Long before she became one of Indian cinema’s most respected filmmakers, Aparna Sen was a schoolgirl in Kolkata’s Ballygunge, quietly observing the elderly residents of a nearby old-age home during her daily walks to Modern High School for Girls. Those observations, combined with her closeness to the Anglo-Indian teachers at her school, would eventually shape the character at the heart of her directorial debut, ’36 Chowringhee Lane’, a film that marked 45 years since its release this August 29.
Aparna Sen reveals her real-life inspiration behind Ms Stoneham
Among the teachers Aparna grew close to was a woman she calls Ms Stoneham, who lived entirely alone at Karnani Mansions on Lower Circular Road, with relatives settled abroad and no family nearby. When she once fell and broke her elbow, only a handful of kind neighbours came to her aid, a memory that stayed with Aparna for years and eventually became the emotional foundation for her film’s protagonist. Reflecting on this connection, Aparna told SCREEN, “I had always been able to relate to, and feel deeply for old people who lived alone waiting for death.“Now 80 herself, Sen says loneliness isn’t something she personally experiences anymore, describing herself instead as “snowed under” by the demands of her ongoing career. She also acknowledged that inspiration for the character may have come from less obvious places too. “It could even be a character from a novel read long ago that inspires you. Or a painting. Or a piece of music. I used to constantly listen to the Beatles song ‘Eleanor Rigby’ as I wrote — ‘Ah, look at all the lonely people, where do they all come from…,'” she recalled.
Aparna Sen on writing her way out of creative frustration
Aparna began working as an actor straight out of high school, and the seeds of the story had likely been forming for years before she finally put pen to paper in her mid-30s, while juggling acting roles across Bengali and Hindi cinema. “I started very early, just after high school! I had become very frustrated working as an actor for years in the kind of films that I could not relate to, having been brought up on a diet of world cinema as a film society kid,” she admitted. It was during a Hindi film shoot in Mumbai that she first turned to writing as an outlet, and what began as a short story gradually evolved into a full screenplay — one she initially intended to direct herself.
Why Aparna Sen almost shelved the script
Making a fully English-language film in India was virtually unheard of at the time, and friends and family who read her script advised her against pursuing it. “The general consensus was that no one would fund an English film, and now that I had finished the script, it would be advisable to treat it as an intellectual exercise, put it away in a drawer, and forget all about it. I agreed ruefully, with the caveat that I would first show it to Satyajit Ray. I just wanted his opinion,” Aparna shared. Ray was far from a stranger to her — a close friend of her father, film critic and filmmaker Chidananda Dasgupta, he had introduced her to acting at just 14 in the 1961 anthology Teen Kanya, and their collaboration continued through Aranyer Din Ratri (1970) and Jana Aranya (1976).
How Satyajit Ray changed Aparna Sen’s mind
Ray dismissed the concerns Aparna had absorbed from others about the feasibility of an English-language Indian film. “On the contrary, said Ray, I think the time has come for India to make English films. After all, English is the state language of one of the states in our union,” she recalled, referencing Nagaland, which had adopted English as its sole official language in 1967. Sensing her hesitation, Ray went a step further, gently steering her toward a potential producer. “Looking at my uncertain face, he suggested gently that I should approach Shashi Kapoor, who had set out to produce a different kind of cinema. He had a gut feeling that he will come on board,” Aparna added.
Shashi Kapoor, who had only recently turned producer, had already backed an
Aparna Sen’s directorial debut ’36 Chowringhee Lane’ turns 45. She drew Ms Stoneham’s character from a lonely Anglo-Indian teacher she knew in school. Frustrated as an actor, Sen wrote the English script in her mid-30s. Discouraged by others, she consulted Satyajit Ray, who encouraged her and suggested Shashi Kapoor as producer.d starred in Shyam Benegal’s ‘Junoon’ (1979), a bold move for one of mainstream Hindi cinema’s most sought-after leading men at the time, and one that ultimately paved the way for Aparna Sen’s landmark directorial debut.
