Upon the success of Pather Panchali, Ray was inspired to continue Bandopadhyay’s saga with an adaptation that comprises the end of the first book and beginning of the next novel, Aparajito. In this detailed coming-of-age drama, Apu and his family transition from the natural world of their village to the bustling, inbetween realm of Benares. Monkeys freely roam and worshippers from all over India collect along the banks of the Ganges where his father now works as a priest. Apu’s wild, curious spirit has not abated as he discovers all kinds of lives and activities along the busy, labyrinthine streets. Yet, more tragedy strikes, intensifying the relationship between Apu and his mother Sarbajaya, who must work as a maid for a weathy, rural family. As he grows into adolescence, Apu’s thirst for knowledge grows too. He excels in school, and eventually the train that so mesmerized him and his sister in Pather Panchali takes the ever-curious Apu far from his mother, becoming a symbol of both promise and despair as it delivers him into the complicated strata of Calcutta. As a mother who wants her son to have everything while grieving the increasing distance this creates, Karuna Bannerjee is heartbreaking as Sarbajaya, whose bitterness of the earlier film has softened into a chronic anguish. In the fervor of his intellectual pursuits, Apu seems only half-conscious of the difficult choices before him, until fate, once again, intervenes.

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