Uma Dasgupta, the sprightly Durga of Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali, handed away in Kolkata in the present day, November 18. She was 84 and was battling most cancers for a few years. Though it was her first and final movie, Uma shall 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 long-lasting 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 means 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.
Additionally Learn | ‘Do you have got any disgrace?’: Radhika Sarathkumar’s recollects Dhanush’s response to Nayanthara-Vignesh Shivan’s romance on Naanum Rowdy Dhaan units
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 in the present day,” says Banerjee.
He remembers her as somebody with loads of persistence. “She was so variety to me. It was her first movie too, however I’d rely upon her for steering. I bear in mind for the rain sequence, which finally results in her dying within the movie, we had been made to take a seat all day underneath 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 presupposed to within the movie,” says Banerjee.
Dasgupta, who has marvelled generations of cine lovers, was observed by Ray throughout her stage efficiency as a toddler artiste at a college operate. The director then obtained 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 potential 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 keep away from 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 got mentioned that many occasions later. However at the moment, for many middle-class Bengalis, the movie business was not a really good place. My mother and father, too, weren’t glad about me performing in Pather Panchali, Uma di’s father was very strict. He didn’t desire a movie profession for her in any respect,” says Banerjee.
One other Satyajit Ray heroine, the long-lasting 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.
