Page 134 - The Apu Trilogy_ Satyajit Ray and the Making of an Epic

Aparajito: Critique 121

of the overdressed inspector, a beaming Bengali sahib in a white
suit sporting a sola topee. The cow, however, gets her revenge, by
reappearing at the very moment the honoured inspector reaches
the school entrance. But then comedy gives way to seriousness.
In front of the benign inspector and the anxious headmaster,
Apu shines by reading with clarity and fervour a famous Bengali
poem, ‘Bangla Desh’ (Land of Bengal). Although this incident
had its germ in Banerji’s novel Aparajito, it was vividly developed
by Ray, who chose the poem by Satyendranath Dutta. Perhaps
he was thinking of a Ray family story. Satyajit’s artist grandfa-
ther Upendrakisore, as a boy in East Bengal in the 1870s, had
a school inspection by the governor of Bengal, who spotted the
boy drawing intently in class. Picking up the book he saw an
excellent sketch of himself. The boy’s teachers were worried as to
how the visiting British sahib would react. But the governor pat-
ted Upendrakisore on the back and told him, in English: ‘You
must not let this skill disappear. When you grow up you should
follow this line.’
Education divides Apu from his mother in the latter half of
Aparajito, as we know. The most poignant sequence in their rela-
tionship occurs when he returns to the village for the first time
since starting college in Calcutta. Sarbajaya is sitting listlessly
sewing beneath a tree. As the train from Calcutta comes bee-
tling across the near horizon, she busies herself to receive Apu. A
solo sarangi, the most piercing of the Indian string instruments,
expresses her loneliness with heart-wrenching pathos. She is still
drawing water from the well when Apu arrives. Instead of pull-
ing the bucket up, she simply lets the rope snap back in her joy; no
embrace could have been more eloquent, especially given the calm
way in which we have seen her draw water in Pather Panchali.
Apu is genuinely pleased to see his mother, but the gap
between them is evident from the moment he arrives. He has
barely exchanged a few sentences with her before he is off for a
dip in the village pond. That night as she sits fanning Apu at his
evening meal, as once she fanned her husband Harihar, Sarbajaya

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