Pather Panchali

Its quite a shame that I end up watching a Bengali masterpiece like Pather Panchali, in the US, surrounded by people who barely understand the society and struggle that this movie portrays, let alone the language. Ironically, I think I enjoyed the movie more here than I would watching it at home.

Well, the movie IS a masterpiece. Some critics might say that it is too slow. Yes, it is slow, but I feel it has deliberately been kept slow. Also, some people are restless. Others, like me, relish it when time moves slowly. So it definitely wasn't too slow for me.

What made the movie special ? The simplicity and ubiquitousness of the theme. It is an ordinary story of ordinary people, just narrated in an extra-ordinary way. This in my opinion is the hallmark of a good story-teller. It is the story of family in a village facing the vicissitudes of fortune. Plenty of movies have been made on this general theme, but what makes this special is (a) the picturization and (b) the ability to to make one empathize without resorting to melodrama.

The picturization is just brilliant. The scenes that will be etched in my mind for some time are the candy-man, durga, apu, and dog scene and the scene where Durga and Apu play hide and sike around a dilapidated wall. See it and you'll know what I'm talking about.

The reason this movie was all the more special to me was because of a feeling of association. Sitting here in the US, there is hardly anything with which you feel an immediate connection. For once, I truly understood the characters, the colloquilisms and the setting. There's something about rural Bengal which is really magical. Rural Andhra or rural Orissa isn't the same. I speak out of my experience on the Howrah-Madras route. I always knew it by the scenery when we entered Bengal.

Finally, the scene of the water bugs darting about in the pond : it made me nostalgic about my IIT days. Actually, I get nostalgic about IIT at the drop of a hat , but this was different. I remeber one fine winter morning in Chennai when Shivaram and I decided to go explore the IIT lake area in order to prepare for the "Nature Lovers' trek" that we were organizing during Saarang. We ended up accidently noticing these same water-bugs on the IIT lake, and were awe-struck by nature's beauty that manifested itself as these timy bugs moving absolutely randomly on the water surface. I dont know what was the purpose of that scene in the movie, but it was definitely a statement about Satyajit Ray's idea of beauty . I wonder how many urbanites have seen these water-bugs ?