Sharmila was literally picked out of the blue to work with Satyajit Ray. She had to leave school, as the teachers were worried about the “corrupting” influence of cinema, but thank God for her enlightened father, he preferred Ray over the school. In a role that spanned barely 20 minutes or so, Sharmila left an indelible impact as the child bride Aparna. Whether in the shot of Aparna entering her ramshackle marital tenement for the first time, going over to the window and getting overwhelmed, then espying, through a tear in the curtain, the happy interaction between a mother and child, and finding some indefinable solace. Or in the memorable scenes between the newlyweds: Aparna crying copiously, to Apu’s great embarrassment, at the mythological film they are watching, her affectionate efforts to discourage his smoking, his earnest attempt to teach her English and the letters that she writes to him when she goes away to her mother’s home. As Sharmila says, “Even today, sixty years later, the romance of Apur Sansar has not faded. An entirely new generation thrills to it in exactly the same way as they did at the time.”
