Page 192 - The Apu Trilogy_ Satyajit Ray and the Making of an Epic

Epilogue: Ray Talks about the Apu Trilogy 179

just outside the city limits at that time. Boral, the loca-
tion of Pather Panchali, was only about seven miles from
my house. Now that place is hardly recognisable – it’s

been electrified, big houses have come up, roads have
been metalled – but when the fi lm was shot, you had an
authentic village just outside the city. And we used to go
there before we started shooting. In fact, it was a habit of
my art director Bansi Chandragupta and I – it was our
Sunday outing – to take a train and go to a village and
spend the day looking and absorbing.
AR: What were you looking for in the location?
SR: I went to the village of the story, the author’s village. It
was unsuitable because it was not photogenic enough. I
was looking for certain elements, it’s very diffi cult to say
which, but they strike you.
AR: There must have been an element of compromise even in

your fi nal choice?
SR: Yes. Take the fi eld of kash where the children discover
the train. That was far away from our location and there

was no river, which is in the story. So I just dropped the

river from the film. But the pond was right next to the
house and that was an important element.
AR: How did you set about getting to know the people in the
village where you shot?
SR: I owe this to a friend of ours, one of the six or seven found-
ers of the Calcutta Film Society – Manoj Majumdar.
He had a relation who had a house in Boral, and Manoj
knew the village very well. He suggested we should take
a look at it because it was close to Calcutta. We hadn’t
even heard of Boral. We had heard of Garia, on the left
side of the main road. Boral was on the right. Manoj took
us by car to Boral and introduced us to his family and
we took a look around and we happened upon this ram-
shackle old house by the pond. To begin with the people
were not particularly friendly. They didn’t like the idea of

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