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The camera slowly zooms into a letter — it’s a letter of recommendation and says Apu is a “sensitive, conscientious and diligent” person. And then camera cuts to Apu’s face. A young, ordinary man with an earnest smile who beams in black and white frame. This was Satyajit Ray’s introduction to the debutant Soumitra Chatterjee. It was 1959 and ‘Apur Sansar’, the last film in Apu trilogy, had released in theatres to much success. In the ’60s and ’70s, Uttam Kumar became the face of Bengali cinema, but Soumitra Chatterjee was the stout hero of the ‘thinking man’ and throughout his six-decade long career, he successfully embodied the typical Bengali middle-class - sensitive, vulnerable yet intelligent. On the thespian’s 85th birthday here are some of the lesser known facts about Soumitra Chatterjee, the living legend.
People who visit the ancestral house of Suchitra Sen in Pabna, Bangladesh often return with a broken heart as the small collection of memorabilia and lack of maintenance and negligence have transformed the house into a forgotten piece of heritage. Suchitra Sen was born in her maternal grandfather's house on April 6, 1931, in Bangladesh at Bhangabari of Sirajganj and was raised at her ancestral house in Gopalpur Hem Sagor Lane in Pabna town, also in Bangladesh.
