Page 109 - The Apu Trilogy_ Satyajit Ray and the Making of an Epic

96 The Apu Trilogy

these pages into a mere four minutes, in which he packs a micro-
cosm of human behaviour, which teeters on the edge of comedy
and cruelty, rather like the novels and stories of the south Indian
writer R. K. Narayan. The schoolmaster’s cane, for example, is
prominently stuck, for ease of use, in his grocer’s tub of salt.
Although little happens in this school scene, there is a
lot to look at and listen to. In a short span we see the school
from multiple perspectives: those of the tubby, pop-eyed
grocer–schoolmaster and the pupil Apu, but also those of a
girl customer, a leathery-faced village elder come to sponge
off the grocer, and the rest of the boys in the class who are
of various ages and levels of mischief. All the while that the
multi-tasking schoolmaster is giving the boys a sonorous dicta-
tion of poetic phrases from a text retelling the story of the epic
Ramayana, he is also measuring out goods and selling them to
his customers, gossiping with his visitor, rebuking and chas-
tising his pupils, scratching his back with the cane and loudly
yawning. The innocent Apu – new to this quotidian, slapstick
spectacle – at first grins spontaneously, abruptly becomes seri-
ous after a scolding, and is finally afraid for his own skin after
being forced to watch the caning of an older boy caught playing
noughts and crosses on his slate. So sharp is the ‘thwack’ that
it can be heard across the quiet village pond. All this is teach-
ing of a kind – but an education more in the ways of the world
than in the pursuit of knowledge (though the schoolmaster is
clearly not a total philistine; he has some feeling for the grand
language he is dictating from memory). When Apu next goes
to school, in Aparajito, and proves to be an earnest pupil, we
know that he is aware of the ignominious fate he has escaped
at the hands of the grocer–schoolmaster.
An extract from the script gives some idea of Ray’s dramatic
skill and the scene’s humour:

Schoolmaster: (dictating) ‘Deep in the heart of Janasthan ...
Deep in the heart of Janasthan!’ (He glares at

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