West Bengal: Ray film actor Pradip Mukherjee passes away after cardiac arrest

KOLKATA: The Ray actor, who had defeated Covid last year, succumbed to a cardiac arrest at a city nursing home on Monday. This was just 16 days after Pradip Mukherjee had given the last shot for Nirmal Chakravarty's adaptation of Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay's 'Datta'.
The 76-year-old actor, whose performance as a young unemployed Calcutta University graduate in Satyajit Ray's 'Jana Aranya' had won him the Filmfare Awards East for Best Actor in 1976, is survived by his wife, son and daughter.
After studying at Hare School, Mukherjee joined City College before completing law from Calcutta University. A theatre personality, he would often visit the Ray household in 1972. But these visits became less frequent when he started working at an India-Japan collaboration. He was no longer a regular at Ray's place in 1974 when the filmmaker had wanted to cast him in 'Jana Aranya' after being impressed with his performance for Nakshatra Theater Group.
Destiny had plans of getting the two to work together and Mukherjee dropped by at Ray's residence in December 1974. "We spoke on a wide range of topics. I don't know how time flew and a 30-minute-long meeting went on to last for over two hours," Mukherjee had once told TOI in an interview.
‘Jana Aranya’ was critically acclaimed and till today remains extremely “pertinent”. Adapted from a novel penned by Shankar, the film traces the journey of a young Calcutta University graduate named Somnath who struggles to find a job till he meets a well-wisher (Utpal Dutt) who introduces him to the world of middlemen where he has to turn a blind eye to ethics for cracking deals. The climax, where Somnath ends up offering his best friend's sister to a client for a business favor, points at what a compromised world we live in. Yet, Mukherjee never became a constant in Ray movies. The shy actor could never ask Ray to cast him. They reunited for the big screen 26 years later. This time it was for 'Shakha Proshakha'.
In between, Mukherjee started working full-time as an income tax consultant. Acting remained a passion and he did Buddhadeb Dasgupta's 'Dooratwa' and 'Mondo Meyer Upakhyan', Rituparno Gho sh's 'Hirer Angti', 'Dahan' and 'Utsav', Sandip Ray's 'Baksha Rahasya', 'Gorosthane Sabdhan' and 'Badshahi Angti', Aparna Sen's 'Goynar Baksho', Indrasis Acharya's 'Bilu Rakkhosh', 'Pupa' and 'The Parcel', Sujoy Ghosh's 'Kahaani 2' and Debaloy Bhattacharya's 'Dracula Sir'.
Mukherjee was highly respected as an amiable industry senior. Sadly, not too many author-backed roles came his way. Mukherjee himself had told TOI that being "stamped as an actor of good roles" had worked against him. Indrasis Acharya said he was an 'underutilized actor'. “His looks, attitude and behavior were outstanding. He was true Bengali and an educated gentleman. It was rare to find a personality like him. Today’s films have flamboyant characters. Pradip-da was composed and a humble gentleman. The demand for such characters in today’s scripts has gone down.”

Even last year, he told TOI on a lighter vein: “An actor’s instinct doesn’t die till he is on the pyre”. These words haunt when one sees how diligently he still shot for Nirmal Chakraborty’s ‘Datta’ till August 13 – just a week before being hospitalized on August 20. “He had said that he wouldn’t be able to shoot for more than two or three scenes. That’s why we shot for four days in August with him,” Chakravarty said. Rituparna Sengupta, who shot ‘Parcel’ and ‘Chhuti’ with him, had celebrated the actor’s birthday on August 11 the sets of ‘Datta’. “Pradip-da’s was subtle and subdued. He was a metaphor for a quintessential middleclass person. He got some interesting roles but it’s true that he could have got more,” Sengupta said.