Satyajit Ray , revered as one of the maestros of world cinema, is a cultural icon in India and across the Globe. Ray’s films are highly respected and recognized in renowned film festivals worldwide. His films have an existence of art, western in origin, but transplanted and taking roots in a new soil. The tools of filmmaking are the same, but the methods and attitudes are distinct and indigenous in his work.

Satyajit Ray was born on 2^nd May 1921, in an affluent and intellectual family in Calcutta. Affectionately, known as ‘Manik Da’, Satyajit enjoyed watching films and listening to western classical music on his gramophone.

Ray’s creative sensibility was a combination of nature and nurture. His grandfather, Upendrakishore Ray, was a famous Bengali writer, illustrator, philosopher and prominent figure of the Brahmo Samaj. His father, Sukumar Ray, was a pioneering Bengali writer of nonsense rhyme and children’s literature as well as an illustrator and a critic. His own inspirations ranged from Rabindranath Tagore to his teachers Nandalal Bose and Benode Behari Mukherjee in Santiniketan, from the films of Renoir and De Sica (Bicycle Thieves), Chaplin and Ford (Fort Apache) to the photography of Cartier Bresson and the music of Beethoven. So, when his biographer, Andrew Robinson, asked him if he considered himself “50 per cent Western”, Ray had replied: “Yes, I think so—which makes me more accessible to a Western audience than someone who’s not to the same extent influenced by Western models.” And yet, Ray remained loyal to his roots and the dishevelled study in his south Calcutta (now Kolkata) home was forever his creative headquarters, from where he explored and depicted universal human values through his films. He was a truly “glocal” citizen—steadfastly local in his medium of work but effortlessly global in its appeal.

It was significant that the memory game focused only on people. As Ray was to say: “I am not conscious of being a humanist. It’s simply that I am interested in human beings.”And the manner in which he depicted human beings, their frailties and their struggles, their individual rebellions and simple triumphs, drew admirers far and wide. So fundamental to life and humanity were Ray’s creations that the Japanese director Akira Kurosawa once wrote: “Not to have seen the cinema of Ray means existing in the world without seeing the sun or the moon”. Even before he had embarked on his first film, Pather Panchali (1955), Ray had written a piece titled “What Is Wrong with Indian Films? in The Statesman newspaper in Calcutta (now Kolkata) in 1948, “The raw material of the cinema is life itself. It is incredible that a country which has inspired so much painting and music and poetry should fail to move the filmmaker. He has only to keep his eyes open, and his ears. Let him do so.”

Satyajit Ray died on 23^rd April 1992 after struggling with heart complications for years. Less than a month before his passing, Ray received an Honorary Oscar. The Academy Award read: “To Satyajit Ray, in recognition of his rare mastery of the art of motion pictures, and of his profound humanitarian outlook, which has had an indelible influence on filmmakers and audiences throughout the world.”

Among the numerous awards that Satyajit Ray received, both for his personal accomplishments and for his films, are the Padmashree, the Padma Bhushan, the Padma Vibhushan, the Bharat Ratna, the Magsaysay Award, the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, the Legion d'Honneur, and the honorary Oscar for lifelong achievements.