116 JUNE - JULY 2019
LEFT TO RIGHT: SATYAJIT RAY;
DRAFTS OF HIS FINAL LOGO FOR THE
DOUBLE BILL KAPURUSH O MAHAPURUSH (THE
COWARD AND THE HOLY MAN, 1965);
THE COVER DESIGN FOR PANCHISH
BACHARER PREMER KABITA (LOVE POEMS
OF 25 YEARS, 1956) BY ABU SAYEED AYYUB
DISPLAYS A TREASURED RAY TRAIT: RESTRAINT.
Even those remotely interested in films
might have heard of E. T. the Extra-
Terrestrial (1982) or Close Encounters
of the Third Kind (1977), both from the
Steven Spielberg stable, both uncannily
similar to Satyajit Ray’s Alien — an
unrealised script that was picked up by
Columbia Pictures and slated to star
Marlon Brando and Peter Sellers. It was
loosely based on a Bengali sci-fi story
he had written for Sandesh, a legendary
children’s magazine originally published
by M/s U. Ray and Sons, a firm started
by his grandfather and celebrated
writer Upendrakishore Ray, who also
functioned as its editor. And when
Bollywood ventured into alien territory
with Koi... Mil Gaya (2003), Ray fans once
again noticed similarities in the storyline.
His choices in his youth demonstrate
his wide range of interests. Ray studied
economics and then painting at Tagore’s
Visva Bharati University in Santiniketan,
under the tutelage of Nandalal Bose
and Benode Behari Mukherjee (yearslater, he would direct a documentary,
The Inner Eye, about Mukherjee). In
1943, he joined DJ Keymer, a British-run
advertising agency (present-day Ogilvy
& Mather), where he developed his own
style as a junior visualiser while working
on campaigns for an assortment of
products — biscuits, musical instruments,
cigarettes. Ray also designed over 200
book covers including Bibhutibhushan
Bandyopadhyay’s Chander Pahar, Jim
Corbett’s Maneaters of Kumaon and
Jawaharlal Nehru’s Discovery of India
for Signet Press, a new publishing
house started by a senior colleague at
Keymer. Argued to be India’s first graphic
designer, Ray together with Signet was
instrumental in changing the look and feel
of Bengali books. It was while designing
the cover for and illustrating a children’s
version of Pather Panchali, a renowned
Bengali novel by Bandyopadhyay, that
its cinematic potential struck Ray. In
1950, he was sent by the ad agency to
work at the London headquarters, an