Page 127 - The Apu Trilogy_ Satyajit Ray and the Making of an Epic

114 The Apu Trilogy

Instead he watches, fascinated by the rhythm of the swing and
the man’s strange accompanying grunt. As the scene fades into
dusk over the whole ghat seen from the river, we understand both
the ten-year-old Apu’s dawning new horizons and his subliminal
rejection of both the priestly and the manual way of life.
The sequence of scenes in Benares that describe the illness
and death of Harihar demonstrates Ray’s unobtrusive use of
contrasts of all kinds to enrich a film and make it mysterious and
poetic. First, we see Sarbajaya and Apu visiting the chief shrine
of the temple-ridden city, the Viswanath Temple, where they
experience the arati, the cacophonous evening ritual of chant-
ing and bell-ringing through a haze of incense. The spectacle
mesmerises Sarbajaya, but not her son. Back in their ground-
floor rooms, she decorates them with a hundred little points of
light, the burning wicks that a pious Hindu lights to celebrate
the autumn festival of Dusserah (Durga Puja in Bengal).
Into this luminous setting comes Harihar carrying some
shopping, and obviously in a weak condition. He has to lie
down. Outside the window next to him, a series of fireworks
explode in a burst of light and noise that is slightly menacing.
Then Apu bursts in holding a large sparkler, eager to show it
to his mother. His face falls. Sarbajaya tells him to sit with his
father. A little hesitantly Apu answers his father’s affectionate
questioning. Harihar’s feverish mind has taken a nostalgic turn;
he asks Apu if the Benares fireworks are as good as the ones
in Nishchindipur, their ancestral village. Probably to please his
father, Apu says they are not. But what he really wants is to
get back to his friends outside. His father gently releases him.
Instead, he discusses with Sarbajaya a better dwelling that he
may have found for them. Outside, as the night is filled with
sparks and bangs, Apu is humming his own version of the
tune he has picked up earlier from their upstairs neighbour,
the somewhat sleazy bachelor Nanda Babu, a tabla player. The
original is a thumri, a romantic song with a slightly disrepu-
table air; Apu, with the ingenuousness of a child, has drained

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