Book excerpt: Ritwik Ghatak’s journey in Hindi cinema and the path he chose not to walk

We are talking about 1955-56. Nagarik had been made, and its release scotched in 1952. He married Surama in mid-1955. The story of those years – Ritwik’s time in the city he called ‘rotten’ and ‘crude’ and ‘materialistic’ and ‘completely unsuited to any creative work’ – is to be found in the letters he wrote to his wife, published by her in a book titled Ritwik (Anustup Prokashoni, 1996).

In the letters, we find a young man, just around thirty, missing his wife (to-be, to start with) and his city and the avenues to channel his creativity; not being able to build with his wife the life they might have hoped for, but also a man full of hope. Hope that he would be able to do something useful while at Filmistan; hope that he would earn enough money to put some sort of life together for his family; and that it would be the start of better things for him as a creator.

‘I just received a telegram from Salil Chowdhury, quite out of the blue. “Filmistan job almost fixed. Passage, hotel expense free. Start immediately!” We had a casual conversation around a year ago, and then this,’ Ritwik writes in a letter dated 26...

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