BHUVAN SHOME
Mrinal Sen is a legend, a cult figure. He represents an era that reflects itself through him. He is the lone ranger in a field that is now filled with other people, other cinemas, and other worlds. But he holds on to his own principles. He is prominent at book exhibitions, plays, film festivals, special screenings, art shows for charitable causes and diplomatic parties.
The anger of yesteryear has given way to cynicism, to a sort of biting satire that is charismatic enough to attract you, yet scary enough to want to pull away from him. Age has invested him with the reverence that prevents you from attacking him with questions he may not like to answer. Problem is -- there is hardly a question he does not like to answer. His alacrity and his nervous energy surprise you, considering his age --- he is touching 90.
Spiking his answers with the right dose of barbed smiles and caustic one-liners, Mrinal Sen, the doyen of India,s parallel cinema, faces every question with the brashness and courage of a young soldier. He is warm and pleasant to be with because he is very anecdotal and is not inclined to didacticism. He does not threaten you with his intellectual inputs. "Anecdotes make life interesting. Theory is boring," he says. He quotes anecdotes all the way and each one is as good as -- if not better than -- the one that went before. He is an extremely unpredictable man. Just when everyone was convinced that he was suffering from a mental block so far as film - making goes, his last film having hit the screen in 1993, he surprised us all by making a beautiful film, Amar Bhubon (This, my land) in 2002, after a gap on 9 years.
Over the years, Sen has acquired the physical manifestations of a public image that is now an integral part of his persona. He sports longish sideburns, generously dotted with salt and a little pepper. He wears spotlessly white Kurtas. His spectacles are black-framed with angular corners that cannot hide the glint in his bright eyes. Thanks to a gall bladder surgery not long ago, his cigarette has been replaced with the ultimate insignia of the Bengali intellectual, the pipe. Of late, even the pipe is no longer visible.
Sen picks, awards left, right and centre. They dont matter to him any more. Much of his archival clippings, posters, press coverage and photographs are in France which bestowed on him the honour of Commander de L,orde des Arts des Letters. It also held a retrospective of his films, a rare honour for an Indian film - maker. USSR gave him the Soviet Land Nehru Award.
He has won numerous awards for his films at international film festivals like Cannes, Berlin, Moscow, Karlovy Vary, Chicago, Montreal and Carthage. The Government of India bestowed on him the Padma Bhushan in 1980 while the West Bengal Government gave him the Satyajit Ray Memorial Award in 1994.
Over the years, his films have won four Golden Lotuses. He bagged four Silver Lotuses as Best Director at the National Film Awards. He represented India at the UNESCO Comission to celebrate the centenary of cinema. His films have had retrospectives at many international film festivals. He has been a nominated member of the Rajya Sabha. In 1991, Sen was elected chairperson of the International Federation of Film Societies, taking over from Carlo Lizzano, a famous Italian director. He takes all this in his stride. The honours do not seen to have made a dent in his accessibility to the masses.
Shoma Chatterjee
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