Kolkata: A black and white image and a colourful video related to Satyajit Ray resonated on social media as both public and police celebrated the 99th birth anniversary of the film maestro in the virtual world during the lockdown.
A legend remembered
The image created by visual artist Aniket Mitra is an imaginary groupfie taken by singer Kishore Kumar at Ray’s birthday party. The Kolkata Police on the other hand shared a video, a popular number from a film by the Oscar winner. The lyrics however, had been changed to advice people on the dos and don’ts of social distancing. Both of them were posted on social media May 2, Satyajit Ray’s birth anniversary.
Groupfie developed to honour Ray
The black and white groupfie was a galaxy of stalwarts. Among the actors in the groupfie were Utpal Dutt, Amjad Khan, Sanjeev Kumar, Rabi Ghosh, Tapen Chattopadhyay and, Santosh Dutta. Others in the picture were singer Kishore Kumar; musician Pt Ravi Shankar; Ray himself, his father Sukumar and wife Bijaya. All of them had come in the life or the works of the filmmaker in one way or the other.
“Happy Birthday Manikda can be seen at the background of the image #Selfie of Century# Ray. Ray was fondly addressed as Manikda by people who knew him closely.
“My idea was to give the feel of an informal get together,” Mitra said after posting the image on social media which was shared over 2.6 million times.
Filmmaker Sujoy Ghosh tweeted ‘no idea who made this… but solid banaya’. Actor Prosenjit Chatterjee replied, “He is Aniket Mitra from Kolkata now settled in Mumbai…. Concept Artist….very talented.”
Message from Kolkata Police
The police video features Ray’s iconic characters ‘Goopy’ the singer and ‘Bagha’ the drummer. They are asking people to stay indoors during the lockdown. The characters of ‘Goopy’ and ‘Bagha’ were essayed by Tapen Chattopadhyay and Rabi Ghosh respectively. They appeared in three fantasy films directed or conceptualised by Ray.
The Kolkata Police also posted a song sequence from the film Hirak Rajar Deshe with changed lyrics on its Facebook page. They said that this was their tribute to Satyajit Ray on his birthday.
“Our message in the song is: please do not go out of home. Coronavirus is still strong. If you still need to go out for any urgent work, wear mask. Fight this disease unitedly,” a Kolkata Police official said. The video so far had 5.7 lakh views and 2.9 lakh shares on the social media.
“I have seen the video several times. It retains the original sequence of the film Hirak Rajar Deshe. The sequence has blended smoothly with the changed lyrics. It is highly creative and non-preachy,” Sumanto Majumder, a Satyajit Ray enthusiast, said.
Agencies
