Bimalda, literally, took me by hand to the New theatres studio where the main gates were never open nor did they allow outsiders. He picked me up and gave unconditional love. I worked with him for awhile, as chief assistant in Tathapi and earlier for Beduni.

If I were to evaluate Udayer Pathe ,I have to frankly admit Bimalda literally pulled out Bangla cinema from the dark abyss. Then came his Anjangarh. And what a phenomenal experience that was!

Most know him through his films, I know him from my heart and soul. What kind of cinema he created is not of particular significance to me…the kind of individual he was is of far greater importance.

We have forgotten ways of effective framing in our films, the way d tors like Bimal Roy showed us. In Anjangarh all he did to establish the setting of a maharaja’s palace was to construct a huge arch. It was his camera placement that created a magnificent image on the screen. Today, in a small way, the cinema in Kerala is bringing back that same feeling for cinematic excellence as we had in Bimal Roy’s times.

I am saying all this after nearly fifty years since I first met him: Bimalda was a pioneer, a craftsman, a true artist, and a visionary:

The decade of the 1950s was a watershed in indian cinema. Ideologically and emotionally, it was suffused by the warm afterglow of Independence. India was led by Jawaharlal Nehru along the path mapped out by a liberal democratic Constitution, one of the most remarkable to be devised by post-colonial nations. There was also a heightened awareness of the power of cinema in moulding the minds of the masses, as well as recognition of it as an art. It was a meeting point of the idea of cinema as a product of high culture for the educated and entertainment for a burgeoning industrial working class.

The leading light of this era was Bimal Roy. He was the architect of its ideology and the pathfinder of its cinematic values. Bimal Roy was thus the central figure, the pioneer who inspired the cinema of the 1950s, its golden age. He did more than merely make the Bengali type of film in Bombay; he created his own methods of coping with the contrary demands of art and the box office, and stuck to them till the end, establishing an enduring model in the process.

An interesting aspect of the ‘Do Bigha Zamin’ film was the parallels it provides with today. Fifty years on there is still agricultural indebtedness and despair leading to farmers’ suicides. The homeless, more and more of them, still sleep on city pavements. Villagers protest rousingly when their land is taken for mills and factories. The moneylender still has a stranglehold in parts of the countryside. The trek from rural to urban areas continues for jobs, for a reprieve, for salvation.

The present might well be a surreal extension of Bimal Roy’s sombre view that nothing was going to get better. Are we then living in the mixture as before? Not at all – we have come a long way since the 1950s But I found the film with its almost unbearable bleakness disturbing also for its flashes of similarity to today’s India and it left me feeling uncomfortable about all that we have failed to deliver.

The film which hit me between my eyes was Do Bigha Zamin. I was a schoolboy then. It had struck me as different from anything I had seen before. No film had ever made me discover its maker until then. Do Bigha Zamin was the film that made me look for the name. Later, I saw some of his earlier works – for example, the Hindi version of Barua’s Devdas in which he was the cameraman—when I was well on my way to becoming a filmmaker. It was more of a professional interest for me then to see how Bimal Roy had progressed and developed from cameraman to author.

During his time, the Bombay film industry had people e Mehboob Khan on one side and film-makers like V. Shantaram on the other—these two were big names—and most people went to see their films not because there were stars in it but because it was Mehboob or a Shantaram film. The third big name was Bimal Roy.

The cinema of Bimal Roy is in many ways a documentation of Nehruvian India from 1947 to 1964. By some uncanny predestination, ” Nehruvian era coincided almost perfectly with the finest period of Bernal Roy’s cinematic career. Moreover, his best films Do Bigha Zamin, Devdas, Sujata, and Bandini reflect, in many ways, the ideals of a young republic struggling with the harsh reality of poverty, despair, prejudice, and injustice Roy was an artist, but not confined to any ivory tower, and seemed very much to be in tune with the aspirations of a young India in transition.

In Do Bigha Zamin (1953), apart from the influence of Italian neo-realism in recording urban and rural poverty, there is a very clear link between the feudal system in rural India and the growth of the urban ghetto. Shambhu (Balraj Sahni) loses his ‘do bigha zamin’ because there has been no land reform taking place and the zamindari writ allows the thakur to grab his land illegally Eventually, at the end of the film, the land is auctioned and the plot ends up as industrial estate. Shambhu is left contemplating with a handful of dirt in his hand.

Films like Do Bigha Zamin’, Udayer Pathe, Sujata, Biraj Bahu, Bandini, Parineeta, Devdas have enriched the heritage of Indian cinema. More importantly. Bimal Roy’s films have added to the repertoire of film music. These works are considered classics today not in form alone. They remain classics largely due to the fact that Roy did not place his work on a distant pedestal. In the history of Indian cinema, often, one comes across extremes. There is either too much concentration on pure entertainment or too much stress on the message.

Bimal Roy’s approach was constructive. Unarguably, one of the greatest film directors, his legacy transcends the art of cinema to touch the collective consciousness of a society. At the same time, the larger aspect of his work did not alienate viewers. He moved and touched the inner being of the person who viewed his craft. His approach seems to be a collaborative one, that of inviting the participation of his audience to introspect and engineer a change in perspective.

Throughout his life Bimalda backed talent when he saw one. The small incidents lead me to believe how clear he was in his head about what he wanted. It was amazing to hear from Gulzar Saab how Bimalda pulled him out of oblivion to write ‘Mora gora ang lai le’ at a time when Gulzar was not even interested in films and how Gulzar, then an assistant to Bimalda, was trying hard to make Salilda to compose one of the songs in Bandini and Salilda kept postponing it till Bimalda announced that he was coming to hear the tune.

All hell broke loose and Salilda was very tense when Gulzar suggested that he adapt a Bengali tune of Salilda in Hindi and Gulzar volunteered to throw in some words. Well, under the circumstances that seemed like the best option and when Bimalda came he liked what he heard but made it very clear that he realized that it was a last-minute adjustment. The song was ‘Ganga aye kahan se ganga Jaye kahan’. The biggest gain for me while doing Parineeta was discovering Bimal Roy and his films, especially the songs in them. These are changing times and it is a struggle today to convince directors on a good tune and many of the songs picturized never manage to scrape past the ear. Songs are slotted as ‘happy’ and ‘sad’, and recording labels hate ‘sad’ songs.

Yes, I miss Bimal Roy.

The acting we consider modern today is the result of a long tedious process that started evolving long before any of us were born or even thought of, and it was people like Bimal Roy who made that process possible.

Bimal Roy’s choice of stories illustrates his deep compassion for and understanding of the plights of the underdog.

It is difficult to forget the image of Nutan and her luminous eyes in Sujata. Those eyes spoke of prejudices and atrocities that an independent nation had not yet wiped out. Those eyes were also reminders to those growing up in the years after Independence that a lot more work lay ahead of them. Apart from the mother and the older lady who voice their prejudices openly, there Is no villain in this film. The complexity of communication and relationships is part of the caste system itself with its own codes of purity and impurity.

“Nobody has ever mentioned that while shooting in the suburbs of Bombay – behind his own Mohan studio, in Andheri or other selected exteriors, Bimal Roy captured the very ethos of rural Bengal. He did not need to go there.
To me it was an education to work with him. In my formative year it was important to work with a director who lead you gently under the skin of the character. Today we have institutions, they teach cinema, acting etc. We did not have these in our times. We had instead directors like Bimal Roy. Add to this my own application as an actor. Take making Devdas. The question often while doing my role was ‘not to do’ than do anything.”

“Bimal Roy was Bengal’s gift to Bombay. His first film, Udayer Pathey (Hamrahi) had already established him in this region as a filmmaker of rare perfection. But the film which left a permanent impact on the Indian cinema was his Do Bigha Zamin. That was not merely an outstanding Indian film but received International recognition.”

“In my long experience in this industry I really have not come across another director like Bimal Roy… such commitment to cinema, to perfection. I regret we have few like him today.”

“If I have to name six Indian filmmakers who have left their lifelong imprint on the history of Indian Cinema I would place Bimal Roy unhesitantly as one of these six.”

“Bimal Roy was himself such a conscientious filmmaker that it was natural his films would have social content and not be just populist films.”

“Before we started filming Sarat Chandra Chatterjee’s Biraj Bahu, Bimalda asked me how many times I had read the novel. “Twice”, I said. He told me to read it twenty times. I read it over and over again. What a revelation that was. Here was a literary character one could not play around with. One had to catch every little nuance, every cruelty inflicted on this woman. Many scenes were taken without single rehearsals at times. That was why we had done so much homework. Working with him only once as I did, I learnt so much. He was such a sensitive, beautiful human being, I wish I had a chance to work again with him. Some memories outlive others, knowing and working with Bimalda is one of those cherished , everlasting memories.”

In 1945 I saw Hamrahi, the Hindi version of Bimal Roy’s Udayer Pathe in Madras’s Star theatre. I saw it purely as a commercial film without knowing anything about the director. Hamrahi bowled me over. I belonged to the generation which was young in the 1940s. In the UK C.M.Joad had said “ We are Socialists now”. That was true in the U.K. But in India the leftists generation felt isolated, surrounded by trashy popular culture. I still recall the sense of exultation with which I saw the film. Today critics recall Hamrahi as an exercise in romantic realism.

We did not use those labels. For me, it was a millennial film. That it was a state of being, a society we aspired to. We loved the millionaire’s daughter for falling in love with the leftist hero. And all’s well that ends radically well.

Bimal Roy made modern cinema possible. He brought Sarat to the screen more than anyone else. His legacy as a serious, pioneering film-maker is safe with films like Do Bigha Zamin, Devdas, Parineeta, and Biraj Bahu. There are also other films such as Sujata, Bandini, Parakh. Bimal Roy has us all in his debt for what he has left behind for us to see, and see again and again.

Bimai Roy’s role in my professional career was an important one indeed! He rewarded me with the two award-winning characters: Sujata and Kalyani (my second and third Best Actress awards respectively). He extracted the best in me just as these roles demanded. My first impression of him was that of a very quiet person; his presence could hardly be felt in the room. In fact, no one would imagine he was the boss if one did not recognize it was Bimal Roy. He was also extremely patient. I do not remember him getting angry or lose his temper whatever the provocation. If anything went wrong he would accept the responsibility and try to rectify it as best as he could without blaming even the possible culprit!

I first met him during the story session of Sujata at his office and he explained the important details of my role while the writers were narrating the story. I felt confident at once for he knew what he wanted and would see that I gave that in my portrayal.

Readers will have no idea how silent it was on Bimal Roy’s sets when he was shooting a film! Most film studios I had attended possessed a self. congratulatory air. Most sets were flamboyant and gaudy, even chaotic. Never before had I experienced such an ambience of total submission to work, such exceptional concentration and discipline on a film set.

On Bimalda’s set, each individual was engrossed in his work, as if he was a general on duty When it was time to shoot the scene, it seemed like an organized army unit awaiting their commander’s signal to launch into action. That particular scene at the kothi needed to be shot at one go. By the end of the scene, the zamindar stomped out of the room, but only after disentangling his foot from the grovelling peasant’s grip. The camera was carefully placed on the trolley, the plotted movements were complicated. Preparations for the shot were finally completed after a good deal of groundwork. Once more I felt like I was a soldier in the army waiting to launch an attack at our general’s signal.

Bimalda’s calm voice announced.
‘Start sound!’

I was little more than a boy when I first met Bimalda. I think it was at a movie premiere that we first met. He was a soft-spoken gentleman and I still remember his interesting eyes. By 1959, I was on my own with a small family and urgently in need of work, and of course, money.

We met again at a dinner at the Ritz Hotel in Churchgate. The Filmfare magazine had organized a talent contest; I did not go for the contest but went to the dinner later. I had to borrow a Jodhpuri coat for the occasion from Tiger (the Nawab of Pataudi). Within a week of this meeting, I got a message from his company, Bimal Roy Productions, that he wished to meet me. I rejoiced at this news and literally flew to meet Bimalda at Mohan Studio.

Iconic Filmmaker Bimal Roy… the father of Neo Realism in Hindi cinema is to me the most important film director emerging out of Hindi Cinema. His aesthetic approach to socially relevant content makes him stand apart from his peers. An exceptional motion picture photographer himself, he brought us frames that were artful and memorable. His deep understanding of music paved the path of unforgettable music in his films with partnerships with music maestros S D Burman and Salil Chowdhury and lyricists Shailendra and Gulzar… and his association with Ritwik Ghatak for the writing of his Madhumati can never be left out of cinema discussion. Long Live Bimal Roy and his cinema legacy that won’t ever be replicable.