The Epiphany Of Wonder: 70 Years Of Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali | Seventy years since its release, Ray's Song of the Little Road continues to lead us towards a greater understanding of the beauty of life, writes KE Priyamvada | WHEN I WAS A CHILD , I remember seeing two children running across a field of kaash phool (wild sugarcane) in rural Bengal. Apu, a young boy wearing a tinsel crown, and his older sister Durga, draped in a simple saree, were running between the feathery white plumes of windblown grass to see a novelty passing their village — a train chugging by, its steam engine’s black smoke marking the sky with its intruding presence. It is an unforgettable memory that is the essence of pure cinema from Satyajit Ray’s first film and cinematic masterpiece Pather Panchali ( Song of the Little Road ). This year we celebrate 70 years of Pather Panchali . Released in 1955, and recipient of the ‘Best Human Document’ award at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival, Satyajit Ray’s sensitively filmed version of the 1929 novel, written in Bengali by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, remains an outstanding work of cinematic vision and empathy. | I had the good fortune of viewing Pather Panchali, Aparajito (1956) and Apur Sansar/The World of Apu (1959) in continuous sequence, in the span of a single day, at a screening in Delhi. The moment in Pather Panchali when the father Harihar Roy (played by Kanu Banerjee) comes home to his impoverished family in their village, with a saree for his daughter Durga, only to learn that she has passed away from a fever, moved me to tears. The heart-wrenching soundtrack (composed by Pandit Ravi Shankar), played on the tar shehnai at this moment in the film, enhances the moment of pure grief as the parents Harihar and Sarbajaya (movingly portrayed by Karuna Banerjee) mourn the loss of their lively daughter. ALSO READ | Revisiting Satyajit Ray's Aranyer Din Ratri But let us return to the beginning. Satyajit Ray had wanted to make a film based on Pather Panchali after he had first read the novel in 1944 and created illustrations for an abridged version, when he was working as a graphic designer in Calcutta. He wrote a series of notes and a storyboard for his vision of the film. In Ray’s book of film criticism Our Films, Their Films (1976) he writes that he modified the story to focus on some key events, and also sought permission from Bandyopadhyay’s widow to adapt the novel to screen, as the author had passed away in 1950. | | | HALF A CENTURY AGO, Steven Spielberg's Jaws (it turned 50 on 20 June 2025) birthed the shark movie genre — and we’ve been nervous about getting into the ocean ever since. From sleek thrillers to gloriously gory camp, stream its fin-tastic successors now, only on OTTplay Premium . | | | Muted For Years, Chinmayi Finds Her Voice With 'Muththa Mazhai' | Trolled, banned and made invisible, Chinmayi Sripaada found vindication through the Thug Life track, writes Subha J Rao | ON JUNE 4, eight days after Saregama Tamil uploaded Chinmayi Sripaada’s version of ‘Muththa Mazhai’ as sung at Mani Ratnam’s Thug Life ’s audio launch, the comments were still pouring in. Words of affection, rarely used for Chinmayi since she spoke out about poet Vairamuthu during the #MeToo movement, were openly shared. Music labels created carousels of her songs, most of which predate 2018. Each felt like it was a personal win. But Chinmayi herself was deeply anxious over her court hearing the next day. Nothing really registered. From about 9.45 am to 10.45 am on 5 June 2025, she waited in court. For the intrusive questions, for queries that would make her wonder why she decided to fight back. However, there was a new judge, and a new date set for later this month. | This routine is one the singer-voiceover artiste has been following for six years now, since she decided to fight her ban from The South Indian Cine, Television Artistes and Dubbing Artistes Union. (Others before her, such as Dasharathi, have filed cases too, and are still fighting in court.) In Chinmayi’s case, while there is an ‘unofficial’ ban on her doing voice-overs, there’s a shadow ban on her singing too. In the nearly seven years since 96 (for which she both sang and dubbed) released in October 2018 — till ‘Muththa Mazhai’ , her most popular work with 36 million views on YouTube as of 19 June — she’s sung fewer than 15 songs in Tamil, and dubbed for only three films ( Hero and Leo were due to the insistence of the directors, PS Mithran and Lokesh Kanagaraj, respectively). | | | The one newsletter you need to decide what to watch on any given day. Our editors pick a show, movie, or theme for you from everything that’s streaming on OTT. | | This weekly newsletter compiles a list of the latest (and most important) reviews from OTTplay so you can figure what to watch or ditch over the weekend ahead. | | In which we invite a scholar of cinema, devotee of the moving image, to write a prose poem dedicated to their poison of choice. Expect to spend an
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