Mahanayak

As the screen lit up with a beatific smile, comfortably tugged between my Ma and Kakima, I watched the phenomenon called Uttam Kumar for the first time. And that was many many years ago. That enigma has lived on in my life, and likewise in many lives of my generation ever since, as the yardstick of good looks, good acting and an essential goodness. When he laughed, we laughed with him. When he was hurt on screen, we felt the pain. When he lipped those sweet melodious songs, we hummed along with him. There was never a hero who captured the hearts of million of Bengalis like Uttamkumar did, while he was alive and even now, thirty years after his sudden death. He was the greatest of them all, our Mahanayak. We fashioned our hair after him, emulated his walk, smiled his smile, laughed his laugh and even sang like him, but still could not help feel the pain of not being able to gather his aura and effect. We dreamt of  holding the sensational Suchitra Sen in our arms if only our looks could kill, like his did. Ruefully, we envied him as much as we idiolised and admired him.

I remember buying a commemorative LP record cut by HMV and getting scolded for wasting money on a "cinema-fellow" by one of my holier-than-thou Mama. I had to protest, not because I was unnecessarily being pulled up for no reason, but because my hero was being demeaned. I remember gearing up enough courage to tell my Mama that only the greats like Netaji and Rabindranath have LPs cut in their commemoration , and some peole did not appreciate their true worth, while they were alive. Coming to think of this rebellion now, it needed immense courage for a young boy to stand up for his idol and get into a head on collision course with a no-nonsense elder at that time and age. But I had to fight for the dignity of Uttamkumar, who could not do any wrong, and the end justified the means. We read the gossips, but believed that a creative genius had the right to indulge in what the society may not find proper. What really mattered was what we saw on screen, blown up forty times than normal, and that extraordinary screen presence which had the power to transport us into a make believe world for those few magical hours. With him, went the art of Bengali celluloid. With him Bengalis lost their moments of enjoyable respite. With him, we lost our alter ego, for ever.  

Thirty years have passed by after Uttamkumar passed away. That fateful day in July, when as kids returning from school, we got caught up in the teeming multitude of mourners that engulfed their hero during his last journey, I remember getting up on a tea stall bench at Rashbihari crossing to catch a glimpse of the man many of us never saw in flesh. I also remember the pain, the tears, the grief and the deep sense of loss that the quiet mourning millions felt and shared with each other. It was just not about loosing an actor forever. It was about loosing one of those rare icons that were essentially Bengali, but universal in appeal. With him we lost an integral part of our growing up years, our parents' fantasy, and a bit of being Bengali, that day. 

And then, like our lost childhood, we lost fifty percent of his films during the past thirty years due to our Government' shameless apathy to preserve heritage. Rarely I come across a glimpse of him on television now a days. Maybe it is a song that I have heard a thousand times before or a dialogue I can quote ad verbatim even in my sleep. I stop to greedily steal a private moment with my hero. I rewind subconsciously to my childhood that can never be taken away from me, being quintessential to who I am. The negatives may have degenerated beyond repair. But the reels keep on running in my mind. This film has no end.