A life lesson to be learned from an old interview of master film-maker Satyajit Ray: Anger is best allowed to simmer within than to be shown immediately. It makes you stronger
Many a Saturday evening I relive my other self — an expatriate (that is the closest, though not the exact, translation of the Bengali word probashi) Bangali who craves for the sights, sounds and smells of Bengal each moment of his life in exile. The last bit sounds more dramatic than it actually is — I did not have to flee political or religious persecution when I left Kolkata for Delhi in 1991 (although this could well have been true 23 years later). I left for a better job, seduced by the charms of Delhi as the hub of national politics. Since then, that charm too has worn off; I now live far away from the city that once enchanted me, and many of my generation of Bengali journalists. I have neither looked back nor do I have any regrets: At least I do not have to live in fear of Mamata Banerjee’s goons. Yet, a dull pain remains, surfacing every now and then, when there’s this craving for Bengal.
So, to lessen the pain I go shopping at Delhi’s ‘little Kolkata’, Chittaranjan Park (Dilliwallahs call it CR Park, in all probability ignorant of a person called CR Das). It’s fun breathing in the smell of freshwater fish laid out shimmering against the emerald green of water-drenched banana leaves, haggling over vegetables (tindas andlaukis are banned) and stopping by at one of the mishti’r dokanfor ledikeni, rajbhog, sandesh and, if you are feeling very nostalgic, a pot of (runny) mishti doi. I make an additional stop at the bookstall to pick up Bengali magazines, often just for the lark of it because most of them are no longer readable. One Saturday, I picked up a copy of Anandalok, a popular film magazine, with Satyajit Ray on the cover. The blurb said: “I don’t know what Marxism means today.” That copy of Anandalok surfaced recently from a pile of magazines retained for reasons that none can remember at home.
During his lifetime, the master film-maker had refused to ever talk of politics and about politicians and never appeared on a platform that could be remotely considered anything but apolitical. Years after his death, Anandalok had come up with an unpublished interview that had Ray talking of politics. I dusted the copy and read the interview (it was really a reconstruction of what Ray had said during several adda sessions with the author) all over again. I was transposed back to my years in Kolkata and my two encounters involving Ray. The first was when I was all of 23 or 24 years old, a rookie journalist at The Telegraph struggling to survive in the shadow of a towering editor, MJ Akbar. Rajiv Gandhi, in his usual manner, had made an off-the-cuff remark that had greatly hurt Bengali pride — he had described Kolkata, or Calcutta as it was then known, as a “dying city”.
MJ Akbar, the boy from Telinipara who is more Bengali than most Bengalis, was as infuriated as others in the city. He planned a full-page of what was then called Weekend Telegraph that would carry the reactions of what famous Calcuttans had to say about Rajiv Gandhi’s infamous remark. I was despatched, pen and pad in hand, to meet members of Kolkata’s snob society, people who belonged to the charmed inner circle — people like Ray. I called up Ray, stammered that I was calling from The Telegraph and sought an appointment. Oozing politeness, he asked me, in his baritone voice and clipped accent, to come over right away. I remember popping into the washroom to comb my hair and see whether there was dirt on the shirt collar. later, as I stood outside the door of his Bishop lefroy Road flat, I felt my stomach doing a twist as I gingerly pressed the calling bell button, wondering whether I had pressed it too long.
The door swung open and I was ushered into Ray’s famed study where the master was sitting on his favourite chair, reading a book. Sensing an alien presence, he looked up, put the book down and asked me what did I want to see him about. “Sir, Mr Gandhi has described Calcutta as a dying city,” I stuttered, “We wish to record your reaction…” I had barely recovered from my stuttering that Ray cut me short. “I am sorry but I don’t talk politics. You should have known this.” And went back to the book he was reading. I stood there for a moment, feeling utterly foolish and my stomach doing a double-twist and rock-n-roll at the same time. I crept out of the room, out of the mahogany door, down the stairs and virtually ran all the way back to office. I felt so stupid, so silly — I should have known something the whole world apparently knew. I felt done in by MJ Akbar — he had purposefully set me up for some subbing error.
The other incident occurred some years later when I was working at The Statesman. Congress thugs had murdered Safdar Hashmi and the Progressive Writers Association or some such left-wing organisation had arranged for a condolence meeting where all those believing in freedom of expression, etc etc, would commiserate with his widow. I trooped off to attend the meeting, firm in my belief that I should join the protest against Hashmi’s murder. Buddhadev Bhattacharyya, then Minister for Information and heir apparent to Jyoti Basu, was presiding over the meeting. After all the speakers had showered Hashmi with what is described as “glowing tributes”, Buddhadev Bhattacharya fished out a piece of paper from hiskurta pocket and read it out to the audience. It was Satyajit Ray’s message. He was moved by Hashmi’s murder, Ray had written. He condemned it, he added. But he could not be present in person — that was the unsaid bit — because he could not share a political platform.
The same Satyajit Ray had now been quoted in Anandalok as saying, “I have never found the formula-cast so-called progressive attitudes interesting, valid or of any substance. I always found them an over-simplification… I don’t know what Marxism means today — Marxism has changed so much over the years. There’s a huge difference between Marx’s Marxism and today’s Marxism… If you claim to be a Marxist, then you are a Marxist… (Marxism as we see it today) makes me feel as if all doors and windows have been shut…” Taking a swipe at Mrinal Sen’s “angry political films” Ray says, “Some people must show their anger immediately… There are those who don’t show their anger but keep it within themselves — they are stronger.” Ray implied that he belonged to the second group.
Older, if not wiser, than what I was when I first read Ray’s views on Marxism, I would agree with him. Not that the maestro needed others’ to validate his views. But there’s a life lesson hidden in those sentences.
(The writer is a current affairs analyst based in NCR)