Page 129 - The Apu Trilogy_ Satyajit Ray and the Making of an Epic

116 The Apu Trilogy

dying. Whilst a doctor, Sarbajaya and a neighbouring couple
gather round him, the bulky figure of Nanda Babu loiters out-
side the bars of the sickroom’s window. ‘I hope he hasn’t hurt
himself,’ he says disingenuously. Immediately after this sombre
composition we see Apu absorbed in watching a bulging leather
water bag as it is drawn from a well by bullocks. Pressure forces
the water to come spurting out through numerous small ruptures.
One thinks, without being asked to, of the life that is leaking out
of Apu’s father. We see Harihar lying motionless.
The shot that follows is one of the most expressive of the many
examples in Ray’s work of ‘a dewdrop which reflects in its con-
vexity the whole universe around it’ (an idea he found in Tagore’s
poetry; also found, of course, in western poets such as William
Blake and W. B. Yeats). It begins with a close-up of two pathetic
kittens – reminiscent of Durga’s kittens in the village – play-
ing with a wooden toy common in Benares on the steps leading
upstairs from Harihar’s ground-floor rooms. From the top of the
frame now appear two feet clad in shiny new pumps – obviously
Nanda Babu’s. One of the pumps prods one of the skinny little

Aparajito: Apu and Nanda Babu

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