Our Films Their Films<\/a><\/em>, that he is a city boy. He is not lured by the idyllic romanticism of the village. He did not complete his studies in Shantiniketan. He came back to Calcutta to catch up with his western music and Hollywood films. This urban-philia has got rubbed off in Ray\u2019s construction of Apu. Ray\u2019s Apu has become a symbol of a newly independent nation\u2019s march towards modernization.<\/p>\nBibhuti Bhushan\u2019s Apu, on the other hand, is torn between the pull of the outer world and the pull of Nishchindipur. For him Nishchindipur is his microcosm – the place where he spent his wonder years, where he learnt his letters and had his first stirrings of manhood. In Nishchindipur, Apu spent hours sitting under a tree or perched on a fishing scaffold and reading books from his neighbour\u2019s library. While the gentle breeze of Nishchindipur nurtured his body, his mind raced to the snow-capped mountain or the dreary desert.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne day he opens his father\u2019s trunk and discovers a book titled Sarva Darshan Grantha <\/em>or \u2018The Book of All Wisdom\u2019<\/em>. He opens the old book gingerly and a colony of silverfish escape in different directions. Apu brings the book close to his nostrils and fills his lungs with the smell of an old book.\u201d<\/p>\nAnother day, \u201cApu\u2019s father secretly spends two rupees to buy a newspaper.\u201d Apu is mesmerized by the newspaper \u2013 the real stories it carries of distant places and great people. \u201cApu\u2019s father is a collector of rare books. Apu reads these books and wants to become like the characters of the books \u2013 Rosko who solves algebra problems on a leather surface using a blunt stick as his stylus, or the shepherd who studies maps when his cows happily graze in the meadows.\u201c<\/p>\n
In Aparajito<\/em> the book as well as the film, Apu insists on joining school and quench his thirst for knowledge through the rigour of academics. In Bibhuti Bhushan\u2019s Aparajito<\/em>, in between his school hours, Apu continues to perform his task as the village priest. But in Ray\u2019s Apu Trilogy<\/em> on the other hand, we never see Apu performing his priestly rites. As a matter of fact, we do not see his father performing these rites either, even though we know that priesthood is Harihar\u2019s livelihood. Perhaps Ray\u2019s aversion for rituals has been reflected in this absence.<\/p>\n![\"Apu](\"http:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2015\/07\/Apu-2-300x229.jpg\")
Apu finally wins the confidence of his son and shoulders his responsibility.<\/p><\/div>\n
All the films of the trilogy end in a journey. In Pather Panchali,<\/em> the family uproots itself from the ancestral home and moves on in search of greener pastures. In Aparajito, <\/em>Apu severes his ties with the pastoral past and in Apur Sansar<\/em>, Apu finally wins the confidence of his son and shoulders his responsibility. Father and son move on towards an unknown destiny.<\/p>\nIn Bibhuti Bhushan\u2019s Aparajito<\/em>, Apu finds fulfilment in taking Kajol to the broken down hut, the place he calls his ancestral home:<\/p>\n\u201cKajol came and stood by the jungle beside his grandfather\u2019s broken down home. A sudden breeze welcomed him \u2013 and the breeze brought with it the spirit of his grandfather Harihar, his grand ma Sarbajaya, his aunt Durga. They all smiled at Kajol and said, \u2018welcome home. You are the bearer of the family torch. You have our blesings.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
By taking Kajol back home, Apu resolves the dilemma in his mind \u2013 the dilemma between being rooted and being on the move. \u00a0Thus Bibhuti Bhushan completes the cycle. Pramathanath Bishi writes in the preface to Pather Panchali,<\/em> \u201cA snake is the metaphor for time. A snake can have two forms \u2013 the straight form and the coiled form. Time too can be linear or cyclic. In our everyday life we are used to the linearity of time. But the eternal child resides over the coiled figure of time, where time winds up to a point. Bibhuti Bhushan has been able to transform time into a point \u2013 an eternity. There lies the mystery of the timelessness of Pather Panchali<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\nRay\u2019s treatment of time in Apu trilogy is linear \u2013 like an unwound snake, its energy unleashed. Apu moves on in life. After Apu Trilogy<\/em>, Ray\u2019s Apu recurs in several later films, each time in a different name, but having the same qualities of being untouched by the complexities of life, unvanquished by its challenges. So Apu lived on even after its original creator Bibhuti Bhushan died in 1950.<\/p>\nBut did Apu die a peaceful death on 23rd<\/sup> April 1991?<\/p>\nPramathanath Bishi writes that Apu is an eternal child. Apu is not a being of flesh and blood. Apu is an idea \u2013 not an apparition, but a luminous spirit \u2013 a spark from the flame of creation that had fallen on the pristine greenery of Nishchindipur many years back.<\/p>\n
Twenty two years after Satyajit Ray\u2019s death, Kaushik Ganguli brought the luminous spirit out of the bottle in his film Apur Panchali.<\/em>\u00a0 \u00a0Apur Panchali <\/em>begins in a documentary style, with the protagonist Arka, an SRFTI student, looking for the guy who had played the role of Apu in Pather Panchali<\/em>. The reason for the search is to deliver a letter from the Government of Germany, who have chosen Apu to be the most celebrated child character in world cinema.<\/p>\nAnd why did the protagonist take up the search for Apu as his personal mission? In his own words, \u201cIt makes me feel a part of the Pather Panchali <\/em>team.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Apur](\"http:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2015\/07\/Apur-Panchali.jpg\")
Arka finds Apu in 32\/27 Chandi Ghosh Road, a small house in a by-lane of south Calcutta, recluse and slightly bitter with life. Just as Apu\u2019s eyes were opened by Durga through the tear in the bed sheet, Subir Banerjee\u2019s gaze was turned outer world by Arka\u2019s knock at the door \u2013 as if it was a cue to the spectator that Apu\u2019s new journey is about to begin.<\/p>\n
If Ray absorbed the qualities of Apu during his two years of companionship with Pather Panchali<\/em>, how much of Apu was brushed off on the tender shoulders of Subir Banerjee during the four years spent on the little road?<\/p>\nThe innocent looking child that Bijoya Ray (Satyajit Ray\u2019s wife) had spotted on the terrace of her neighbours, is now a weather beaten, \u2018vanquished?\u2019 widower. Above everything else, he is strongly resentful of being called Apu. At one level, Apur Panchali <\/em>is about how Apu\u2019s fate was transferred on his impersonator Subir Banerjee. Like Apu, Subir has a friend and confidant in Moloy, who is instrumental in sealing Subir\u2019s wedlock, like Apu, Subir is woken up from his sleep\/ reverie when his father\u2019s condition gets critical and Subir\u2019s mother\u2019s stoic stance in keeping the family going is reminiscent of Sarbojoya\u2019s daily struggle in keeping her hearth warm.\u00a0 Apu\u2019s wife Aparna had died of childbirth, leaving behind Kajol whom Apu did not want to face for five years. Subir\u2019s wife died of grief having lost her child in childbirth. Both Apu and Subir were grieved by their wives\u2019 death and both withdrew from the worldly life. Apu left Kolkata and took up a job at a colliery. He destroyed the manuscript of the book he was writing. Subir stayed on in Kolkata and withdrew into a shell. He took voluntary retirement and thrived on his meager pension and paltry house rent.<\/p>\nThe spirit of the unvanquished had temporarily deserted both Apu and Subir. In Apur Sansar<\/em>, Apu\u2019s son Kajol was the catalyst that brought back the spirit of the unvanquished in Apu. In Apur Panchali, <\/em>Subir\u2019s new friend Arka was the catalyst. In Arka\u2019s company, Subir slowly begins to relive his years as Apu. He takes Arka to Boral and shows him around, \u201cthis is the room my sister died, my aunt used to sit here in the evenings and this is the broken down wall from where we came and went.\u201d<\/p>\nThrough much of the second half of the film, we see Arka gradually transforming into Subir\u2019s son. First Arka brings his father\u2019s clothes for Subir. Then they become close buddies on the night they drink together and Arka decides to spend the night in Subir\u2019s home. Finally, the airport duty officer mistakes them for father and son. They do not deny the relationship imposed on them. In the penultimate scene of the film we see \u2018father and son\u2019 \u2013 Apu and Kajol, climbing the escalator on their way to board the aircraft. For Apu it would be his first plane journey. For Kajol it would be his first plane journey in business class. The plane has replaced the train of Apu trilogy. But llike Apu trilogy, the arrow of time continues to point forward.<\/p>\n
Or does it?<\/p>\n
In the last scene of Apur Panchali, <\/em>Subir finally says \u2018yes\u2019 to a little boy\u2019s query whether he is Apu. Subir is finally at peace with the Apu in him. As the little procession with the Durga idol passes him, he continues his journey along the dust track of the village. It is an inward journey, celebrating the spirit of the unvanquished.<\/p>\nThus, in skilfully juxtaposing two journeys \u2013 the outward journey to Germany and the inward journey to \u2018the cave of one\u2019s heart\u2019, Kaushik Ganguly has brought out the dual nature of time. While time is linear and forward looking, it is also coiled to an eternity. The eternal child Apu dances on this coil.<\/p>\n
Apu is the recurring motif not only of Ray, but of Indian cinema. Let us wait for his reincarnation.<\/p>\n
![\"Apu](\"http:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2015\/07\/Apu-3-1024x512.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
REFERENCES<\/p>\n
\n- Bibhuti Bhushan Bandyopadhyay, Pather Panchali, <\/em>Mitra & Ghosh Publishers<\/li>\n
- Bibhuti Bhushan Bandyopadhyay, Aparajito, <\/em>Mitra & Ghosh Publishers<\/li>\n
- Preface to Bibhuti Rachanabali Part 1 by Pramathanath Bishi<\/li>\n
- Preface to Bibhuti Rachanabali Part 2 by Jitendranath Chakrabarty<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
More to read in Critique <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On reading Pather Panchali one cannot help feeling that Bibhuti Bhushan\u2019s construction of Apu has given Ray an understanding of child psychology. Most importantly, Ray imbibed from Pather Panchali, the leit motif of his body of films. This recurring motif is Apu. We encounter Apu not only in Apu trilogy, but also in Pratidwandhi, Seemabaddha and his last film Agantuk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":603,"featured_media":2059,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[792],"tags":[1274,243,28,1218,1217],"class_list":["post-1947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-critique-on-films","tag-apur-panchali","tag-pather-panchali","tag-satyajit-ray","tag-satyajit-ray-and-apu","tag-satyajit-ray-films"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/603"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Pather](\"http:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2015\/07\/Pather-Panchali.jpg\")
\u201cWhenever Apu stands by the window, he has visions of Bishalakshi Thakur, the radiant goddess in a red saree, adorning a flower garland and a flower bracelet.<\/p>\n![\"Apu](\"http:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2015\/07\/Apu-1.jpg\")