It comes as a surprise when Rinki Roy Bhattacharya, talking about her father and filmmaker Bimal Roy’s Madhumati , says, “We grew up listening to myths… that he made this film with all commercial trappings of songs, dances, comedy, villain and a ghost saga, to tide over the financial crunch in his production house. It’s the biggest grosser among his films.”
The surprise is because she and her siblings didn’t know how and why Bimal Roy made Madhumati , a commercial offering compared to his other films like Do Bhiga Zameen or Bandhini . “My father didn’t discuss films at home saab ,” she recalls and adds, “I refer to my father as a man of silence because he rarely spoke.”
This silence meant Rinki had to turn to actors and crew members that Bimal Roy had worked with to retrace his work. In Hyderabad for the International Children’s Film Festival, she also had a reading session of her 2014 book
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Hours before the reading session, she flips through the book and says, “During my research, I met wonderful people who had watched the shooting of
Rinki, like many others, assumed that Madhumati was shot in Nainital. She had gone almost up to Nainital when she learnt that the film was shot in Ghorakhal. “Even today, it isn’t easy to reach this area. One has to take an overnight train to Kathgodham from Delhi and then drive to Ghorakhal. It wouldn’t have been easy to travel with the crew and film equipment in those days,” she says.
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Vyjayanthimala and Dilip Kumar shared their memories and Pran’s family chipped in with anecdotes and quotes Pran had written down years ago. One of Roy’s erstwhile assistants, Debu, recalled the shooting days.
Meanwhile, a journalist informed Rinki that her aunt, Dr. Razia Husain, had witnessed the shooting as a teenager and had shot pictures of Dilip Kumar. “Razia graciously recounted her experience and shared archival images,” says Rinki. The locales around Ghorakhal, observes Rinki, remain pristine. “When I looked at the pine tree lined paths and heard birds chirp, I was waiting for the songs to play in the background. Sujata ”
Rinki began writing about her father’s work after he passed away in 1966. “A number of obituaries were written but there was no significant book. The Madhya Pradesh Film Development Corporation asked me to write one and I jumped at the offer. I was lucky that many of the actors he had worked with were active. I gathered quotes and hurriedly put together a book. Looking back, it was a handout rather than a book,” she reflects.
The next was A Man of Silence (Harper Collins), where she feels she again went in the route of gathering information and assembling it. “It got me thinking that I need to study his films and not look at him as my father.” A more serious, anthology book came through The Man Who Spoke in Pictures: Bimal Roy (Penguin) in 2009 with accounts by 30 eminent personalities, edited by her.
As a parting shot, she jokes that a friend chided that she had written enough on her father and quips, “I can’t help it; he continues to inspire me.”