Page 64 - The Apu Trilogy_ Satyajit Ray and the Making of an Epic

An Epic in Production 51

so heedless of the risk he was running. ‘[When] I cast my mind
back to those days’, he wrote in his autobiography, ‘I am struck by
a signal lack of professionalism on our part.’ During the shooting
he often found himself thinking that Pather Panchali could not
have happened without Chunibala. Banerji’s description of the
old woman was a tall order to fulfil: ‘75, sunken cheeks, slightly
crooked at the waist and hunched forward – she cannot see things
at a distance as she once could.’ Not that Calcutta lacked for such
old women, but the part also required acting ability, stamina and
a good memory. Ray’s chances were not improved by the fact
that he intended using no make-up, as his newspaper advertise-
ments made clear; he was always against making up a younger
actress for the part.
He heard about Chunibala Devi from the professional actress
Reba Devi (no relation – ‘Devi’ simply indicates a mature, gener-
ally married woman), who played the part of Sejbou, the shrewish
neighbour in Pather Panchali. It turned out that Chunibala was
the mother of a well-known actress, though unmarried. In 1953,
she was about 80 years old and had been on the stage for some 30
years in the first decades of the century, when she also acted in
silent films. Since then she had been more or less retired.
Ray paid a visit to Chunibala’s house in a red-light district
of north Calcutta. He was soon satisfied. ‘But what part can I
play at the age of 80?’ asked Chunibala. ‘That of an 80-year-old
woman,’ Ray replied. ‘I don’t have an answer to that. Ha ha!’ she
chuckled. When asked if she could recite a rhyme, Chunibala
recalled many more lines of a particular lullaby than Ray him-
self knew. And when asked if she were capable of rising at six
o’clock, travelling fifteen miles to the location by taxi, standing
up to a day’s shooting followed by the journey back, she was
quite certain she was. The only condition she made, apart from a
small salary, was that she should be provided with her daily dose
of opium. The one day she missed it, she fainted.
From the beginning, Chunibala grasped Ray’s intention that
the film should display no artifice. ‘She was constantly aware

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