Soumitra Chatterjee: For his heroines, he graduated from being a ‘craze’ to a ‘great teacher’

Aparna Sen was barely 14 when she first met Soumitra Chatterjee. They went to a remote village to shoot for Satyajit Ray’s ‘Samapti’, the final story in ‘Teen Kanya’. Up from a balcony, she watched him come down the road on a bullock cart. “He looked just like Apu. I was still very young and Soumitra was such a craze. I remember how thrilled I was to have spotted him there,” Sen’s reminiscences of that day read like this.Apparently, all his heroines felt similar thrill and excitement to work with Chatterjee.
She felt his ability to retain his contemporaneity set him apart from others.
Sabitri Chatterjee had said she would work even in a short film just to share the screen with him. According to her, Chatterjee was a “measured actor” and needed his co-actors to be “alert”. For Lily Chakraborty, who had gone for the look test for ‘Apur Sansar’, he was a “great teacher” with an eye for details. Tagore found her Apu always “pleasant, affable” forever curious and engaged with life. Except Balraj Sahni and Ashok Kumar, Tagore said, she never met anyone in the film industry who always ensured an engaging company.
If the Apu-Aparna pair attained cult status, Amal and Charu reigned viewers’ hearts. In her autobiography, ‘Madhabikanan’, Madhabi Mukherjee described Chatterjee as a “sincere actor” in ‘Charulata’—he practised his handwriting the way Ray had suggested—and “a spontaneous one” in ‘Eki Onge Eto Rup’. Yet, for a period, the two did not see eye to eye. But the cold war thawed and Mukherjee acted in plays, like ‘Phera’, directed by Chatterjee. When she watched him in ‘Raja Lear’, she had said, “I pray to the almighty that he lives life like a king.” Swatilekha Sengupta, who worked with Chatterjee in Ray’s ‘Ghare Baire’ and years later, in ‘Belaseshe’ and ‘Belashuru’, believed he brought “truth” to the characters he played.
Later, Chatterjee acted with heroines from another generation, for whom, he was a teacher. Indrani Halder described him as the “flexible actor” in “Sanjhbatir Rupkathara” who taught her the importance of being always “prepared” to perform. Rituparna Sengupta, who worked with him in “Sesh Chithi”, “Chander Bari”, “Debipakkho,” “Belaseshe”, “Belasuru”, “Praktan”, “Atyiyo Sajan”, “Arohon” and “Nishijapon”, found a “father figure” in him. “His body language has been envious. A master all the way, he was extremely sensitive and had an infectious smile,” Sengupta said. Paoli, who acted with him in “Aroni Tokhon” and “Sanjhbaati”, remembered how she had shot with him in September for “Aboho” just a fortnight before he was hospitalised. “His diction was impeccable. He participated and made people participate in conversations that were about a diverse range of subjects. When I started shooting after lockdown, he asked me how it felt to face the camera after so many months. That's how curious he was about everything around him. I shall forever remember his advice to me on that day. He had smiled and said: 'You are an actor. Mogoje dhulo jomte diyo na (Never let the brains rust)'.”