhuri, one of Chatterjee's mentors, had told him: 'Read your lines like a detective'.
The book starts with Chatterjee's birth in a north Calcutta home to a mother who is obsessed with Rabindranath Tagore, which influences Chatterjee's interest in Tagore and Bengali literature. As he wrote, 'My own heart and mind, in some way, have also been shaped by him.' The family moved to Krishnanagar later, and Chatterjee was entranced by the writing of his grandfather, Lalit Kumar, and the tales of his uncle and grandfather being jailed, and met various freedom fighters who would drop into their home. This made the young boy crave adventure and he got the acting bug at a young age.
After matriculation, Chatterjee moved back to Calcutta. He became the ringleader of a group of students and frequently visited the bookshops on College Street as well as the Coffee House. Reading, meeting with friends, debating and reciting poetry, he soon became a part of a vibrant group of like-minded people, one of whom took him to watch the play Alamgir. That play and its producer and director Bhaduri inspired him to the extent that Chatterjee started learning the theory of theatre as well. It was in the mid-1950s that he started a theatre group, Chhayanot, and started acting in plays, including in one that Bhaduri staged Prafulla. He also worked at All India Radio and during that period auditioned for a lead in a Bengali film,only to be rejected.
Despite the rejection, Chatterjee didn't give up and when a friend asked him if he wanted to audition for the role of Apu in Aparajito (1956), the sequel to Pather Panchali (1955), Soumitra agreed to meet with the director, Satyajit Ray. Though he was again not chosen for that role, that meeting was pivotal because the legendary filmmaker remembered him and did eventually cast him for Apur Sansar (1959), changing the course of his life.
Apur Sansar was a box-office hit and generated rave reviews for its actors. Chatterjee had by then started getting recognised on the streets and in Coffee House, a sure sign of being a celebrity! He went on to collaborate with Ray on many other memorable movies, including Devi (1960), Samapti (1961), Kapurush (1965), Charulata (1964), Ghare Baire (1984), to name a few.
The later sections of the book describe Chatterjee's breakthrough into commercial cinema through Jhinder Bondi (1961), his forays into a diverse roles with parallel cinema directors and his return to the theatre. He was steadfast in wanting to stay in Kolkata, and thus, the city is sometimes as much a character in this book as the actor. He stayed resilient and creative until the end. In fact, in 2020, seven of his new films were released. He remained an icon of Bengali culture and that is why there was an outpouring of grief and obituaries at a global scale on his demise in November 2020.
Soumitra Chatterjee and His World is a delight to read for cinema and history lovers. There were many aspects of his life that had stayed unknown, and reading this book gave me insight into those as well as a world that is fast-disappearing, and therefore must be remembered.