#Ray@100: Ray's humanism is missed today more than ever, says Goutam Ghose

What I learned from this tall man is

discipline

. Though our filmmaking styles were different, Satyajit Ray inspired me at every step.
Like Ray, I compose music for my films as well. I trained in music but it is from him that I learnt how to plan out my music - how much to use and when to notch up the volume of the background score and when to bring it down. It is from his work that I understood the concept of bars. Since he was into the discipline of orchestral music, he knew when to insert the flute piece and when to bring the sitar. I was fortunate enough to learn all this from him.
Ray used to listen to a lot of music. He used to ask me to visit him, usually at around 4-4.30 pm. And every time I met him, he would be listening to

Western Classical

music.
I think he was working on

Jana Aranya

at the time and I was just beginning my journey as a feature film maker. That's when I saw him record street sounds with a simple tape recorder. I was very impressed. He told me how I should start doing the same. “Shooting na korleo recorder ta niye ghurbe (Carry your recorder even when you are not shooting),” he said. Inspired by Ray, I started recording bird songs, the sound of waterfalls and what not. Today, I have a large collection of such sound samples, all thanks to him.
The other thing that I learned from

Ray

was how to write the script in the minutest of details. He used to say that if the script is written carefully, you should be able to see the final edit of the film right before your eyes. One can always improvise, but the finer details should always be in the script. I realised, when taken this approach, filmmaking is far economical and faster.




I saw his famous ‘Kheror Khata’ and how carefully he drew the uniform of British soldiers for

Shatranj Ke Khiladi

. He had even noted down the musical notes he wanted to use. Despite being a man of such global stature, Ray never, for once, gave up the rigour of reading and research. It is astounding to see the amount of research he used to put together for each of his films. And to think he did everything with his own hands and applied his brilliant mind - no software tools. I don’t know what he would do with them!


It is unfortunate that his 100th year and all that we planned to do around it, was washed away in the pandemic. But Satyajit Ray's work is more relevant today than ever. His humanism is missed today when our enemy is in our living room in the form of social media.