Bengali film industry has seldom come across a figure that combines beauty with brain. Six-footer Soumitra Chatterjee, is that figure the Tollywood should be proud with. Rarely deep eyes, rosy cheek, masculine chin and sharp nose coalesce with cerebral conduct. In Soumitra, cine-goers find them all in eclectic abandon.
The blushing newly-wed, Apu in Apur Sangsar, traverses a lone, long, chequered path where, at a certain bend, he goes mad, as a King Lear, over the realization of his mistake of trusting men at face value, ignoring a simple truth, like a simpleton, that substance never shows off, but speaks in voluminous silence. From a cuddling romantic to lunatic realist, the actor is well at home.
Just the other day, he came to a musical reality show and asked the contestants not to dare to imitate Kishor Kumar. Good performers should know where to draw the line between sustained perseverance and volcanic brilliance, between dragging effort and fountaining spontaneity, between human constraint and superhuman liberty. He opined. Correct sense of proportion is an attribute of art which an artist can overlook at his peril. Soumitra tried to suggest it, perhaps, that day. “Know your limitation”, should be the mantra for abiding success.
The pandemic, which threatens to be endemic to human civilization in destructiveness, has shattered many a dream in its eerie run. Soumitra Chatterjee is no exception. The octogenarian challenges its writ by doing his shooting schedule without break, everyday. Now he is taken ill as Corona strikes him.
Khidda of Kony is fighting and giving it back to Corona. Because in fight-back, lies another Soumitra, the punditmoshai of Hirak Rajar Deshe, who loves to challenge and be a rebellious winner; be it cancer or corona.