‘Soumitra Chatterjee and His World’: A moving tribute to a beloved Bengali icon

Soumitra Chatterjee. The name itself evokes a million emotions for Bengalis and film-lovers. The man himself is a bundle of contradictions; from Apur Sansar to Bela Seshe, from Kony to Atanka: he is associated with the best of Bengali cinema, but also some of the worst. Cinephiles the world over know his name, and yet he remains largely unknown in his own country beyond the borders of West Bengal. He is familiar to people primarily as a thespian with a wide-ranging film career, and yet he was also a proficient and prolific theatre actor and director, writer, editor, poet, and later in his life, artist.

To write the story of such a man is not an easy task, and yet biographer Sanghamitra Chakraborty in Soumitra Chatterjee and His World makes it feel as though it is. The book flows from section to section – ten in all, with a foreword by Sharmila Tagore – fluidly; the depth of research is remarkable and the prose by turns journalistic and personal, at times zooming in on Chatterjee’s own life and personality, his likes and dislikes, his works and hobbies, and then zooming out to capture a panoramic view of life in 20th and 21st century India.

A multitude of histories

This, perhaps, is the most impressive achievement...

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