Legendary Bengali actor Soumitra Chatterjee’s daughter Poulomi Basu conducted a prayer service in his memory on Tuesday, the third day of his death. Chatterjee, 85, died on November 15 after losing a 40 -day battle with post-COVID ailments at a Kolkata hospital.
Basu said she and her father did not believe in rituals but she did it anyway in deference to the wishes of her mother. The rituals were conducted in the presence of close family members at a popular ‘math’ (religious place) in the city.
“Being the daughter, I decided to go ahead with the rituals. As I participated, I found the process detoxicating after so much stress in the past 40 days. I think father would have loved the serenity of the place where the rituals were performed,” she told PTI. Memorial meetings will be later organised by the family and theatre troupe ‘Mukhomukhi’, Basu said.
“I will do it (memorial meeting) in an appropriate manner, befitting a personality like my father,” she said. Meanwhile, Dey’s Publishing will bring out a compiled third edition of Chatterjee’s published articles by the end of this year, Apu Dey from the leading Bengali publishing house said.
Several sketches made by legendary Bengali actor, his diary jottings during the nationwide lockdown and unpublished poems will be made public in the coming days, the thespian’s daughter Poulomi Basu said on Tuesday.
The workaholic’s eagerness to return to routine shoots after lockdown and musings during the lockdown period from March-end to the first week of September will be part of the publication, she said. “He could not live without work. During the lockdown period, he would get restive at times. I used to tell him this (situation) is not in our hands. He was missing the life during shoots. He had become more regular with writing diary during this phase,” Basu said.
Chatterjee, in his diary notes, had once written in July he felt the urge to give words to the thoughts coming to his mind during this phase in the form of poems, she said. He had also drawn coloured sketches, Basu said.
The actor had hit the shooting floor for a biopic in August and a documentary in September with adherence to the COVID-19 protocol, industry sources said. His last diary jotting took place before his hospitalisation on October 6, she said.
“We wish to publish my father’s last writings, scribbles, poems and sketches in the form of a book. We want the average reader to know his way of thinking and do not want to keep the contents in the closets of the family. “We also have plans to set up an archive where my father’s unpublished poems, drawings and notes on copies of film scripts about certain aspects of his characters will be kept in a proper manner. Many of these are unchronicled and are now kept here and there,” Basu, who is also associated with theatre like her father, said.
The actor, who had debuted in legendary filmmaker Satyajit Ray’s ‘Apur Sansar’ in 1959 and acted in 14 of the maestro’s films, was also a towering stage personality, a gifted poet, an elocutionist and was associated with magazines. He had acted in over 300 films in a career spanning six decades.
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