In a week-long special, rediff.com takes this opportunity to celebrate the greats.

Today, Tathagata Bandyopadhyay raises a toast to Tapan Sinha, the Bengali director who gave us classics like Safed Haathi, Kabuliwala and Ek Doctor Ki Maut.

When I was about four or five, I was just beginning to discover that it was uncool for boys to weep. One day, my pet parakeet cut its claw on a sharp cage bar. I saw blood dripping from the injured limb, and found myself sniffling uncontrollably. I felt I had to hide from my mother the fact I was a cry baby. I told her I had a cold. I suspect she knew what the matter was (she must have -- children don't suddenly develop a cold that's better in an hour or so). But she said nothing.

That's always been the way with me. I'm not the soulful type but I can't stand the suffering of dumb, innocent animals. When someone throws a rock at a starving mongrel that is sitting in the gutters, I'm ready to commit violence. I also feel ready to weep, but manage to hold it back because guys aren't supposed to snivel in public. It may sound corny to some but I can't help it. I'm like that.

I first came to know this when my mother took me to watch Safed Haathi at a local cinema house. I find on an Internet database that this film was released in 1978, so this must have been about the same time as the parakeet incident, perhaps a little earlier.

I wasn't usually allowed to watch movies at that time (this was before we had television) because they were deemed a corrupting influence. Only two kinds of movies were allowed -- those made specifically for children, and those which my parents considered to be of an edifying nature or helpful for building character.

In this last category, I watched various inferior religious-themed melodramas involving minor gods and goddesses which I highly enjoyed at the time, biopics of great men and women which I generally tried to avoid, and patriotic films, which were okay because they had a lot of gunfights.

Not too many films could be found in the first category, and its definition was confusing too. Mother once took me to watch Masoom, thinking it was for children. She was hugely scandalised that I was watching intimate scenes between Shabana Azmi and Naseeruddin Shah, while I was thoroughly bored and kept asking her when the real action would begin. But that's another story.

Tathagata Bandyopadhyay is the grandson of Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, who authored the novel Pather Panchali, on which Satyajit Ray made his classic.

In the picture: Tapan Sinha, seated in the centre

Also Read: Classics Revisited: Kabuliwala

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