Page 48 - The Apu Trilogy_ Satyajit Ray and the Making of an Epic

Apu in Fiction and Film 35

Harihar lies dying of pneumonia, Nanda Babu will make a pass
at Sarbajaya.
Harihar’s death leaves his widow with no choice but to take
a job. Sarbajaya works as a cook for a rich Bengali Brahmin
family in Benares, whilst Apu plucks the grey hairs of the head
of the household and does other odd jobs around the house in
exchange for a few paise. The situation is a dead end for both
mother and son, and she knows it. When an older relative of
hers, Bhabataran, invites Sarbajaya and Apu to settle in his vil-
lage in Bengal, she soon accepts and leaves the city.
Apu spends the next five or six years of his life in this new
village. His elders expect him to follow tradition and become a
priest like his father. But it is the crowd of boys from the local
school who really appeal to Apu. He wins over his mother by
agreeing to carry out his religious duties too and proves himself a
star pupil at school, with a penchant for science. Years of reading
and enquiry pass, and we see an older Apu with the beginnings
of a moustache standing bashfully before the headmaster again,
accepting a scholarship to study science in distant Calcutta. Only
his mother stands in the way; her health is beginning to fail and,
anyway, she feels Apu should be a priest. They quarrel and she
slaps him; then, consumed with remorse, she agrees to let him
go and to pay his way in the big city.
The rest of Aparajito is a deeply experienced clash between
mother and son, and between incompatible beliefs. In Calcutta,
studying during the day and earning his keep at night in a print-
ing press, Apu grows distant – mentally as well as physically –
from Sarbajaya, whilst she, in the village, as inexorably declines
into morbid depression. On a night sparkling with evanescent
fireflies, her life leaves her. Apu returns to the village too late.
After weeping bitterly, he finds the strength of mind to reject
the shade of his father’s life and retrace his steps to make a new
life in Calcutta. He will definitely not become a priest, though
it is not yet clear where his talents will lead him.

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