This year has been unlucky yet eventful for the Indian entertainment industry. With the passing of some much-loved stars of the film industry, such as the charming Rishi Kapoor, the effervescent Irrfan Khan, the brilliant Sushant Singh Rajput and more recently, seasoned character actor Asif Basra, Indian cinema has suffered great losses this year.
The latest addition to that list is one of West Bengal’s brightest stars, veteran actor Soumitra Chatterjee, who breathed his last on November 15 after a month-long battle with COVID-19 and its consequential complications.
The seasoned Bengali actor was aged 85 at the time of his death. He had tested positive for COVID-19 last month and was admitted for treatment. Although the actor had tested negative since October 14, he continued to suffer from post-COVID ailments, particularly encephalopathy. Although he showed signs of recovery initially, a brief from the hospital informed the media that the actor’s cognitive abilities had suffered greatly and he was not recuperating. He remained admitted at Belle Vue Hospital where he died after a month of treatment.
Chatterjee was not just an actor but a multifaceted personality who was a playwright, poet, painter, and orator all in his own right. Many said he was goddess Saraswati’s special child who was sent to glorify the blessed soil of Bengal. Responding to news of his death, Bengali superstar Aparna Sen rightfully said the state’s cultural sky had lost its brightest star in Soumitra Chatterjee.
Whether it was his readings and recitations that revived the glory of Bengali literature, or his cinemagraph spanning the last six decades that brought the art of Bengali cinema to the fore, Chatterjee personified art and literature’s perennial confluence. Such was his involvement in the nuances of cinema that even at the age of 85, just before he took ill, he was working on a film based on his own life.
He was a young talent of 23 when he was spotted by preeminent filmmaker Satyajit Ray, who then chose him as a debutant actor in the 1959 film Apur Sansar. It was only after spotting him in 1954 that Ray had started planning the third and final film of The Apu Trilogy.
Chatterjee would go on to collaborate further with Ray in his later films such as Teen Kanya, Ghara Baire, Abhjaan, Charulata and many more. Chatterjee’s most famous role however remained Feluda, the fictional detective, he thought was the alter ego of Satyajit himself. But Ray believed that Feluda resembled Soumitra Chatterjee in many ways and he went on to play the famous part in Sonar Kella and Joi Baba Phelunath under Ray’s direction.
Apart from working with Ray, Chatterjee acted in a wide array of films in diverse roles during the sixties and seventies. His diverse characters and understated style of acting made him popular under the moniker of Mahanayak, or the greatest actor of Bengali cinema.
Chatterjee’s legacy in the field of art will be celebrated for decades to come.
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