Of Ray & Ghatak, Sankar to Sircar, session on four stalwarts of Bengali literature and cinema
Telegraph | 1 May 2026
The first time Barun Chanda met Satyajit Ray, he was taking his interview on behalf of a newspaper. But his dictaphone refused to work, and Chanda was too embarrassed to ask the great filmmaker for paper and pen. “So I wrote the entire piece later from memory,” Chanda said. “So later, when Manikda (Ray) cast me for Seemabaddha, I wasn’t given a script to take home as he thought I had a good enough memory!”
BE College Ex-Students’ Club, in CK Block, held a talk recently on four stalwarts of Bengali literature and cinema, and the actor was recounting his experience with Ray, whose 105th birth anniversary it is tomorrow.
“I was from an advertising background, but Manikda liked to cast non-actors for his films, like Dhritiman (Chatterjee in Pratidwandi) and me. This is because newcomers come without baggage. If Saumitra (Chatterjee) was cast in the role of, say, Shyamal in Seemabaddha, people would say he was good as Shyamal. But if a Barun, whom the audience did not know, was cast, they would say Barun is Shyamal,” said the actor.
Chanda read out excerpts from his book Satyajit Ray: The Man Who Knew Too Much, and recalled what a grounded person he was. “Once, Manikda, I, and a large group went to watch the last show of a Hollywood film at New Empire, but found a long queue before us. It did not once strike Manikda or Babu (his son Sandip) that the queue would have dissolved if they announced that the Satyajit Ray was standing behind them. I, however, exploited the situation, informed the management and got tickets.”
The talk was being moderated by author Krishnendu Mukhopadhyay, who pointed out that two of Ray’s films in the Calcutta trilogy — Seemabaddha and Jana Aranya — had been based on books by author Sankar, another topic for the day’s discussion.
“Back in the day, after weddings, couples would be asked how many Chowringhees they got as gifts,” said Krishnendu, a resident of FE Block. “The book has been translated into multiple languages, and besides the 1968 Uttam Kumar-starrer on it, it was remade into Shah Jahan Regency in 2019. Sankar’s books sold in lakhs, yet he is not considered a serious writer by many as his language was rather simple. Why so?” he asked writer Pracheta Gupta.
Gupta responded by first contesting the assumption that low sales of a book necessarily mean it is bad, and vice versa. “Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay’s Ghunpoka had a slow start, but later even authors like Sunil Gangopadhyay would read only one page a day in a bid to make it last longer. Sankar, too, received awards much later in life and is being discussed more after his demise (in February) than when he was around,” said the EC Block resident.
Sankar’s contribution to literature, he felt, was giving readers a glimpse of the corporate world. “Other authors focus on the personal lives of characters, with just a passing mention of what they do for a living. But Sankar showed how rooms are booked in a hotel, how breakfast is served there, how people change jobs for better opportunities... Before satellite television, this was people’s only peephole into the corporate world,” Gupta explained. “And the city itself would be a character in Sankar’s books.”
Director or drunkard
Another icon discussed was Ritwik Ghatak, who, film scholar and author Sanjoy Mukhopadhyay felt, was a visionary. “His Nagarik and Subarnarekha dealt with migration and refugee crisis — issues we are still grappling with today. In terms of cinematic grammar, too, that last scene from Meghe Dhaka Tara was groundbreaking. The frame is hogged by the scenery, and Nita is in a corner. And then in the climax, the camera starts panning. This was very unusual and yet the scene is etched in our minds,” said the author of the book Ritwiktantra, on the director.
“The man only lived till 50 and worked on films, plays, scripts... but it is a pity that people still reduce his life to the label of a drunkard,” said Mukhopadhyay, but Chanda added here that upon Ghatak’s demise, Ray had hailed him and called him an “uncut diamond”.
Mukhopadhyay also spoke on Badal Sircar, dramatist, theatre director and incidentally, an alumnus of BE College.
This was a man who wanted to break boundaries and reach the people, much like Tamasha of Maharashtra and Ramlila of Uttar Pradesh. He shattered the proscenium structure of drama in closed auditoriums and took it into the open,” said Mukhopadhyay. “Theatricians like Vijay Tendulkar and Habib Tanvir held Sircar in the highest regard and Girish Karnad claimed to have learnt from Sircar to transition from one scene to another. His plays, such as Ebong Indrajit, Pagla Ghora and Solution X made a deep impact, and he was the last great name in Bengali theatre.”