Like many more, I too have some hope of a die-hard optimist that Soumitra Chatterjee would emerge victorious over his fight both against Corona and Corona-triggered Cancer. But like all good things, life must end. So Soumitra has to concede. And here lies the critical difference between Khidda of reel life and Pulu da of real life.
It was way back in 2010 at Girish Mancha where I and Bala pishi went to see “Homapakhi”, one of Soumitra’s much popular plays where he and his daughter combined to give, perhaps, one of their best. Soumitra at one point would say in a dialogue in that play that the poet, who you idolize as the world-poet also thought once to commit suicide to justify his own thought of suicide. Hearing this, his daughter fell to silence as did the packed-up hall. I and Bala pishi exchanged a questioning glance at each other.
After the play, Bala pishi asked me to go to Soumitra straight to know where he had got the information that Rabindranath Tagore wanted to terminate his life wilfully. I requested permission from a staff for entry. He told me to wait. Barely after some minutes I was conveyed inside a green room.
Entering in I was somewhat blinded by some powerful lights that dazzled all around as I came from a semi-dark hall where the lights were being switched off by a staff as the audiences started leaving. I took time in getting used to it before I found Soumitra sitting under the lights before a large mirror among a line of mirrors that stood against the wall, front and back, busy in removing make-up.
He looked at me quizzically with a welcome smile. I, for a moment, could not figure out who was fairer – Soumitra or the overpowering lights. From all the mirrors, luminous Soumitra gazed at me. The room became portraitful of Soumitra; all poised and cerebrally ravishing. I lost in them for a while.
Where did you get that Tagore wanted to commit suicide? I somewhat managed to ask after regaining strength to ask. I did not say it. It was what my director scripted me to say. He said. Plus I also read that he wanted to end his life at one point of his life. He added. Where? I asked.
I forget where I found it. He said, busy again in his face-lift removal, with a towel.
I came out of the room and went to Bala pishi to board our car parked outside. As I shut the door, I found Soumitra and Poulomi coming outside and waited with a huddle of common people for a taxi.
After some days my brother, maternal aunt’s son, died of massive heart attack at an unlikely age of twenty six. All the locality people made a gully of Golf Green chock-a-block as his body was brought home on a sun-struck April mid-day. Among grieving people, I noticed, some distance away, on a higher step of a non-descript house, Soumitra stood to pay last respect to his brother’s son.
Among the crowds, he stood out — a solitary figure, beyond reach within reach.
Today people of Kolkata came down on the roads to go with Soumitra’s inert body to Keoratola burning ghat. He lay, deep in sleep, in a flower-bedecked car; again, solitarily away from crowds.