Page 8 - THE CHANGING WORLD OF RAY

120). This collective opti- structed image of the protag-

mism is illustrated in the onist film star, is gradually

final scene of the third film, exposed until his ultimate

Apur Sansar, in which the alienation

middle-aged, bearded Apu is revealed.

holds his son on his shoul- Similarly,

der, as they both stare at the in Ray’s ad-
future in the bright sunlight. aptations of

Tagore’s short

This optimism was stories (as in

challenged in the second Charulata

film of the trilogy, Aparajito 1964 and in

(1956), in which the train Ghare-Baire
becomes a symbol of dislo- 1984), the sound of the train

cation, separation, and a off-screen anticipates sudden

vain hope for reunification. and often cruel and unpre-

In this film, the train con- dictable change, becoming

tains a new set of problems a source of anxiety. Finally,

in family relationships that in Agantuk, the forgotten
rose because of the rapid ur- uncle returns to Kolkata on

banization of India, with the a train, to an unrecogniz-

new generation of educat- able and alienated ‘home’. In

ed Bengalis leaving behind sum, in Ray’s films, the train

their families and village is a ‘gift’ of modernity to the

poverty for a new life in the world, in the sense of Mar-

big city. Ray’s disillusion cel Mauss’s ‘gift’: ‘on the one
with Nehru’s modernizing hand, a gift, and on the oth-

project continues in Nay- er, a poison’ (2002/1954: 81):

ak (Hero 1966), in which an object of modernity which

the train becomes the static connects the home to the

mechanical setting, juxta- world, the village to the city,

posed to a rapidly passing different individuals to each

landscape seen from the car- other, their memories, their
riage’s window, as the con- intentions and expectations,