In Search of Pather Panchali’s Nischindipur at Boral Village

Boral Village near Garia township of Kolkata is where Satyajit Ray unfolded his Pather Panchali saga. Boral became the setting for Nischindipur, an idyllic but impoverished Bengal village. Here  Durga and Apu would run with abandon,  Sarbojaya would stoically face  poverty  and from where Harihar thought he would never have to leave.

Probashionline took a trip to Boral to see if traces from the film scenes can still be identified. It was no less than a pilgrimage for the team to be at the locale of the film which  put independent India firmly on the world cinema map and is rated amongst the greatest films ever made globally.

Ray started scouting  location for Pather Panchali in 1953.  In his search for the setting of Nischindipur, Ray gave a pass to Jadavpur and Garia villages and finally settled for Boral about 6 miles from the Ray residence at Tollygunge. In the immediate aftermath of partition Jadavpur, Garia, Baghajatin , Bijoygarh villages were experiencing winds of change. New refugee colonies were coming up. Boral till then remained relatively unaffected. However subsequently Boral was also to fall to the refugee influx. In an interview with James Blue in 1968, Ray mentions  “ it (Boral) is unrecognizable now from the days of Pather Panchali. It is no longer pure, its spoiled. It was once very nice indeed , with long areas of no huts (refugee huts)”.

The film location was found by accident.  One of  Bansi Chandragupta’s friends mentioned  he had a small house at Boral  . Bansi was the friend of Ray and the film’s art director. Satyajit and Bansi went to see the village, but it was a monsoon day and impossible to view it properly.  They returned when the weather cleared and searched the village to establish its possibilities. They found a house no more than a heap of ruins, but it was potentially suitable to represent the dilapidated family house of Harihar Roy. Hence they decided that the bulk of the money must be spent by Chandragupta in reconstructing this house as the main location. The house was taken on rent at Rs. 50/month from the Mukhopadhyay family who owned the property. Additions like exterior walls, doors and a kitchen were added to the house.

A metro ride to Kobi Nazrul Metro Station and a auto ride to Boral (Bokultala) took us to the stage of Pather Panchali. On way there were not many traces of Ray’s Nichindipur. We saw rows of builder flats at the periphery of  Boral ( now a municipal town with pin code 700154) far removed from the mango groves and large expanse of greenery with pathways as seen in the film. We saw shops which sold chips and coke,  there were no traces of ek poishar muri ( puffed rice worth one paisa) which Durga would buy . The bill board of mobile phone companies vie for attention, no more does Apu come running shouting Chitthi-Chitthi (letter)  anymore.

On our exploration of the Pather Panchali film locale we were lucky to have Karun and Shikha Gupta as our guide. They are long time  residents of Boral and are proud of the village’s Pather Panchali legacy. Inidentally the Gupta family had   one family member in the Pather Panchali cast. The family cow Lalu is seen in the film.

Our first tryst with Pather Panchali at Boral was the statue of Satyajit Ray marking the general site of film shooting near the Bokultala Bus Stand , Boral. The statue was inaugurated by  His Excellency Saiyid Nurul Hasan, Governor of West Bengal in 1990. Need we say the statue only has a faint resemblance with the film director. It however calls for applause that  offcialdom has  put a sign post in form of the film director’s statue marking the Pather Panchali film locale.

Behind the statue at about 50 mts walk  is the house of Harihar, his wife Sarbajaya, their daughter Durga and son Apu in the film.  It is here that Durga died after catching cold,  here Sarbajaya shed many a tears as she waited for her husbnand to return and here  Apu took his first lessons. The house which was a diliapated homestead was briliantly adapted for Pather Panchali. The original structure had one room which served as Durga’s pishi’s(aunt) room in the film. The other parts of the house were part of the set created for the film. Here now stands a pucca house. The house has been extended but the original one room house has been kept.

As we start back from Boral, the haunting song of Durga’s Pishi comes to mind ” Hari sondhey holo paar koro na maare” (God,  the dusk of my life has come , help me cross over to the other bank).