Page 66 - The Apu Trilogy_ Satyajit Ray and the Making of an Epic

An Epic in Production 53

experiences of the characters he was creating for his film and
so did the individuals who portrayed the parts.’ Banerji’s wife
Karuna agreed, as did the great majority of those who acted for
Ray; their most frequent observation was, that they ‘never felt
they were acting’.
There was one person in Boral who intrigued Ray more than
any other, though he does not appear in Pather Panchali. He
was the first to greet them the day they arrived to shoot. He
called out loudly: ‘The film people are ’ere! Watch out! Reach for
your spears, reach for your spears!’ Indeed he believed that the
villagers were equally untrustworthy, as he confided when he
came to know Ray and his team a bit better. They had cheated
him of land, he said, and he had ancient deeds to prove it. He
believed that deceit was in the very marrow of Boral. Once he
told Ray: ‘Imagine ten men walking along a village path in sin-
gle file on a totally moonless night. Not one of them has brought
a lamp – they’re that mean. The leading man falls into a hole,
and as he does so, he keeps himself to himself – he doesn’t warn
the others. And so every one of them falls into the hole and
none of them lets out a peep for fear of benefiting the others.
That’s what they’re like here in Boral.’ He had names for many
of them too, reckoning Churchill and Hitler among his neigh-
bours. He would see a certain man cycling by and say, quite
seriously: ‘That’s Roosevelt. He hasn’t forgotten his tricks. What
a devilish fellow!’ Subodhda, as this crackpot was called, must
have helped Ray create his memorable madman a few years later
in The Postmaster. About five years after he left Boral, Ray had
occasion to return there. He felt disappointed to find Subodhda
sane. Gone were his ancient land deeds and his accusations. His
only vaguely interesting remark was: ‘I wish you’d come in the
mango season. They were good this year.’
The shooting in Boral did not begin until early 1953. There
had been a gap of some months after those first shots in the
field of kash, in which Ray had made a renewed effort to interest
producers in his footage. In the meantime, in late 1952, there

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