Satyajit Ray’s Dance of the Ghost King

I’ve been wanting to write about a particular scene from a film that remains ingrained in my mind— not only because of its cinematic achievements of that time but because there was something so original in the scene, and so simply done (which i didn’t know at the time I saw it as a child), and so mesmerizing, it’s hard to forget , as a child and as a cinema lover.

It’s a scene from a lesser known but one of my favourite Satyajit Ray films, Goopy Gyne, Bagha Byne, a story about two tragic village idiots, one who cannot sing yet insists on it and the other who can’t play a music instrument yet keeps everyone awake doing so, who are banished from their village.

Satyajit Ray had come close to abandoning a film project because nobody was willing to put their money in it. And this film was made long after Pather Panchali, his first film. This was 1967/68. Ray at the time had no fewer than 13 full-length feature films to his name. He had also figured repeatedly on the top honours lists at som…