Soumitra Chatterjee's Tryst with Destiny
The encounter that led a budding actor to a legendary filmmaker, and sparked an iconic creative partnership during the golden age of Bengali cinema
Nityananda Dutta, Satyajit Ray’s assistant, was waiting on the pavement across the street from Soumitra Chatterjee’s house. Once they got past the pleasantries, Netai, as he was called by Ray’s unit, came straight to the point: Mr Ray was planning to start filming Aparajito (The Unvanquished), the sequel to Pather Panchali (Song of the Road) [the film adaptation of Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s acclaimed novel by the same name], and had launched a hunt for an actor to play Apu. Would Soumitra be willing to come along to see Ray for that role?
Next, Soumitra was on a bus with Ray’s assistant to his home in south Calcutta. On the bus, Netai sized him up with a piercing gaze. Soumitra had started wearing glasses at the time. Midway, Netai asked him to get rid of them.
Ray was seated in his room in his signature white kurta pajama when Soumitra arrived at his Lake Avenue flat. “The moment I entered, he said, ‘Oh dear, you’ve turned out to be much too tall.’ Restraining himself immediately, he added, ‘Please come in, take a seat.’ I was shaken. How engrossed he must have been in his work to be able to say something like this. It only meant that he was looking for Apu everywhere, all the time.”
At five feet eleven, Soumitra looked considerably older than Smaran Ghoshal, whom Ray eventually cast in Apu’s role in Aparajito. Yet, for Soumitra, that first meeting was...
Nityananda Dutta, Satyajit Ray’s assistant, was waiting on the pavement across the street from Soumitra Chatterjee’s house. Once they got past the pleasantries, Netai, as he was called by Ray’s unit, came straight to the point: Mr Ray was planning to start filming Aparajito (The Unvanquished), the sequel to Pather Panchali (Song of the Road) [the film adaptation of Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s acclaimed novel by the same name], and had launched a hunt for an actor to play Apu. Would Soumitra be willing to come along to see Ray for that role?
Next, Soumitra was on a bus with Ray’s assistant to his home in south Calcutta. On the bus, Netai sized him up with a piercing gaze. Soumitra had started wearing glasses at the time. Midway, Netai asked him to get rid of them.
Ray was seated in his room in his signature white kurta pajama when Soumitra arrived at his Lake Avenue flat. “The moment I entered, he said, ‘Oh dear, you’ve turned out to be much too tall.’ Restraining himself immediately, he added, ‘Please come in, take a seat.’ I was shaken. How engrossed he must have been in his work to be able to say something like this. It only meant that he was looking for Apu everywhere, all the time.”
At five feet eleven, Soumitra looked considerably older than Smaran Ghoshal, whom Ray eventually cast in Apu’s role in Aparajito. Yet, for Soumitra, that first meeting was unforgettable. He had been in awe of the great director already, but Ray’s graciousness was a genuine surprise. Soumitra was a nobody at that stage, and he definitely had not expected Ray to spend so much time with him. He fondly remembered the conversation they had that day. The big man took his time speaking to the young actor on a variety of subjects, even though he had known right away that he was not right for the role.
Soumitra found out later that Ray would evaluate actors for certain specific abilities in the course of his first conversation with them, subtly observing their manner of speaking, the timbre of their voice, their enunciation skills and so on. For Ray, it was crucial that his actors spoke fluent Bengali, and so he observed their choice of phrases and expressions during their everyday speech.
“He asked me two specific questions that day: whether I really loved acting, and whether I was ready to act in films, if necessary ... Given my immense fascination with Pather Panchali and with the person asking the questions, my response was exactly as it ought to have been.”
Ray seemed pleased with their chat; he spoke freely, taking a genuine interest in the conversation. With his 6-foot-4.5-inch frame, he towered over most people.
Most people who met him for the first time were inevitably overwhelmed by his large presence and his baritone. With his Brahmo reserve, Ray normally appeared somewhat distant and sombre. But even as he grew in stature, achieving a cult status, he remained unfailingly polite, particularly while speaking with newcomers and children. But in this case, it wasn’t just that. He had definitely spotted in Soumitra a certain spark, something of a promise that prompted him to say, “Do come again, keep in touch.” Soumitra had reckoned then that Ray was just being polite; but he was to realize much later that Ray’s invitation was genuine. And that it was entirely out of character for him to slip in a hollow remark, no matter what the circumstance.
Soumitra and his friends had been attached to Bibhutibhushan’s Pather Panchali for long. Since 1929, when the novel was first serialized in the magazine Bichitra, it had secured a place as a literary classic in the Bengali imagination with its profound compassion for the human condition. Not surprisingly, there had been a great deal of curiosity about the director who would make a film adaptation of it: Who was this new filmmaker? A commercial artist by profession, Ray was known mainly as Sukumar Ray’s son and Upendrakishore Roy Chowdhury’s grandson—beyond this, he had no identity of his own. He apparently had a family legacy, but he was still a novice. Could he possibly do justice to this literary masterpiece?
For many, it seemed like an audacious venture destined for failure. Ray, by then, had become only slightly known as a graphic artist among the cultured circles in the city. His cover design of Aam Aantir Bhepu, the young-adult version of Pather Panchali published by Signet Press, was noticed for its artistic excellence. Soumitra and his friends had certainly noticed his cover art. Those who saw this work waited eagerly to see how the young Satyajit Ray would cinematically interpret Bibhutibhushan’s tour de force.
Edited and reproduced with permissions from Soumitra Chatterjee And His World, published by Vintage, Penguin Rnadom House, Copyright © Sanghamitra Chakraborty 2025