Editor’s Take – Inside Manik and I: Bijoya Ray’s Intimate Portrait of Satyajit Ray
50 years living with a genius may not have been easy but it must have definitely been memorable. The late Bijoya Ray’s biography, Manik and I, gives you a fairly candid ringside view of what life must have been being married to a genius like Satyajit Ray. Being his first cousin, their courtship in the ’40s was conducted in utmost secrecy over 8 years – a hush hush marriage in Bombay where she was a fledgling actress. And through it all, family disapproval. Bijoya or Monku, as she was fondly called, passed away in 2015. Her memoir was serialised in a Bengali magazine and this book is that translation. Told simply but lucidly, it’s like a drawing room conversation with your favourite “pishi” over luchi and maangsho about the couple’s various European travels, her various health problems, her shopping sojourns, the numerous awards her husband won including the lifetime achievement Oscar. For me, the most interesting parts were her childhood days spent in Bihar, the sudden loss of her father and the courtship with Ray. …
