No personal feelings
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Soumitro Chatterjee accepted this year's Best Actor award because his fans wanted him to.
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Veteran: Soumitro Chatterjee.
Who knows? Soumitro Chatterjee,
largely Ray's man, might
have got the National Award
way back in 1964 if he had accepted
the role Rajendra Kumar eventually
played in "Sangam". But the
veteran doesn't regret that at all. After
all, what mattered to him was his
roots, his Calcutta of those days and of
course his very dear "friend and mentor"
Satyajit Ray.
"Raj Kapoor offered me this role.
But I refused, as I didn't like to live in a
nerve-wracking place like Mumbai,"
says the veteran of over 100 films and
theatre productions, without even a
hint of remorse.
Mellow reaction
The veteran has received the National
Award for Best Actor in "Poddokkhep",
a Bengali film directed by
Suman Ghosh, in which he plays a
lonely, retired widower "who is fighting
his age regression and ego". The
man who turned down the Padma Shri
in 1970, indicating it was offered too
late, is definitely a shade mellower;
what with the Padma Vibhushan in
2004 and the National Award this
year.
Yet the 74-year-old clarifies,
"Awards or no awards, it doesn't matter
as I am internationally known
through Ray's films. This award too
has not come with any personal feelings
or value to me. I accepted it because
my fans and admirers wanted
me to," says the veteran.
Ask him why Ray liked him so
much, and notice a sudden chirp in his
voice. "Some heavenly connection?"
he retorts, adding, "We shared a special
bond. He told me often that I
understood his mind before he spoke
to it to me, and he did mine. In my
30-year association with him, not only
did he teach me a lot but also gave me
immense freedom in my roles. I went
to see him when he was making `Aparajita'.
He liked me but told me that I
was too grown up for Apu, so he took
me in the third film. At that time I was
a radio announcer. He did a voice and
screen test, pasted a moustache and
said, `Your face should look changed'."
Apart from doing "routine films"
that have "no great roles", he now prefers
to "immerse" himself in theatre
productions under the banner of
`Mukho Mukhi'. "We do translations
and adaptations of literary works," he
shares.
And Bengali films? "They are becoming
very bad. They are now copying
the South and Mumbai. They seem
to have given up on our literary tradition
of making films. We don't have
writers who can make good comedy,"
he sounds grim.
So how many more Hindi films was
he offered? The question does the
trick. Laughing he answers, "I would
have played Manoj Kumar's role in
`Aadmi' and Hrishida's Amitabh
Bachchan (`Anand') you know? I can
speak good Hindi. But why do they
live in Mumbai?"
RANA SIDDIQUI
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