Opening shot: Mongyr, a small town in Bihar Province, British India, in 1935. Palm trees rise up and ripple across a clear blue sky. The camera slowly moves from the lush treetops to focus on a historic yellow bungalow with a peaked roof, tall windows and a long, wrap-around veranda.
A slender, intense-looking Indian man in a crisp white shirt and a dhoti, is sitting at a cane-legged desk set on the veranda with a whirring fan nearby. His brow is furrowed as he slowly writes in Bengali on the legal pad in front of him.
Sitting cross-legged on a mat nearby, is a well-groomed boy who appears to be seven or eight years old. He’s neatly dressed in shorts and a kurta shirt. In his hand he carefully holds an antique pencil sharpener, which he is using to shape a pencil’s point to perfection. His concentration on his task just as strong as the writer in the chair.
The boy turns his head at the sound of footsteps. A middle-aged woman slowly treads up the path and onto the verandah. But Saradindu Bandyopadhyay, the writer at the table, works steadily, as if in a world of his own.
I can picture this scene in so many Bollywood historical films—my favorite genre. But the story is true. Saradindu Bandyopadhyay was born in 1899 to a very respectable Bengali Hindu family and was trained as lawyer. Yet since his college days, he’d engaged in creative writing, a passion that was perhaps less respectable, but more emotionally thrilling.