Soumitra Chatterjee in a new role

The great actor, theatre personality, poet, recitation persona, film activist Soumitra Chatterjee has, at last, decided to have ‘a stint in Bengali yatra’, a conventional form open theatre more popular in the agrarian belt of Bengal. Before him, many film stars did join ‘yatra’ for lucrative payment and huge financial yield. Those who earlier had joined this crude form of traditional yatras include Supriya Choudhury, Moon Moon Sen, Anup Kumar, Sontu Mukherjee, Indrani Halder and Rupa Ganguly and many eminent film artistes during a lean season of Bengali cinema. Incidentally, it should be mentioned Soumitra Chatterjee was recently honoured with the ‘life-time achievement’ award floated in the name of Satyajit Ray bestowed upon by the Cine Central Calcutta, the largest film society of India. Following this, he too was bestowed with honorary D’lit from Kalyani University, a rare honour for Ray’s ‘one-man-stock company’. An autopsy reveals there is not a single tele film, tele serial and films in general which have not taken service of this actor. In the recent times, he had major roles in films like Dekha, Abaar Aranye, Paromiter Ek Din, Hemanter Pakhi, Amtyia Sajan and Asukh. While Dekha and Abaar Aranye are directed by Goutam Ghose, other films are directed by Aparna Sen, Urmi Chakraborty, Raja Sen and Rituparno Ghosh. He now has a new role, quite a different one, in the tele film Musalmanir Meye, directed by Nabyendu Chatterjee. It is gathered Soumitra will be playing his life-time character in this film to be shot in Bengali shortly. It is being produced by the National Film Development Corporation. Soumitra Chatterjee has also made himself ready with his new play to be staged on Kolkata theatre. His new play, Kurbani, is based on his own idea. Kurbani is basically a play with a theme on social values which the actor/ director feels is fast stooping so low. It tells the story of an honest police officer faced with rank corruption, official graft, social rot and decaying human values. He is the director of the new play. It goes without saying he has been playing both sides so well with cinema acting and theatre acting/ directing and he deserves all praise. However, his joining ‘yatra’ at this time of his life appears a little strange. Yet he feels “there is nothing wrong” in the move and he holds promise if he fails to show his magic performance, he would leave it immediately.