Sonar Kella never gets old. Every time you read the story or watch the film, the sense of amazement remains the same. So, when Satyajit Ray’s first on-screen Topshe, Siddhartha Chatterjee, penned his memoir, Feluda fans were stoked. In the book titled Feludar Prothom Topshe, Chatterjee documents working in Sonar Kella with Ray, making Topshe a living-breathing character. The book was released in May this year in the presence of Sandip Ray, Kushal Chakraborty (Mukul in Sonar Kella), Shantanu Bagchi (the other Mukul in Sonar Kella), Moloy Roy (Gunomoy Bagchi in Joi Baba Felunath) among other noted names in Kolkata.
Siddhartha Chatterjee signs copies of the book at the launch in May this year My Kolkata
A few months later on August 4, at Ramjhol 2.0 organised by Kolkata Centre for Creativity (KCC), Sandip Ray, Siddhartha Chatterjee and Kushal Chakraborty came together again to discuss an interesting topic — ‘Bridging Kolkata and Rajasthan: Sonar Kella’. Moderated by Pinaki Dey, the conversation focused on how the Oscar-winning filmmaker introduced Rajasthan to Bengal.
Ramjhol 2.0 is an endeavour of KCC to celebrate various creative pursuits — art and craft, language and literature, architecture, history, performing arts and more — that form a confluence between West Bengal and Rajasthan.
Reminiscing about their experiences, the panellists looked back at working with Ray through the movie that put the yellow sandstone Jaisalmer Fort — the sonar kella — on the travel list of Bengalis. Glimpses from the movie were also played, and the trio was seen thoroughly enjoying the moments, perhaps taking a trip back to the times of shooting of the landmark film.
‘Feludar Prothom Topshe’ by Siddhartha Chatterjee documents his journey of working with Satyajit Ray in ‘Sonar Kella’ My Kolkata
While Siddartha Chatterjee discussed how Bikaner garnered popularity after the film, Sandip Ray shared how he had heard that tourists visiting Jaisalmer would carry copies of Sonar Kella with them as a guide book. This highlights Ray’s impeccable research that put a place so far west from Kolkata on the travel map at a time before the Internet when affordable means of transport were limited.
The famous caravan scene from the movie with Soumitra Chatterjee as Feluda, Siddhartha Chatterjee as Topshe and Santosh Dutta as Lalmohan Ganguly aka Jatayu
“Manikda, such a fantastic work is in the making with child artistes like Kushal and Siddhartha, and there’s Kamu Mukherjee in the film, what will I do in it” — these were Soumitra Chatterjee’s words to Satyajit Ray, said Sandip Ray, talking about an interaction between the two before Chatterjee became the first on-screen Feluda.“Tumi script e ja ache follow koro, dekhbe thik hobe” (Follow the script, and you’ll see the rest will fall in place), said Ray to [Soumitra] Chatterjee, and the rest is history.
