Tribute (1935-2020): Soumitra Chatterjee, an Indian legend

If India was a country of one or two languages, Soumitra Chatterjee would have certainly been feted as one of India’s most celebrated actors.

Instead, even before his passing at the age of 85 on Sunday, he was considered as a great Bengali actor. This, strangely, limits his superb career. The man was discovered by Satyajit Ray, who cast him as the adult Apu, Apurba Kumar Roy, in the 1959 Apur Sansar (The World of Apu).

Chatterjee would go on to become the face of Feluda a.k.a. Prodosh Mitter, Ray’s wildly popular detective. But Chatterjee was much more than a great and popular actor.

He gave flesh to the much overused word ‘artist’ as a cinema and stage actor, poet, as well as ‘The Voice’ of modern Bengali literature, his renderings of the poetry of others like Rabindranath Tagore, Nazrul Islam and Jibanananda Das bringing to life the works of these greats as well as the Bengali language itself.

Chatterjee was the toast of both the high and middle brow — bringing his intensity into characters like Apu, Srijut, the tax collector who encounters a spectral past in Tapan Sinha’s 1960 Khudito Pashan (The Hungry Stone), Mayurvahan in Sinha’s 1961 Jhinder Bondi (Prisoner of Jhind) and Feluda.

In ‘Bengali,’ ‘My dear’ refers to a man who is generous, liberal and open. Chatterjee was all these, making him not just a modern Bengali icon, but an Indian one.