He studied chemistry at the Scottish Church College, which, he says, was "a hotbed of the radical students, movement". "Since the Scottish Church was a Protestant college, Prof. Mohit Choudhury would teach us the Bible," Sen recalls. "I love the Bible to this day. I treat it as a piece of beautiful literature rather than a religious tract," he adds. "There was a time when I was steeped into reading on a wide horizon of subjects and authors. As member of the Imperial Library (which later became the National Library), I read Firdaus, Fitzgeral, Nietzsche, Marx.
During 1937 - 1938, the International Brigade was created after the Spanish Civil War. The greatest of writers of all time formed a part of it. Stephen Spender and Hemingway were two of them. I chanced upon a long poem in this paper penned by Pablo Neruda who was then being chased by the police. It was titled, Fugitive from somewhere in America. Ralph Fox who died in the Spanish War at 36 fascinated me greatly.
During that time, I had seen a film of P.C.Barua and these experiences inspired me to write an article entitiled CINEMA AND THE PEOPLE.
Since the Communist Party of India was banned at the time, Sen,s political association were mainly underground. He became an enthusiastic and active participant in the activities of the Indian People,s Theatre Association (IPTA), founded around that time, a cultural organisation aimed at raising political consciousness among the masses against the British rule through theatre. Since the IPTA was known to be the cultural arm of the Communist Party of India. His involvemente with the IPTA brought him in close touch with the masses and also with artists who shared his political ideology and social philosophy. "I was deeply impressed that art could do so much for the people, that it could creat a certain climate." he reminisces.
"I wil not say whether I was more or less of a Marxist earlier. But I definitely know that I have moved from where I stood years ago. I have changed with age and experience. I have seen a lot, lost a lot, gained a lot and learnt a lot. I have a dialogue with myself and I carry it over to my art. Cinema is evolving all the time and evolving quite rapidly. The advantage in technology has a strong bearing on it. It changes the dimensions of the art. I too, have changed with time."
Interestingly, Mrinal-da, has never been a member of the Communist Party of India, in fact, he broke away from it in 1964. "I go my own way. I go by my conscience. I do not have to go by the mandates of the Party." he once said.
The Bengal Famine of 1943 left a deep impression on the Mrinal, just 20 years old. This impression has remained with him throughout his life. BAISHEY SRAVAN, was his way of purging himself of the traumatic memories of the time. The famine saw 5 million people starve to death in Bengal. "I cannot remember a single day when I did not have to step over 7 or more dead bodies, just lying there.... They just starved and dropped dead," he says. The riots in Calcutta on August 16, 1946, which took a heavy toll of innocent lives, also disturbed him deeply. These historical events and the city of Calcutta found expression, reflection, questioning and interpretation in many of his films.
Sen met and fell in love with Geeta, a theatre actress and have a son, Kunal. Sen says, "I was born of Bengali parents, I married a Bengali, and we live in a Bengali milieu. But there is hardly anything any longer which could be called truly Bengali or truly India or purely German. We live in a kind of bastard culture, which is great for me. I feel that, sooner or later, we would arrive at a stage where to find a cultural identity, to find cultural roots, will be an exercise in futility."
After studying sound recording at Aurora studios along with his experience in theatre inspired his very first full length feature film, RAAT BHOR, in 1956.
His journey through his own cinema too, has been marked more by diversity than by uniformity, even by stagnancy at times, when he stopped making films for 8 years. This, however, is precisely what makes him and his films so much the subject of debate, discussion and argument.
Shoma Chatterjee
Mrinal Sen was born in Faridpur district in 1923, now in Bangladesh. It was a small town with distinct flavour of the countryside. The Sens were a large family with Mrinal - da being one among five sisters and 7 brothers. His father was a staunch nationalist and a champion of lost causes. He fought for freedom fighters who had gone underground and hardly stood a chance of winning once they were arrested. They lived in a sprawling house frequented by relatives of freedom fighters undergoing trial or waiting for the hangman,s noose. Thus the police often raided the Sen house.
When Mrinal - da was one year old, Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das came to Faridpur to preside over the Provincial Ryot Conference -- that was to be his last speech. At the tender age of eight, Mrinal was arrested for having participated in a procession and singing the then banned Bankim Chandra song BANDE MATARAM. As he recalled later, "The police surrounded us, and many people ran away, but i could not, and I was arrested along with the others. I was the youngest of them all. The policeman, told me that I would be beaten to jelly because I was the youngest, and started crying. So I was in police custody for an hour or so and then people from my house came and took me back. That was my first encounter with the police".
"ours was not an economically affluent family. It was not poor either. It was numerically a large family. My father was a lawyer -- independent and upright without being arrogant. He was the leader of the Bar Commission in our small town. Throughout his career he made it his mission to lend active legal support to militant political activists -- "freedom fighters". Very few of who could escape death by hanging. My father suffered disbarment for 6 months when he boycotted the court session as a mark of protest against the arrest of Gandhi.
"My mother was a traditional housewife, loving and affectionate, the likes of whom there were millions in the country".
"From whatever I could collect from my parents I could see that my childhood was neither colourful nor retarded. I vaguely remember a couple of things that happened to me in my childhood".
One painful memory is of a sister, younger than him by around ten to 12 years, who drowned and died when she was five. A small bedi - a memorial - was built in her memory.
Sen recently happened to visit Faridpur with wife Geeta. "I was visiting tha place after a gap of 47 years. Everything had changed completely. I wanted to visit this bedi. By then, we had a hundred people following us. Someone came out of the crowds and said, "You are looking for that bedi, aren,t you? Come, I,ll take you there." So saying, he led me to the bedi, aged and forlorn with neglect, the only trace of a sister who died before I could know her better. I could not hold myself. I broke down", says Sen.
At 17 his parents sent him to Calcutta to study for a degree. "On the eve of my departure to the great city, I asked them if, so far, they had noticed any streak of genius in me." They felt awkward. I told them not to worry and quoted one of the greatest thinkers of the contemporary world who said : "All are genius up to the age of ten". My parents had to give me the benefit of doubt."
"As soon as I came to the big city, I was seized by a kind of fear. I confronted a crowd, a huge crowd, I felt lost. I felt I was standing alone in the crowd -- anonymous, selfabsorbed, indifferent swarms of people, even menacing and monstrous. The predicament of a small - town boy being suddenly thrust into an Alien world. I was an average boy of average intelligence. In retrospect, coming from a man who went on to make nearly 30 films between 1956 and 2002, this underscores how little Mrinal -da understood his own potential.
The initial response was depressing. but "I underwent a metamorphosis. Through increasing interactions of diverse kinds, with people around me, close to me and not very close, through continuous exposure to world events and domestic chaos piling up at an incredible pace, I was beginning to change." says Sen. he read the last manifesto of Tagore -- The Crisis of Civilisation. This make him see wisdom. With time, sen discovered that Calcutta had become an inseparable part of his entire existence. He had grown to love it. His growing love - hate relationship with the city, "till today, acts both as my stimulant and irritant. I am both touched and shaken by its vibrancy and youthfulnedd, its humour and flippancy, and indeed, by its tragic dimension, by its greatness and its meanness."........WILL CONTINUE.
SHOMA CHATTERJEE
