The memoirs of film directors are often confined to early memories. Ingmar Bergman writes of his childhood, Akira Kurosawa gets up to the creation of "Rashomon" and then stops, Jean Renoir writes most warmly of his early days, and Satyajit Ray has a whole volume dedicated to his boyhood.
"Childhood Days" was originally published serially in 1980 and in book form two years later. In it, India's most famous film director remembers his childhood in Calcutta. "I have described some ordinary events and ordinary people," he says, "as well as extraordinary ones. Children do not make a distinction between the ordinary and the extraordinary, anyway. Adults do."
With simplicity and sincerity, Ray (1921-1992) remembers what it was like to be an Indian child during the last days of the Raj. He records early impressions and a precocious interest in the visual -- he was drawing from an early age and, like Bergman, was enthralled by the magic lantern. (Kurosawa, to the contrary, had real movies in mind from the first -- his brother was "benshi"(commentator) and he got into theaters free.) From there Ray graduated to filmmaking itself. But that is another story, since his memoirs end with his entering high school.