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
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