The village where Satyajit Ray met ‘Pather Panchali’ Premium

The village where Satyajit Ray met ‘Pather Panchali’

Just on the outskirts of the old city limits of the megapolis of Kolkata stands the semi-urban hamlet of Boral, where a young art director with the advertisement agency D.J. Keymer shot his classic debut film ‘Pather Panchali’ (Song of the Road), some 70 years ago, to metamorphose into the celebrated movie maestro Satyajit Ray. 

Mr. Ray or Manick-da as his close associates called him, whose 102nd birthday is being celebrated May 2 with aplomb across the globe, chose the village as it “was only four miles from the city limits and this meant that we could make daily trips” as also because with his shoe-string budget to shoot the movie, he could hardly afford on-location shoots in faraway rural idles. 

“He used to come to this field between our house and the ancient twin Shiva temple and stand for hours under a tree staring and chewing a handkerchief. 

“My father asked him what he was really doing. Ray told him that this was his way of composing shots in his head,” said Tushar Kanti Ghosh, 80, a scion of the Zamindar family which used to own most of the land in this village turned part of the city at one time, adding with a wrinkled grin: “He told dad he wasted around a dozen handkerchiefs a day thinking about shots!”  

Also Read: Satyajit Ray’s ‘Pather Panchali’ declared best Indian film by International Federation of Film Critics

Mr. Ghosh met Mr. Ray at age eight, and played a small part as a student at the village school in ‘Pather Panchali’, shot over from 1952 to 1955. 

“He [Ray] asked my father if he could borrow some young boys for the movie … I had two small parts in the film and naturally at that age I was thrilled,” chuckled the octogenarian, who along with other fellow villagers never realised that their non-descript village would be thrust into international fame once the movie was released and showcased at Cannes as India’s official entry.