Showing posts with label Pandit Ravi Shankar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pandit Ravi Shankar. Show all posts
Farhan Akhtar asks, ‘Can you send me the tuning configuration for the strings?’-Purbayan Chatterjee
10:34 AM
Sitarist Purbayan Chatterjee reveals how Farhan Akhtar is learning the sitar from him and his student for his role of Pandit Ravi Shankar in ‘The Beatles’
Priyanka Sharma (MID-DAY; May 14, 2026)
From the outside, landing a plum role in Sam Mendes’s four-film event, The Beatles, seems remarkable. On the inside, it comes with immense hard work. Ask Farhan Akhtar. The actor, who will portray late sitarist Pandit Ravi Shankar, has begun his physical prep for his Hollywood feature debut. But that’s not it — his prep naturally involves learning to play the sitar.
mid-day has exclusively learnt that Akhtar is being trained by acclaimed sitarist and composer Purbayan Chatterjee’s Purbayan Arts and Artists Music Foundation (PAAMF).
Chatterjee remembered his first interaction with Akhtar; it happened without any indication of the film franchise that was driving it.
“My friend Anurag Rao, who is also associated with Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy, called me out of the blue and said, ‘Farhan wants to learn [the sitar] from you.’ I asked why he wanted to learn it. At that point, Farhan was bound by an NDA, so [my friend] couldn’t get all the details. [Later] Farhan said, ‘There’s this role that I’m doing.’ So, we met and I gave him some tips,” recalled Chatterjee.
That was just the start. Chatterjee realised that with Akhtar’s busy schedule, it was better if someone guided him whenever he sat down to play. “My student Ruthvik Rao goes regularly to monitor his [progress].”
Of course, Chatterjee is only a call away. “Sometimes Farhan bhai calls or texts, saying, ‘Can you send me the tuning configuration for the strings? I have forgotten it.’ I respect him, he is artistically inclined.”
Pather Panchali: Going on 70, and still India’s finest film
8:25 AM
Pather Panchali was Satyajit Ray’s debut film and ode to realism. He made it on a shoestring budget in 1955, without a regular script or even studio lights. Now, once again, Time magazine has named it among the 100 best movies of the past 100 years
Srirupa Ray (THE TIMES OF INDIA; March 31, 2024)
If you could place only one Indian film in the same league as Taxi Driver, Psycho and Godfather II, which would it be? Time Magazine has chosen Pather Panchali again (last time was in 2005). Satyajit Ray’s debut film figures on Time’s ‘100 Best Movies of the Past 10 Decades’ list. That’s just one movie for each year from 1920 to 2019.
Released in 1955, the film evokes a small village with ramshackle huts, ponds blooming with water lilies, thick groves dripping dew and rain, and a train chugging past swaying white fields of kaash flowers. Although it’s based on Bengali author Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s 1929 novel of the same name, Ray made a few narrative departures in the screenplay. In fact, he made the film from a storyboard with notes scribbled on the side rather than a proper script.
How Ray, a junior visualiser at British advertising agency D J Keymer & Co in 1950, became a filmmaker and picked Pather Panchali for his debut is a story. While in London, he also designed book covers for Signet Press. One of its commissions was to illustrate a children’s version of Pather Panchali, and Ray had begun the first drafts on his voyage to London.
The story deeply influenced him. At the same time he had been watching path-breaking films from around the world, including French filmmaker Jean Renoir’s ‘The Rules Of The Game’, Akira Kurosawa’s ‘Rashomon’, Soviet filmmaker Alexander Dovzhenko’s ‘Earth’ and, most importantly, Italian neorealist filmmaker Vittorio De Sica’s ‘Bicycle Thieves’. He is said to have watched around 100 films in London and by the time he returned, he was a changed man determined to translate Pather Panchali into film.
Incidentally, Bicycle Thieves is also part of the Time list. Ray literally followed in De Sica’s footsteps, refusing to either use studio lights or hire trained actors for enduring realism.
It took three long years to complete the film, and that was because no producer wanted to finance it. Ray kept his day job as a graphic designer and did the shooting on weekends. A good part of his salary went into the film, but that was obviously not enough. He sold off his prized gramophone records, pawned his insurance policy and even his wife’s jewels for the film’s production.
When Ray exhausted his means, West Bengal govt stepped into the role of ‘production company’. Chief minister Bidhan Chandra Roy agreed to help and the home publicity department loaned him money in installments. Curiously, the loan records say it was for road improvement, as govt officials thought it was a documentary on rural development. They probably took the ‘Pather’ in its title literally. The film went on to win major awards, including National Film Award, Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1956, Best Human Document, Vatican Award, Diploma of Merit from Edinburgh, San Francisco’s Golden Gate for Best Director and Best Picture, and Critic’s Award for Best Film at Stratford, among others.
Pather Panchali was also a milestone for Ray’s contemporary Pandit Ravi Shankar, who scored the film’s music. The soundtrack is part of the list of 50 greatest film soundtracks compiled by The Guardian in 2007.
PATH(ER)-BREAKING FILM
- Pather Panchali means ‘ballad of the road’
- Adapted from Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s 1929 novel of the same name
- Inspired by Italian filmmaker Vittorio De Sica’s film Bicycle Thieves
- Made over 3 years
- Released in 1955
- Music by Pandit Ravi Shankar
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THE TIMES OF INDIA (April 1, 2024)
An article, ‘Going on 70, and still India’s finest film’ published in TOI on March 31, stated the following, “Curiously, the loan records say it was for road improvement, as govt officials thought it was a documentary on rural development. They probably took the ‘Pather’ in its title literally”.
Responding to the statement, reader Amit Shanker has written, “This is absolutely incorrect. I know it for a fact, because my real uncle Prakash Swarup Mathur, who was director publicity in the BC Roy govt, was the person responsible for arranging funds for Pather Panchali. And he was the one who went to Cannes, on West Bengal govt’s behalf, to receive the award.”
Shanker adds, “To put the record straight, Ray had exhausted all his resources and the film had been rejected by both critics and financiers, when Ray’s mother approached a friend of BC Roy (then West Bengal CM) to enquire if the government could help with funds. An appointment was promptly granted and the lady was able to convince Roy to say yes to funding the film. Govt didn’t have any provision for funding films and Roy called in Mathur, my uncle, to find a way.
Roy and my uncle were both too highly educated for anyone to say they thought it was a documentary on rural development. They knew exactly what they were doing. Like any other bureaucrat would have done, my uncle too was initially reluctant to oblige but just because the CM insisted, he arranged for the funds from his department and put the expenses under the road improvement head.
Despite all the obstacles, my uncle managed to get Ray about Rs 2 lakh, which was the entire cost of the film. Mym other remembers vividly, Ray coming to their house regularly and showing my uncle and his colleagues the rushes.”
Pandit Ravi Shankar’s musical notes, letters, rare photos found at scrap shop in Mahim
8:01 AM
Rarest of rare memorabilia includes a letter from the sitar maestro’s son Shubho to his mother Annapurna Devi, in which he complains about being neglected on his birthday by Ravi Shankar; Author SMM Ausaja was searching for vintage movie posters when he stumbled upon a suitcase stuffed with memorabilia; contents suggest they belonged to Ravi Shankar and his musician wife Annapurna’s son Shubho who died in 1992
Khalid Mohamed (MUMBAI MIRROR; September 23, 2019)
Musical notations composed by sitar maestro Pandit Ravi Shankar, as well as letters written by him, photographs, press cuttings dating back to the 1960s, autographed brochures, and more have been recovered from a battered old leather suitcase which was dumped at a scrap dealer close to Mahim Railway Station. The suitcase made available for perusal to Mumbai Mirror, besides yielding a treasure trove of memorabilia, contains voluminous files of notes and notations by Bharat Ratna Ravi Shankar for some of his famed operas and ragas which were performed at shows the world over. That the material is authentic can be verified from the signature of Ravi Shankar on most of the rescued material.
A draft of a letter of complaint by the musician to the British organisers of a concert tour reveals that at the outset of his career, he would neither be paid nor given “a pat on the back” for his shows which had played to packed houses. In addition, notations for film scores have been discovered, albeit in a mottled condition which like the rest of the finds need to be restored digitally at the earliest.
There are photographs showing Ravi Shankar as a budding musician in his late teens, and snapshots of his first wife, the revered classical singer Annapurna Devi (born Roshanara Khan), daughter of Ustad Allauddin Khan, who laid the foundation for the modern Maihar Gharana.
Add to these, albums of sketches by their son, musician and graphic artist Shubhendra ‘Shubho’ Shankar, which have all been rescued in the nick of time before they were shredded, junked, or sold by their weight in kilos to re-cyclists of waste paper.
The suitcase was located by chance by SMM Ausaja, author of the book Bollywood in Posters. While scouring around for vintage movie posters, booklets and stills, the film scholar randomly picked out the suitcase and was startled by its content, retrieving it immediately. On being asked what he intends to do with it, he stated, “I’m a collector. I intend to preserve it for posterity.”
From all indications the suitcase belonged to the maestro’s son ‘Shubho’ aka Shubhendra Shankar, who passed away in California, at the age of 50, in 1992 after a bout of pneumonia. Towards the end years, he had withdrawn from the music scene and eked out a living for his wife and two children by working at a liquor store and drawing illustrations for telephone directories.
Ravi Shankar lived till the age of 92, succumbing to respiratory insufficiency in California in 2012. The mother of Shubho, the reclusive Annapurna Devi who resided in a Breach Candy highrise, passed away last year at the age of 91.
That the suitcase belonged to Shubho appears to be a given, since it contains his albums of drawings, including a striking pencil portrait of his father. Moreover, a greeting card designed as a gift to his father and signed by Ravi Shankar, could have been stored by the son as a remembrance. In a letter to Annapura Devi, he complains about being neglected on his birthday by his father.
Quite emotionally, the visiting card of the maestro mentioning his address in Pavlova building on Little Gibbs Road in Mumbai, and the apartment’s plastic door-sign have been preserved.
Ravi Shankar and Annapurna Devi had separated in 1962 after 11 years of marriage. Both had remarried. The maestro became an internationally-lauded artiste of mythical proportions, collaborating with greats such as Yehudi Menuhin and George Harrison of the Beatles. However, Annapurna Devi chose never to perform again, it is believed, because she had felt slighted when Ravi Shankar couldn’t quite accept a section of classical music aficionados that she was a superior artiste.
Quite oddly, a short poem written on a Viennese hotel’s letterhead and signed by the master filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak was also in the suitcase. Written in Bengali, the poem’s opening lines, translated into English read, “Where and when were my days of yore lost/ How they were lost, my heart doesn’t know…”
A close-up portrait of Ustad Allauddin Khan – whom Ravi Shankar acknowledged as his guru --is mouldering amidst the material, demanding professional restoration.
The Ravi Shankar Foundation, based in California, has sought to continue the legacy of the superstar sitarist’s music forward both in India and abroad. Meanwhile, the retrieved suitcase is a pointer towards a heart-touching story – of how a son clung on to a bagful of mementoes of his father -- a bag which eventually landed up with a scrap dealer.
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