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Soumitra Chatterjee has been awarded the Dadasaheb Phalke Award this year. The hour of glory has come after it was felt that his contribution to Indian cinema would remain marginalised. Who is Soumitra Chatterjee? Amitav Nag, who is writing a book on Soumitra Chatterjee, says he is an ‘enigma’ who, like Amal, the character he portrayed in Satyajit Ray’s Charulata, stormed into films to stay on for 53 years. Is he the actor who brought characters to life in 14 films directed by Satyajit Ray beginning with Apur Sansar (1959) and ending with Shakha Proshakha (1990)? Or, is he the man who found it easier to cope with cancer at 77 through The Third Act, Therefore, a play he wrote, directed and acted in last year? Actor-director-poet-writer Soumitra Chatterjee, suffering from cancer, presented his autobiography as a live stage performance. He also entered the world of jatra, a kind of travelling theatre that moves from place to place during winter and spring. The Third Act, Therefore
maps the personal, social, political and historical journey his life
has taken. The events that finally shaped him as an actor are mapped
too — the arrival of soldiers of Netaji’s Azad Hind Fauj at
Barasat packed like animals in a train, the Bengal Famine, the Great
Calcutta Killing, and finally, his encounter with Natasamrat Girish
Chandra Ghosh. His professional life is marginalised to the man
Soumitra Chatterjee, who smoked 20 cigarettes a day for 50 years till
one day his body painfully reminded him that he had stretched the
borders of well-being a bit too far.
"A serious interest in cinema started with the first film festival held in Calcutta. I watched Bicycle Thieves, Miracle in Milan, Fall of Berlin, with friends, who were film buffs. These films changed my thinking about cinema. We saw Renoir’s River shot in India. Then came Pather Panchali. Ray made four films before he did Apur Sansar. I now feel those films were a kind of preparation for what was to come — my first film Apur Sansar," reminisces the actor. Soumitra Chatterjee, like his mentor, Ray, is a pillar of creativity, an architect of culture as a poet with 11 published books, an elocutionist, a theatre director with around a dozen staged productions, and an editor of a prestigious literary magazine called Ekkhon (Now.) He has done around 300 films. Apart from the films directed by Ray, he has done crassly commercial potboilers and some good mainstream films that were big boxoffice hits. He held on to his own even when Uttam Kumar was the reigning superstar. Talking about Uttam Kumar, Chatterjee says, "Uttam Kumar gave me a tremendous sense of competition. I had to deal with it on my own terms, without either imitating him, or being influenced by him. We were more like the East Bengal and Mohan Bagan football teams. Calcutta would always be divided into two warring groups when it came to choosing between the two of us. We acted together in quite a few films. I did have my boxoffice potential as hero. I would not have lasted this long if this had not been so." He has been awarded the Padma Bhushan. He won the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for his rich contribution to the theatre in Bengal. BBC made a documentary on him called Gaach. But the National Award eluded the actor till he was nominated some years ago for his performance in Gautam Ghosh’s Dekha. He refused it. "I often felt it went to people who did not deserve it when other better and more powerful performances by other actors were also in the race. I felt that stars were awarded over genuine actors." But the Padma Bhushan changed view. He won the National Award for Best Actor for his performance in Suman Ghosh’s Padakhep in 2008. He does not draw any hierarchy between mainstream and off-mainstream cinema. This time, he is really happy. "I am happy because my faith in the public that has sustained me for so many years is vindicated. But I miss my mentor Satyajit Ray, my great teacher Tapan Sinha and all those who paved the way for me over these 53 years," he sums up, wistfully.
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