Autobiography of satyajit ray pdf

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Preface to the Second Edition

For Krishna and for my parents

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The Inner Eye

‘The eye, which is said to be the window of the soul, is the primary means by which the brain may most fully and magnificently contemplate the infinite works of nature . . .’ Leonardo da Vinci ‘All great civilisations have been based on loitering.’ Jean Renoir ‘I do not put my faith in any new institutions, but in the individuals all over the world who think clearly, feel nobly and act rightly. They are the channels of moral truth.’ Rabindranath Tagore

Preface to the Second Edition

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Preface to the Second Edition IN the summer of 2002, the National Film Theatre in London announced the first-ever complete retrospective of Satyajit Ray’s films. Some of the prints were coming from the Academy Film Archive in Hollywood, which had magnificently restored the image and sound; these had been seen only in the United States. Here was an opportunity too rare to miss, and I decided to see every film again on the big screen (and Ray’s long-lost documentary Sikkim for the first time). From the opening night, when Ravi Shankar – now in his eighties but still vigorously performing – made a surprise speech and moved everyone by humming the main theme from Pather Panchali, to the screening of Ray’s swansong film Agantuk (The Stranger) two months later, the retrospective was unexpectedly well attended, with showings even selling out. And the people coming were remarkably varied: some were Bengalis or of Indian origin, naturally, but the majority were not, furthermore many were young, seeing the films for the first time as I had in 1982 at an earlier major NFT Ray season. They generated a palpable buzz of excitement. In his introduction, David Robinson, veteran film critic and biographer of Chaplin, promised: ‘To discover or to revisit the world of Satyajit Ray is one