The splendor of Ray’s creative world

Murali Cheeroth
I still remember the sullen silence and gloom that prevailed in Kolkata, and the whole of West Bengal when Satyajit Ray’s health deteriorated. He was the icon of Bengali culture and life, and every Bengali was proud of him. He was the first globally recognized Indian filmmaker, who created his own aesthetics and syntax, thus making his presence felt everywhere, irrespective of the language. Ray was a man of visuals that reflected humanity.

When Kolkata Centre for Creativity (KCC) expressed their interest to associate with Kerala Lalithakala Akademi to organize the third volume of ‘The Satyajit Ray Centenary Show’ in Kochi, as part of the centenary of the legend, we were more than happy, because the legendary filmmaker is a household name in Kerala. Moreover, this show sheds light into the splendor of the creative world of Ray, beyond his films.
The exhibition not only focuses on Ray’s work - his multifaceted genius, but also on his personality through a series of photographs and never-seen-before letters, as said by Sidharth Sivakumar in the curatorial note. “Bromide prints by ace photographers Nemai Ghosh and Tarapada Banerjee capture Ray behind the camera, guiding and instructing the actors between shots, sketching, recording or perfecting a prop, and also basking and brooding behind the scenes and in solitude. These photographs unwrap, layer by layer, the many moods of the man behind the icon, mitigating the distance of a hundred years.” In a sense, these photographs bring to life the man called Satyajit Ray, who always loved the vibrancy of life. In these photographs that are unique works of art, Ray’s personality as a human being and artist comes to the fore, and it also reflects his professionalism and evolution as a filmmaker. This one-month-long exhibition has on display many exhibits that are showcased for the first time, including the costumes from the film ‘Shatranj ke Khilari’, which are in the collection of Suresh Jindal, who is the producer of ‘Shatranj ke Khilari’, and never-seen-before letters written by Ray to Debjani Ray, thus presenting the most comprehensive exhibition of Ray. The costume assumes special significance, because 2022 is also the year of Nawab Wajid Ali Shah’s 200th birth anniversary, and this film portrays the Nawab only.

It wasn’t just Bengal Ray wanted to capture and portray, according to Jindal. “In fact he was quite keen to explore and record every part of the country. He enjoyed filming in Varanasi and Rajasthan. In his childhood, he spent his summer holidays with his uncle in Lucknow, and carried happy memories of those days. I could see that he loved being there for the research on our film,” writes Jindal.
Whatever be the medium that he wanted to handle, Ray brought about a unique aesthetics and visual language to it, and this is visible even in his designs and writings. He was a total artist, who used to draw each scene of the entire script before shooting. He even illustrated storyboards and designed posters and booklets. In this show, all these aspects of his personality come to the fore.
The training in Santiniketan, which had a holistic approach, and later the job at the advertisement agency, strengthened and fine-tuned his talent, which was reflected in his films as well.

As the curator has observed, Ray was exposed to visual vocabularies from the West and the East while he studied in Santiniketan, and Tagore’s zeal for connecting art to one’s lived experience made a lasting impression on the receptive individuals of the time. The intense focus with which the masters at Santiniketan, including the likes of Nandalal Bose and Benode Behari Mukherjee, observed, studied and painted the world around and beyond also touched Ray’s sensibilities.
This show unravels all aspects of Ray’s creative genius, and various programmes are also being organized as part of this, which would further shed light into his creative world as an artist. Ray was one of the rare personalities who explored the possibility of visualisation to the maximum, according to Prof Pinaki De, a graphic designer and member of Satyajit Ray Archives. And that element of the beauty of visuals makes this show unique for everyone.
(The writer is the Chairman of Kerala Lalithakala Akademi)