On her way to and back from Modern High School for Girls in Ballygunge, Kolkata, Aparna Sen would often spot — and “feel deeply for” — the elderly in the balconies of an old-age home run by Little Sisters Of The Poor. Even at such a young age, she would “relate to” elderly Anglo-Indian teachers at her school, whose relatives had migrated out of the country. One of them particularly, Ms Stoneham, had a particularly tragic story. She lived all by herself at Karnani Mansions, an age-old building on Lower Circular Road. So much so that when she fell down and broke her elbow, she had no one to look after her except “some kind neighbours.” That image stayed with Aparna, who years later, would borrow that teacher’s name for the protagonist of her directorial debut, 36 Chowringhee Lane, which released on this day 35 years ago.How Aparna Sen conceived 36 Chowringhee Lane“I had always been able to relate to, and feel deeply for old people who lived alone waiting for death,” Aparna Sen tells SCREEN in an exclusive interview. Now 80 years old, way past Ms Stoneham’s age, she admits she doesn’t feel as lonely. In fact, she feels more “snowed under”, given her active, demanding life as an actor and filmmaker. Though she can put a finger on where she borrowed parts of Ms Stoneham’s identity from, she admits the influences could be more subconscious and subliminal. “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…,'” recounts Aparna.The story must have been simmering within her for decades, but Aparna got to it only in her early 40s, when she was busy shuttling between Bengali and Hindi cinema in the capacity of an actor — before she encountered saturation. “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,” confessed the veteran actor. Finally, on the set of a Hindi film in Mumbai, she decided to turn to writing as a creative release. Her short story became a screenplay, which she intended to direct, before friends and some family members read it and discouraged her from making a film for India entirely in English, which was a rarity back then. A still from 36 Chowringhee Lane.“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,” says Aparna Sen. Satyajit Ray, an old friend of her father, veteran film critic and filmmaker Chidananda Dasgupta, introduced her as an actor when she was all of 16, in the 1961 anthology Teen Kanya. She went on to collaborate with Ray again, in the 1970 seminal film Aranyer Din Ratri, followed by Jana Aranya in 1976. It was only a natural course of action for her to go through Ray before putting her baby to rest. Little did she know that the legendary filmmaker would nudge her into a new, parallel career as a filmmaker.Satyajit also countered Aparna’s second-hand concerns about the uphill task of making an English film in India. “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,” recalls Aparna, referring to Nagaland, which proclaimed English as its sole official language back in 1967. “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,” adds Aparna. Shashi had just turned producer, having backed Shyam Benegal’s 1979 film Junoon, which also starred him despite him being one of the most sought-after actors in mainstream Hindi cinema.Aparna Sen on working with Shashi Kapoor, Jennifer KendalSo, Aparna did reach out to Shashi, whom she had shared screen space with in James Ivory’s 1970 film Bombay Talkie. After she sent across the synopsis, Shashi got back and said both he and his wife, actor Jennifer Kendal, liked it, but weren’t sure if Aparna can direct. “How do I convince you over the telephone?,” she countered. “Fair enough. Come to Mumbai, and read me the script. If I like it and decide to produce the film, I’ll pay your fare back to Kolkata,” came the reply. So, Aparna did make her way to the top floor of Atlas Apartments at Malabar Hill, Mumbai, in a space that she revealed was called the “chamcha room”, “obviously a place where Shashi met his fans when they came to see him.”Immediately after she narrated 36 Chowringhee Lane to Shashi, Jennifer, and Govind Nihalani (whom she initially wanted as the Director of Photography; eventually that mantle was taken over by Ashok Mehta), Shashi and Govind began discussing the probable budget of the film. “I sat wondering, ‘So, it’s really happening?’ I don’t think anyone ever said a formal ‘yes’ to me. I was just handed a contract, that was all. On my way back to Kolkata at Shashi’s cost, I sat hugging the contract to my chest, and kept looking at it incredulously every so often. ‘I’m really making a film!,’ I kept whispering to myself, ‘And I’m even being paid for it!’ It was easy as that,” recounts Aparna. Along with her producer, she also got her protagonist in Jennifer, who played Ms Stoneham with an ache and tenacity that probably no one else could have.Story continues below this ad Late actor Shashi Kapoor and his wife Jennifer Kendal. (Photo: Express Archives)While 36 Chowringhee Lane won the National Award for the Best Feature Film in English, and fetched Aparna Sen her maiden National Award for Best Director and Ashok Mehta an honour for Best Cinematography, the Best Actress honour surprisingly didn’t go to Jennifer Kendal for what turned out to be her last film before she died of cancer in 1984. “It is terribly sad that Jennifer was taken away so early by cancer. She was the driving force behind Shashi,” says Aparna, hailing Shashi Kapoor as “the best producer I’ve worked with” so far. The National Award snub also shook them deeply, “as a family, as a film unit, as admirers of Jennifer’s craft.” But Jennifer continued to be beacon of optimism that she always was. “I believe the chairperson of the jury had said, “Why should Jennifer Kendal be given the Best Actress prize? She didn’t act, she just behaved!” Jennifer herself told me this story, laughing as she did so, adding that this was a compliment that meant more than the prize itself.Even Rekha, who won the Best Actress National Award that year for her titular performance in Muzaffar Ali’s 1981 period musical Umrao Jaan, acknowledged Jennifer as the better actor. “Rekha was very gracious. She said in Hindi, ‘Yeh award mujhe nahin, balki Jennifer ko milna chahiye tha. Magar jab mil hi gaya, main toh wapas nahin dene wali hoon!,’” recalls Aparna. Even the filmmaker’s daughter Konkona Sen Sharma, who was an infant back then, felt very hurt upon learning the story after watching the film much later. So much so that when she won her maiden National Award for her mother’s Mr. & Mrs. Iyer a couple of decades later, she dedicated her win to Jennifer. The late actor’s tour-de-force performance is demonstrated in the climactic sequence of 36 Chowringhee Lane, when Stoneham, having learnt of betrayal from whom she considered friends, recites William Shakespeare to stray a dog on a lonely Kolkata street.“Personally, I see it as a positive ending where Stoneham’s resilience and her decision to stay on in her motherland triumph. I agree that it is heartbreaking, though. Betrayal from people you have given unstinting love, always is. But it is also brave — brave because of the irony Stoneham sees in it, and decides to carry on living by herself on her own terms despite the betrayal,” points out Aparna.“As she recites a passage from King Lear — ‘Pray do not mock me. I am a very foolish, fond old man…,’ she sees herself as foolish in allowing the young couple to use her. Also, when she sees the dog following her, she knows that it is attracted by the smell of food, a selfish reason, but she has come to realise that that is the way of the world. She accepts it for what it is, and starts reciting to the dog in an affectionately mocking way,” adds Aparna.Story continues below this adAlso Read — Tukaram Mundhe ‘not targeting’ SRK, Ajay Devgn with FDA notice: ‘It’s their responsibility’She underlines a “rather wonderful” touch Jennifer gave to those lines, which only reiterate her genius. “At the line ‘…and so, we’ll live!,’ she suddenly raised her voice in a lovely lilt on the word ‘live’, sort of underlining it, and introducing an element of hope in life itself. It is also the first time that Stoneham, through her own life experience, begins to understand Shakespeare, whom she had taught so badly as a teacher,” says Aparna.Thirty-five years later, 36 Chowringhee Lane somewhere makes Aparna Sen reminisce about the school-going girl, on the verge of becoming an actor, finding herself drawn towards people on the far end of the age spectrum. It also makes her think fondly of the conscientious actor who brought that little girl’s schoolteacher to life, only a few years before breathing her last.