It is great pleasure for me to get an opportunity to write a review about Pather Panchali. Let me write a brief personal experience, it was 1992 or 93 when Satyajit Ray was sick lying on dying bed, he received Lifetime Achievement Oscar Award and as usual India doesn’t recognize Indian brilliant son after when other countries find out and regards our people. Then in 1993 DD started to relays Satyajit Ray’s remarkable movies, that time I watched this movie, but remembrance is not deepen in my brain, due to poor relay, B/W tv, poor audio, and immature age. Later on in 1998 I taught “Pather Panchali” for eight class English lesson in Bal Bharti Public School in Delhi when I was teaching there.
Pather Panchali, pather means ‘of the path’, Panchali means ’folk song’, so means of Pather Panchali is Song of The Road. It was a novel written by a Bengali writer Bibhutibhushan Banerjee (Bandyopadhyay), Satyajit always claimed that cinema, as a medium of artistic expression, so he done in 1955 and made this film on a shortening budget in Bengali language. Pathar Panchali takes place in a village where dirt paths were the only type of roads to be found.
The story revolves around a poor Brahmin family in Bengal. The father Harihar is priest, an optimist and dreamer, who never compromised with his dreams in spite of living in abject poverty. The mother Sarbajaya epitomizes practicality has the biggest responsibility for raising her 6 years old daughter Durga and caring for elder sister-in-law who is distant relative and sometimes irritates her. Apu, their son grows amidst the love and pampering of mother and sister. An aged aunt beloved by Durga. Meanwhile mother grows tired of her husband’s complacency. Durga facing false charges of theft by the rich lady. Indir Thakurun’s constant bickering with the mother and then ultimately she dies, not in the courtyard of her house as was her last wish but at the orchard. Durga falls in sick and died, monsoon turbulence caused disaster in village, father’s homecoming is saddened by Durga’s death and he finally faces life realistically and decides to take his family to Banaras for search of a new life.
The script in village like Durga’s running in the field, in the garden, picking mangoes, giving old aged lady, dipping in pond all these scenes focuses a realistic and true life. So in my view Satyajit Ray was a natural director. He has given natural movie, I remember some of them are “Gopi Gayen Bhoota Bhagen’, Aparajito, Mahanagar, Charulata, Parash Pathhar, Devi, Agantuk, Sadgati (Hindi- OmPuri, Shabana Azmi) Shatranj Ke khiladi (Hindi)
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