Sri Ghanashyam Mohapatra - the forgotten Odia movie maker

 We Odias are famous for being poor appreciators of those from our state who excell in the fields of art, literature, entrepreneurship and innovation. At the same time we are the champions of eulogizing Civil Servants. It is a classic trait of a feudal state and "GAAN KANIA SINGHANI NAKI" - Country girl, running nose syndrome. Making sure the message is not lost in transliteration from Odia to English, it simply means we ignore those of our own by making a pooh-pooh of their achievements.

So given an opportunity I contribute my 2 cents by highlighting those men and women from the current and previous generations from Odisha by making sure it gets to the larger audience through the social media platform of Facebook. I have already shared several blogs about such eminent personalities from my home state, from the Astronomer Pathani Samant and Utkalamani (Jewel of Odisha) Gopabandhu Das to Author Manoj Das and Filmmaker Nirad Mohapatra, and many more.

Until Chetana Samal my friend from college days and wife of Rasmi Ranjan Routray, friend from my Engineering days mentioned it to me the other day, I was barely aware of this gentleman named Ghanashyam Das from Odisha. In 2011, Odisha Society of America's Dallas Convention, she got a chance to watch the Odia movie 'Kanaklata' for the first time! She couldn't believe herself how beautifully the movie maker Sri Das had picturized the novelist Palli Kabi (Country Poet) Nanda Kishore Bal's 1925 book by the same name and that too, after 50 years.

This was one of the movies that was screened as part of inauguration of Calcutta Doordarshan. Sri Mohapatra was late in submitting this movie in 1975 for the International Film Festival as information was hard to get on time those days. Satyajit Ray immensely liked this movie made by an young man and actually Mrinal Sen had persuaded Sri Mohapatra to send the movie to the festival, like outside the competition category. This movie got rave reviews. It is the only odia movie which had a special screening for all Members of Parliament and later it was specially screened for then President of India, Nilam Sanjeev Reddy. Sri Mohapatra fondly remembers the word by word, introduction to this movie in Hindi, for the President.

Chetana and Rasmi spent a wonderful afternoon with the filmmaker and his family. He had laid out all his works showing her and talking about his career. In his twilight years too, he is full of energy and was happy to show us his works. It is very sad that such a man of talent could never be awarded even the smallest of Padma Awards. It's another matter that these Padma Awards had been so much politicized beyond redemption that there shouldn't be any remorse for not getting them.

That was the only movie Mr Das made with a loan from RBI. Later on he focused mostly on documentaries and he won a multitude of awards. He is known as Father of Documentaries in Orissa. The Old timers who are reading this posts should remember him. Thanks Chetana for giving me the opportunity to pen a few words about him. May God give him a long rewarding life.