A devoted foodie with keen interest in wild life, music,…
On Satyajit Ray ’s birth anniversary, we revisit his candid memories of Presidency College and a heartfelt rejection letter that inspired director Sujoy Ghosh.
It’s a funny old world, isn’t it? One moment, you’re fumbling with career choices, and the next, your name is spoken with reverence in the same breath as Bergman and Kurosawa. And yet, when Satyajit Ray looked back at his early days, there was no grandstanding. Just a candid shrug and an honest admission — “Chakrir lobh ey orthoniti niyechhilam” — “I chose economics out of a lust for a job.”
On the 104th birth anniversary of the man who made the world sit up and notice Indian cinema beyond song-and-dance, we dip into two tales — one from the bustling classrooms of Presidency College and the other from a student’s flat in Manchester — that together stitch the unlikely quilt of Ray’s legacy.
Satyajit Ray Was A Student Who Dodged Economics
In a rare 1993 interview for Nostalgia, the commemorative history of Presidency College, Ray pulled back the curtain on a lesser-known chapter of his life. Not the maestro with an Oscar. Not even the creator of Feluda. But a 15-year-old lad, uncertain, quiet, and more interested in Beethoven than balance sheets.
He joined the college in 1936, not because he had a burning desire for economics, but because P.C. Mahalanobis had promised him a job at Sankhya, the statistical journal. That little carrot was enough. “I wasn’t sure what to pursue,” Ray admitted, “but I had decided that I would shift to arts.”
Alas, the shift never came. “My third and fourth years were more or less wasted,” he said. “I should’ve taken English.” He wasn’t just being modest. By his own admission, he dodged college work like a seasoned batsman leaving deliveries outside off stump. But still, there was a glimmer — a fondness for certain teachers who managed to rise above the general classroom chaos. “Some teachers had to face impossible levels of rowdiness,” Ray recalled sombrely, mentioning how one, Ajit Chakraborty, took his own life — a tragedy Ray attributed partly to the relentless misbehaviour of students.
And yet, in that same breath, he also remembered others with admiration — Subodh Sengupta, Prafulla Ghosh, Jibanananda Sen — teachers who recognised his flair for writing. Sengupta, years later, would recall: “Satyajit was a very good writer. Then I heard he was making films. I slapped my forehead — how could I know he’d become so famous through film?”
You can almost hear Ray chuckle at that.
The Rejection That Felt Like a Blessing says Sujoy Ghosh
Decades later, across the globe in rainy old Manchester, another young man — Sujoy Ghosh — sat with a head full of dreams and a degree in computer science he didn’t quite care for. He knew one thing: he loved Ray’s stories, his drawings, his quiet command over emotion.
And so, with nothing to lose, Sujoy wrote to Ray.
Not with a pitch. Not a script. Just a heartfelt plea: “I’ll do any job,” he said, “if only you teach me how to draw.”
Let’s be honest, most people would’ve binned the letter with a polite sigh. Not Ray. He typed out a reply.
“Dear Mr Ghosh, Thank you for your letter. Unfortunately, I do not own a company which could offer you a position. I work for a fee as a director for other producers. Also, I write my own screenplays and have a regular editor. I regret, therefore, that I am not in a position to help you. Yours sincerely, Satyajit Ray”
It was Sujoy’s first rejection letter — and his most cherished. “The fact that he took time out to type and reply to some random idiot sitting in Manchester made him a gigantic hero in my eyes,” he wrote. The rest, as they say, is cinematic history. Today, Sujoy Ghosh is at the helm of films like Kahaani and Badla, and now King, starring Shah Rukh Khan’s daughter Suhana.
Two Echoes of the Same Ray
One story ends in regret: the road not taken, the English degree that never was, and two lost years. The other begins with a polite ‘no’ that became a life-changing ‘yes’ in spirit. But what unites them is Ray’s humanity — whether as a boy dodging economics in College Street or as a giant taking time to type a letter to a stranger.
There’s a British idiom that goes, “It’s not just the big things that define a man, but the little things done quietly.” Ray lived that adage.
He may have felt that Presidency gave him little, but to generations who followed, he gave everything — imagination, integrity, and a standard of storytelling that was never over the top, always just so.
So here’s to Satyajit Ray — the young boy who didn’t like economics, the man who replied to a stranger, and the filmmaker who made us believe that cinema, at its best, is poetry with a lens.
A devoted foodie with keen interest in wild life, music, cinema and travel Somashis has evolved over time . Being an enthusiastic reader he has recently started making occasional contribution to write-ups.
