One important aspect of Satyajit Ray’s great craft was that he would not begin a project until he had the right faces for the characters of his film. He was stuck while preparing for his masterpiece, Pather Panchali (1955), because he could not find the perfect actor to play Durga, the little girl, who would make the whole world fall in love with her once the movie lit up the screen.
One day, his friend and assistant director, Ashish Burman, told him that he had spotted a girl who would be just right for the role. Her name was Uma Dasgupta; she was the daughter of the football player Paltu Dasgupta. She was 14. Ray, who had not yet made his name in the world of cinema, was, nevertheless, well-known as a book designer, and Dasgupta wanted to meet him.
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On a Sunday morning, over a cup of tea, Ray got permission to cast Uma in the role Durga. He had taken his Leica camera along, and took the young girl up to the terrace to take some pictures. Uma was initially a little shy; and Ray wanted his Durga to be a tomboy. So, he asked her to pull some faces, which she did immediately, and, as Ray later recalled, “with a total lack of inhibition.”
Ray had no doubt in his mind that she was the Durga he was looking for. Nearly 70 years after the release of Pather Panchali, Uma, who broke everybody’s heart with Durga’s death in the film, passed away in Kolkata. She was 83, and is survived by her daughter. Uma never acted after that, but that single role as Durga brought her immortality in the world of cinema.
It was as though she was born to play that role. The thrill on Durga’s face when she saw a train for the first time; the adoration in her eyes as her mother Sarbajoya dressed up her little brother as a prince; the relish with which she ate mango pickle; her naughty smile; her sad, far-away eyes; her joyous, lyrical dance in the monsoon rain that would kill Durga: Uma embodied not just her character, but her very spirit. She was beautiful, fragile, and yet invincible.
She was a natural in front of the camera, and Ray knew that from the start. “Durga, I had little doubt, would perform well, but I was not so sure about the boy (Subir Banerjee, who played Apu)”, Ray recalled years later. In his book My Years with Apu: A Memoir, Ray had observed, “...Durga (Uma) was a fourteen year old of great promise. There was no doubt that she felt wholly sympathetic to the role, and consequently acted with greater acumen.”
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Uma, however, chose never to act again. Instead, she went on to post-graduate in economics from Calcutta University and became a teacher in a school. Born on September 12, 1941, in Pabna (now in Bangladesh), Uma had a conservative, middle-class upbringing. For all the international accolades she received as a little girl for her role in one of the greatest films in cinema’s history, she led her life quietly, away from the public spotlight, retiring at 60 from a Kolkata school.
Over the years, the name Uma Dasgupta may have faded into a corner of public memory; but the persona of Durga, characterised by her, remained as powerful and fresh with every successive generation of film lovers. Ray had done the illustrations for ‘Aam Aatir Bhenpu’, an abridged version of Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s Pather Panchali. There too, he had drawn a version of Durga, defiant and beautiful as a flower in a storm. But after Uma did the role, all other versions of Durga, representative or imagined, disappeared.
