Satyajit Ray

Abstract

Abstract Beginning with Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury and Sukumar Ray, Satyajit Ray’s grandfather and father, and their stories and poems about fantastic and nonsense plant kingdoms, how that impacted children’s literature in Bengal, this chapter moves to the filmmaker’s memoir, particularly his childhood, his acquaintance with the trees of Darbhanga, the note that Rabindranath is said to have written in the little boy’s notebook. It must have been all of these that produced the fantastic nerve in Satyajit Ray’s stories about plant life—man-eating trees, murderous flowers, plants that can cure depression, the green man, and, of course, the Professor Shanku stories.