Review of Amritakumbher Sandhane.

Review of Amritakumbher Sandhane.

Director Dilip Ray experimented with epic literature of Bengal’s literary giant Samaresh Bose titled Amrito Kumbher Sandhane. The film was based on the experience of visiting Kumbh Mela in Prayag Sangam in Allahabad. It was probably the last film where Sudhin Dasgupta composed music mostly which included bhajans and bayul songs.

Subhendu Chatterji played the role of the observer in the film. He was a writer and related the stories of different individuals who travelled with him. He observed the story of Bhanu Banerjee, who had a daughter, who left the house with her girl friend and never returned back. Bhanu searched for her in Allahabad.

He witnessed the story of George Becker, who was a sadhu, then married Sanghamitra and left the life of ascetic. But she left him and became a baijee in Benaras and again returned back to Allahabad as a devotee. Anup Kumar was a bayul, who went to Prayag for giving holy dip in the sangam of Ganga, Yamuna and Saraswati. But at the holy time for bathing in Prayag, there was immense rush and got stamped and died.

Subhendu met a Bihari family of Pramod Ganguly and his three wives. The characters were played by Aparna Sen, Ruma Guha Thakurta and Lili Chakravarty. Their husband was old and infirm. He was taken to Prayag so that the holy dip can change his health. Instead he got stamped in the rush and died. All the three wives got back being widows.

At the time when everyone wanted to bath in Prayag, the naga sanyasis from different akhras created a mess, and the police and administration failed to stop the crowd and the unrest. It took away the lives of more than thousands of people and the rest returned back with injuries.

Samarash Bose attacked the unscientific belief in the minds of rural people in India that bathing in the holy waters of Prayag during Kumbh Mela can wash away all their evil and bring prosperity in life. His words were given expression by Subhendu Chatterji in the film he realized that Kumbh Mela hardly brought any happiness and prosperity, on the other hand took the lives of innocent people. But for uneducated population of the country the religious beliefs in their minds cannot be substituted by rational scientific thinking.

Dilip Ray was appreciated for his efforts to make a film on the brilliant subject and the film ended being very successful.

Anup Kumar and bengali films.

Anup Kumar and Bengali films.

Anup Kumar is considered to be a gifted actor who contributed a lot in Bengali films of the 50s and 60s. Most of his notable performances were made in the films of Tarun Majumdar. He did a great job in the role of a bohemian character in the film Palatak.

Palatak was a story of a Bengali whose mind never stuck in one place. He travelled from one village to another and gathered experiences. Anup Kumar was sublime in Tarun Majumdar’s other film Nimantran. He had done his best in the comedy film Dadar Kirti.

In the film Dadar Kirti, Tapas Pal, a failure in academic career came to his relative’s house in rural Bengal. Anup Kumar played the character of Bhombolda and exploited the innocent character Tapas Pal. He asked him to run in the hot fields and also swim in the cold water at night, to develop his learning capacity.

While Tapas Pal stayed in the village, Mahua Roy Choudhury, one the neighbours developed a soft corner for Tapas Pal. When her marriage was fixed with another person, Anup Kumar made efforts to get rid of the groom so that the marriage could be arranged with Tapas Pal. In fact helped him after realizing the damage he had done in the beginning of the film.

Anup Kumar had acted in more than 50 films with Uttam Kumar, the greatest superstar of Bengali cinema, including Pathe Holo Deri, Sagarika, Agniparikkha, Rajodrohi, to name a few. Anup Kumar’s performance was well appreciated as comedian.

He did well in many serious films as well like Thagini with Sandha Roy, Rajen Tarapdar’s Jeeban Kahini. In Jeeban Kahini, he gave word to Bikash Roy, the father of Sandhya Roy, that he would commit suicide to help him get money out of insurance. But matters ended up in such a manner that none of them had to die and the film had a happy ending.

Even Sandeep Roy used Anup Kumar to play the role of Lalmohan Ganguly, the character played by Santosh Dutta in Satyajit Ray’ s Sonar Kella.

Anup Kumar’s films should be restored to see his performance in Bengali films over 50s, as his earlier performances include the film Chandrasekhar, in the late 40s, where Ashok Kumar and Chabi Biswas played leading roles.