Book: THE WORLDS OF APARNA
Author: Suman Ghosh in Conversation with Aparna Sen
Published by: Simon & Schuster
Price: Rs 599
The publication of this book, a record of conversations that the film-maker, Suman Ghosh, has had over a period of time with Aparna Sen and other film personalities like Shabana Azmi, Goutam Ghose, Konkona Sen Sharma and Anjan Dutt, coincides with the actress-director turning 80 this year, as also the 70th anniversary of her first film role in Mejo Bou in 1955. The book should be of interest to die-hard Aparna Sen fans but it is possible that there would be others who wouldn’t attach excessive importance to it. In places, it tends to read like the minutes of an extraordinary meeting of a mutual appreciation society. But there are interesting interregnums as well, passages where Sen shares illuminating anecdotes on her life, experiences and craft.
On the book jacket, Sen is hailed as a “celebrated” actress. Her durability as an actress, the cynic would argue in a contrarian tone, can perhaps be attributed to the fact that for years there seemed to be a sufficiently large number of takers for a certain type of hamming passing for the real thing. But, yes, there is substance in the claim that she was “the editor of the immensely successful women’s magazine Sananda”.
Although there is an occasional mention in the book of Sen’s visible participation in public affairs, this is an aspect of her life that perhaps called for detailed comment. The actress is on record that the poet, Sankha Ghosh, had a significant role in encouraging younger people like her to do what they did in the struggle that grew around the Nandigram fiasco. But it was a measure of her growth as a responsible citizen that having realised the dangers present in the culture of violence and corruption speedily spawned by the new rulers, she quietly but determinedly opted out of supporting them. In fact, the dissenter in her had come to the fore years earlier during the Dhananjay Chatterjee hanging episode when, as the editor of Sananda, she took a fearless stand against the obscenity of capital punishment, or the commissar being allowed to get away with his high-handedness with film-makers and other artists opposed to the practice of death by hanging.
Taking up the cudgels publicly on behalf of the besieged classes or unjustly punished individuals is, indeed, rare. Arguably, it is here, more than any other feature of her crowned life, that Sen’s importance lies.