“But we had so much other stuff, background stories, visuals, letters, we thought we should do a book.

“The screenplay has been published before, twice in fact,” says its editor, Ray’s son Sandip. The “whole thing” is now a book – Travails With The Alien. “But the funny thing was that the desire to experience the whole thing was also irresistible.”

“I knew all along that I was being taken for a ride,” Ray said in an interview years later. Instead it turned out to be a great misadventure. It was to be a grand new adventure for a master filmmaker, a huge leap for Indian cinema. Stars like Peter Sellers, Steve McQueen and Marlon Brando were interested, alongside local talents like Aparna Sen and Subhendu Chatterjee. The Alien was supposed to be Ray’s sci-fi foray into Hollywood. This was the opening of the most famous film Satyajit Ray never made. In a blaze of light something descends on the pond, shattering its placidity.” The chorus of frogs, crickets and jackals grows in volume, and is joined by a humming sound. The camera holds on a part of the surface of the pond with lotus leaves and limp lotus stalks, lit by soft moonlight.Ī point of light appears as a reflection in the water, grows bigger and bigger until the pond itself is lit up. “A lotus pond in the village of Mangalpur in West Bengal.

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