Page 137 - The Apu Trilogy_ Satyajit Ray and the Making of an Epic

124 The Apu Trilogy

longs for him to open up and tell her all that he has experienced
in Calcutta. They grope for common ground. Apu reassures her
that he still prefers her cooking. Later, he reads, she sews. With
some asperity she tells him to put his book away and talk to her
about what he has seen. He recites a list of Calcutta place names
almost meaningless to her and adds, with a yawn: ‘Keoratala’.
‘What’s there at Keoratala?’ enquires Sarbajaya. ‘Burning
ghat,’ says Apu, in English. This makes his mother pensive.
She wonders out loud what has obviously been on her mind in
Apu’s absence: what will happen to her if she falls ill? Will Apu
look after her? she asks. Of course, he will, Apu says, without
thinking. Sarbajaya presses him: ‘You’re not going to come to me
and leave your studies, are you? Will you arrange for my treatment
with the money you earn? Will you, Apu?’ But Apu has gone to
sleep. Immediately, we remember another such scene, in Pather
Panchali, when Harihar drifted off to sleep while Sarbajaya deliv-
ered herself of her worries. We know instinctively that Sarbajaya
has not got long to live and the music reinforces this – it is the
first time since Harihar’s death in Benares that we hear the flute
playing the melody in raga Jog, here in a gentler variation.
‘Goodness knows how many films have used the snuffed out
candle to suggest death’, Ray once wrote, ‘ – but the really effec-
tive language is both fresh and vivid at the same time, and the
search for it an inexhaustible one.’ In Banerji’s novel, on her
deathbed Sarbajaya has a vision of Apu as a child. Ray adopted
this hint and transformed it for the cinema. In the twilight of
evening, the dying Sarbajaya hears the whistle of a train passing,
and then the voice of the adolescent Apu calling her. She rises
heavily to her feet, looks out of the door in hope – but there is
no one there, only the glimmering pond, the empty path along
which Apu has so often walked from the station, and sparkling
fireflies. Sarbajaya sinks down on the threshold in despair. The
screen goes black, except for the fireflies. As the points of light
dart around, darkness covers the trees, the pond and the path,
like a shroud.

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