Rajshree Ojha on her favourite scene in a film

Rajshree Ojha, the director of Aisha, talks of her favourite scene in a film...

My favourite scene is from the film Aranyer Din Ratri (1970) directed by Satyajit Ray. The film is about four men and two women who go to a tribal forest in Bihar for a holiday. Asim (Soumitra Chatterjee) is the leader of the group, Sanjoy (Shubhendu Chatterjee) works as an executive but actually wants to study literature, and Hari (Samit Bhanja), is a straightforward cricketer who has been dumped by his girlfriend. Shekhar (Robi Ghosh) is the jester of the party.

Aparna (Sharmila Tagore) is a strong-headed woman. She's not flaky, speaks her mind and is a thinking person. She is accompanied by her widowed sister-in-law Jaya (Kaberi Bose). 
In one scene, the six characters are playing a game called Memory. A player starts the game by taking a name of a famous personality, and the other player has to continue by adding another name to the list and so on. 

The scene is telling — every character of the film names a personality with whom they identify best. It is brilliant how that one scene tells you everything there is to know about the six characters and even about Kolkata in the '70s — how the characters weave in their personalities shows the changes Kolkata was going through at that time. 

Aparna, for instance, names strong women like Sarojini Naidu and Indira Gandhi. Shekhar names Lenin and Marx, which illustrates the communist leaning of the youth of Kolkata at that time. Hari, typical to his character, doesn't really care for the game. 

It isn't just the setting that worked for me while I watched the scene, even the camera work that really impressed me. I think many cinematographers would conveniently settle for close-ups, but that doesn't happen here. The camera takes mid shots of the characters as they name their favourite personalities, and then captures two characters at a time. You can see how one reacts to the other ever so often. 

As the scene progresses, you get more intimate glimpses to the characters' thoughts. In the middle of the game, Jaya gets up to fetch a few sandwiches from the kitchen. Sanjoy, who secretly likes her, offers to help her. The sexual chemistry between the two is so palpable. Then, during a conversation, Aparna tells Asim that she doesn't like to party — quite a deviation from what most girls from Kolkata's upper-middle class families would say back then.

Partying was a habit that was popular among the youth at the time, so Aparna comes across as a woman with nuances and who has a mind of her own; not someone who would do something just because it was 'in'. 

Aranyer Din Ratri was one of the first films where Ray tried to tell stories of people from urban areas, and he got it just right. This particular scene captured the restlessness of city life, of the youth in the '70s, their dreams and their aspirations brilliantly. The characters don't have to say too many things to give you an idea who they are, the director takes care of it all.