Satyajit Ray was a friend of my father, Nirmal Chandra Kumar. My father touched his Centenary in 2017. He was introduced to him by R P Gupta, his close friend from their D J Keymers days. My father was an antiquarian and Ray visited him often for his many requirements.
I saw Satyajit Ray from close and started maintaining a Note Book on Ray. Many a time I ran errands to reach books from our library to Ray's home and had the occasion to have inconsequential talk.
Here is an excerpt from my Book:
PROLOGUE
I first met this six feet four and a half inch bright eyed man when I was in my early teens to record an impression that he alone has left on my mind. Never have I met another who in spite of the animation on his face, was in peace with himself. I did not have with him any consequential conversation but could feel his serenity. He is like the mount Kanchenjunga, with its snow-capped peak standing apart from the rest of the mountain range. To me Satyajit Ray’s presence suggested that sublime peace that only radiates from the image of the seated Buddha. Yet there is a dynamic quality in his personality, which invited immediate response and banished those barriers and restrictions which so often hamper the relations between people of different races and upbringing.
The quiet dignity which sat naturally upon him speaks of a life spent in an atmosphere of unusual intellectual refinement. Such a sensitive mind as Ray’s I had rarely met with, for his mind ranged over every field of culture. Each subject brought from him some quite comment showing an unfading critical discernment. In his films I observed a sensitiveness. He has a beautiful touch, a refinement of insight which gave quality to his work and whatever aspect of life he touched upon gave it an artistic orientation.
He is also a non-conformist. He kept aside the pale of the parochial orthodoxy. He remains a free artist, free from fetish of all kinds with his work embedded to the truth. Unless one recognizes his uniqueness one can hardly understand this remarkable artist for whom art is an intensely subjective and almost personal experience. His artistic motivation is a curious intellection penetrated and surcharged by romanticism. Therefore to explain his films with the help of formulae or other films would be ridiculous in the extreme.