‘Filmmaking in Calcutta has always been a sort of technical battle, mainly as I said due to lack of funds. I am sure this added to the overall stress of filmmaking and I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the cause of Ray’s poor heart condition. I remember him sitting next to the camera during our lunch break, chewing on his handkerchief. He ruined one hankie daily much to Monku Di, his wife’s chagrin.’ The story of a film.

‘…Ray was, of course, famously fluent in both Bengali and English. This fusion inevitably means that many aspects of Ray films are unfamiliar, offputting and sometimes incomprehensible to audiences outside India. How many international viewers will follow Ray’s pivotal pun on NASA as nesa, Bengali for ‘addiction’, in his philosophical final film, ‘Agantuk’? The relevance of Satyajit Ray.

Satyajit’s notebooks were reservoirs of his immense, inimitable creativity. With a thousand minute details jotted down, ranging from costume design to background score, these notebooks were his veritable workstation. Ten pages from his notebooks, placed in context of the films they speak of.