Calcutta: The idea of conferring the Legion of Honour on actor Soumitra Chatterjee was sown during a conversation over lunch in May 2016 between Damien Syed, the consul general of France in Calcutta, and a Frenchwoman who two decades ago had made a documentary film called Gaachh on the thespian.

When Catherine Berge hugged Soumitra at the Book Fair inauguration last Tuesday, hardly anyone recognised her, much less knew her association with him. At the investiture ceremony that night, as soon as the French ambassador planted the insignia on Soumitra's shawl, she beamed: "My suggestion has borne fruit."

"I had asked Damien: "Why don't we try for Legion d'honneur for Soumtra? He responded enthusiastically," she would recall two days later. "I was at the Louvre last summer when Damien called to give me the good news. President Francois Hollande, in his last days in office, had signed Soumitra's diploma," she told Metro at the Fairlawn Hotel lobby, where she had first met Soumitra in 1996. "He had walked in like The Purple Rose of Cairo," she said, alluding to the 1985 fantasy comedy in which a character from a film walks out of the screen.

Catherine was at Columbia University when Satyajit Ray died in 1992. "I was distraught. Ray was a god in France. A professor suggested that I give a talk on Ray's Ghare Baire. I saw several Ray films together and realised that this actor was in many of them. That gave me the idea of making a film on him," she reminisced.

Consul general Syed said he was already a big fan of Soumitra when Catherine broached the topic of honouring him. "I immediately spoke to the ambassador and sent an application to Paris."

A friend who was visiting Calcutta some years later  gathered Chatterjee’s phone number and sent her a fax. And within days, Catherine happened to meet Ismail Merchant in Paris. “I had read in the papers that they had restored Ray’s films so I mentioned my plan for the documentary. He asked if I had contacted Soumitra and on hearing that I had, he simply called his nephew and niece and said he was producing my film!”

In Calcutta, she would meet Rabi Ghosh (“His house had a huge photo of Charlie Chaplin”) ,Bijoya Ray, AparnaSen, Mamata Shankar, the Charulata producer R.D. Bansal…But the person who left the deepest impression was Madhabi Mukherjee. “To meet the Charulata actress… uff! We spoke through an interpreter but both wanting to reach out to each other. I gave her perfume and she gave me a sari.”

Sharmila Tagore shot a sequence where she goes searching for the house where ApurSansar was shot. “It was in north Calcutta (9A Raja Sew Box Bagala Lane). We tracked down the house.”

Gachh was shot over nine days on 35mm with Ismail Merchant’s crew flying in from Mumbai.

The premiere took place at a programme to mark the 50th anniversary of India’s independence at National Film Theatre, London.“Ismail, Soumitra and SashiKapoorattended, three giants of theatre and cinema.” A few days later, it travelled to the Venice Film Festival. “Mother Teresa died the day Gachh was screened. There was a gasp in the audience when the news was announced.” In October, it was shown in France in presence of Sharmila. “She was in London. Ismail must have given her a call.”

She had also planned a feature film on Romain Rolland’s sister Madeleine. “Soumitra was supposed to play Rabindranath Tagore in it. But Merchant died and the film never took off.”

At the investiture ceremony last Tuesday, Berge was surprised when the ambassador announced that her film would be screened at the end. Her Soumitra connection had come full circle.