Uma Dasgupta, the sprightly Durga of Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali, handed away in Kolkata at this time, November 18. She was 84 and was battling most cancers for a few years. Regardless that it was her first and final movie, Uma will probably be at all times be remembered for one of the crucial iconic moments of world cinema.
Ray’s path-breaking 1955 movie is well known for the enduring scene the place Apu (Subir Banerjee) and Durga (Dasgupta), see a practice for the primary time. For movie students, it symbolised many issues, the appearance of modernity for one, however for Banerjee, the actor who performed the wide-eyed Apu, it meant just one factor: the Bangla phrase ‘khunshuti’ (playful preventing). “I bear in mind all by way of the shoot, we had been teasing one another, throwing twigs at one another, poking one another. Didi was 14, I used to be 9. We had been like actual siblings,” says Banerjee.
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Seventy years later, Banerjee has misplaced his Didi. Dasgupta, Ray’s first heroine, is survived by her daughter. “In Pather Panchali, she died leaving me alone. In actual life too, I’ve misplaced my Didi at this time,” says Banerjee.
He remembers her as somebody with lots of endurance. “She was so form to me. It was her first movie too, however I’d rely upon her for steerage. I bear in mind for the rain sequence, which ultimately results in her dying within the movie, we had been made to take a seat all day beneath a berry tree. We had been ready for the rain to reach. Kakababu (Satyajit Ray) made us sit there for hours. We had no alternative however to entertain ourselves, so we’d play phrase video games, tease one another. And when it will definitely rained, we had been shivering. She was holding me shut, identical to she was speculated to within the movie,” says Banerjee.
Dasgupta, who has marvelled generations of cine lovers, was observed by Ray throughout her stage efficiency as a baby artiste at a faculty operate. The director then bought in contact along with her college and household. She, nevertheless, selected to not act in some other movie. Filmmaker Sandip Ray, Ray’s son, says that his father at all times lauded Uma’s pure means as an actor. “I used to be too younger to recollect the shoot, however later in his life my father talked about Uma di’s intelligence. He claimed that working along with her was very straightforward. She was a pure and will perceive complexities of a scene very simply. She selected to steer clear of cinema for her personal causes, however even then she is going to stay one of the crucial iconic actors of world cinema due to that one efficiency,” says Sandip.
However why precisely did she select to not act in one other movie once more? Banerjee, who additionally didn’t act in some other movie after Pather Panchali, says there are a number of causes. “We knew we wouldn’t be part of something this magical once more. That consciousness was there. We’ve mentioned that many occasions later. However at the moment, for many middle-class Bengalis, the movie trade was not a really good place. My dad and mom, too, weren’t completely satisfied about me appearing in Pather Panchali, Uma di’s father was very strict. He didn’t need a movie profession for her in any respect,” says Banerjee.
One other Satyajit Ray heroine, the enduring Madhabi Mukhopadhyay, rues the dying. “I’ve met her just a few occasions and the information of her dying does make me very unhappy. However I really feel she had a lot potential as an actor and it’s such a loss for us that we didn’t see her in some other movie,” she says.
