May 2, 2014
Ray, the Weaver of
Tales
Disturbance of mind is associated to depression and
sometimes, immense creativity. Monet would simultaneously paint many of his hay
stack paintings as the hue and halo around sunlight changed on those calm
countryside mornings. Immensely impatient and disturbed, he would carry a cart
of paintings and as patterns of light gleamed and danced aroud hay stacks, he
too would shift his perceptions and brush. What if this disturbance of mind is
not depression at all, but a platform to express creativity; what if this is
the chaotic cradle from where the lust to change the world, or change oneself,
or change the existing status quo emerges? How else can we explain eccentrics
and crankpots (remember the Apple ad of eighties?), leaders and artists, madmen
and genius, if not by stating that they marched to a rhythm of their own, that
the rainbows of the sky and songs of skylark and thrush and the interplay of
light and shadow and movement glowed in all their splendor only to them and no
one else?
How else would you explain Ray?
It was nineties and post the Oscar ceremony, the DD managed
to put up a few of Ray’s films and I saw Pather Panchali for the first time.
One memory effect from that time is
whenever I see a swamp, or a vendor of
sweets, or a calm morning pond in the village, even today, I would look for the
Kaleidoscopic reflection of how they will look in the dancing ripples of water.
Whenever I see a dilapidated ruin, the first moving camera through the house in
“Jalsagar” come to mind. The trip to Rajasthan is always a roving eye camera
through the railway station scene in Sonar Kela. Poverty and rice fields and
news that flood destroyed villages and that people are starving are all
preludes to the famine in “Asani Sanket”.
Friends going on a trip? The first scene in which the friends in an
Ambassador are rushing through to their guest house in Aranyer Din Ratri – with
the countryside and mango orchards moving in a peripheral orthogonal view?
Everything from these movies is simple, intense, and
personal. They build on you over your subconscious. They juxtapose with your
daily life in seemingly interconnected ways – and when you see something or
hear or feel joy, you hear him. When you stand by the road in rain, you are the
hero in Parash Pathar. When you are disillusioned, you are the depressed Uttam
Kumar’s ref lection in that rail car (with people cheering from the other side
his “success”).
Ray is personal joy – On his birthday, a reminder of Akiro
Kurosawa’s famous quote of not having seen his movies is like living without
seeing Sun or Moon comes to my mind.
A gross understatement, as I see it!
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