| Bijoya Ray |
Meeting Jean Renoir, who came to Calcutta in 1949 to find locations for his film The River, was “one of the most dramatic events” in Satyajit Ray’s life. Before leaving for Hollywood, Renoir gave Ray a photograph of his on the back of which he wrote: “To Manik Ray. I look forward to seeing him as a married man.” Little did Renoir suspect that Ray had already been a married man.
Satyajit Ray had an unconventional marriage. He married Bijoya (born 1917), youngest daughter of his eldest maternal uncle Charuchandra Das, on 20 October 1948 in a simple ceremony in Bombay. The marriage was reconfirmed in Calcutta the next year at a traditional religious ceremony. |
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Bijoya had a struggling youth. She spent her childhood in Patna, Bihar, where her father was a practising barrister. Following Charuchandra’s premature death in 1931, the family shifted to his stepbrother’s house in Calcutta where Ray was living with his mother Suprabha. Bijoya was the youngest of the four daughters that Charuchandra left, and the nearest to Ray in age. It was mainly through their common love for Western classical music and Hollywood musicals that the two young people came closer to each other and ultimately decided to be united in marriage.
The thought that she could not stay at her uncle’s house forever led Bijoya to take a job after finishing college. She worked for some time as a teacher at Bethune Collegiate School on a ridiculously small salary. Later her uncle helped her to get a job at the Supply Department. But the pay there being hardly adequate for a separate establishment, Bijoya quit the job and left for Bombay to try her luck as an actress. But her stint in the Bombay film world did not last long, as she had to come back to Calcutta after her marriage. |
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| Bijoya was more than a wife to Ray. She was a life companion who encouraged her husband to take to filmmaking even though she knew it might mean financial insecurity for their family, and later helped him actively in all his creative pursuits. She was the first person to whom Ray read out his scripts. She was also the first to read the numerous stories and novelettes that he wrote for children. Ray counted on her opinion on details while writing detective stories in particular, as she has been a lifelong aficionado of crime fiction. She made fair copies of her husband’s screenplays as his handwriting was nearly illegible, especially when he wrote a fast hand. She also helped her husband in costume designing. |
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Bijoya’s role in the making of Pather Panchali is well known. Ray’s mother gave her daughter-in-law her own “jewel case brimful with jewels” along with “a large number of lovely saris” as wedding presents. She had to pawn her jewellery to raise money when the shooting for the film got stuck midway through for paucity of funds. It was she who also picked up Subir Banerjee, then a little boy, who played Apu in Pather Panchali. |
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| Bijoya is a writer, translator and editor in her own right. She took over as editor of Sandesh, the children’s magazine founded by Ray’s grandfather Upendrakishore, jointly with Lila Majumdar after the passing of her husband. She translated Ray’s autobiography, Jakhan Chhoto Chhilam (Childhood Days: A Memoir), in English, and deciphered with great difficulty the rough draft of his My Years With Apu when the final draft of the book was found missing. She also authored Bijoya Ray Remembers, a pictorial book on Ray with photographs by Amanul Haq. Her remarkably candid autobiography Aamader Katha (Speaking of Ourselves), which came out serially in a well-known literary magazine, is awaiting publication in book form. |
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| A portrait of Bijoya Ray - by Satyajit Ray |
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