today is bimal roys 50th death anniversary the filmmaker who bagged two national awards the international prize at cannes and 11 filmfare awards with madhumati taking home five passed away on january 8 1966 at the age of 54 after his untimely demise the family retained his office at mohan studio in andheri till they were told to vacate the premises by a builder thats when his son joy bimal roy visited the bungalow adjoining the studio on the first floor of which was his babas editing room and library where he kept stock shots and live sounds this was in 1999 and it was there that i discovered halfadozen reels tagged kumbh mela baba had started a film amrit kumbh ki khoj mein based on sameresh basus novel amrita kumbher sandhane and ma would fondly speak about some scenes from it including one in which a father is separated from his son thinking it was that film i started watching the negative and discovered it was onehour footage of the kumbh mela in allahabad and the negative was in perfect condition says joy he decided to edit and curate the footage as a documentary tribute to his father but didnt have the funds till yash chopra approached the family for the overseas video rights of bimal roys films when joy told him about the kumbh footage which he could incorporate as a bonus chopra allowed him the use of his editing facilities and his editor joy cut a 11minute documentary which begins early in the day and ends with an aarti on the ganga at night with shots of pilgrims arriving by train bus and on foot all dayspecial tribute to legendary bimal roy since it was silent footage he had to decide on the sound and after toying with the idea of using orchestra and even indian classical music and marathi folk joy was put in touch with a sound engineer arun nambiar who came up with the idea of using music from his fathers own films arun left for bangalore after two days but joy took his idea forward using music from devdas for the train shots and madhumati for the mela sequences theres a scene of a pandit speaking which i matched with a scene of another pandit speaking in parakh i have used one song kabuliwalas ganga aaye kahan se since kumbh is all about the ganga says joy not many in india however saw the documentary as it was only attached to the overseas dvds joy did premiere it in january 2000 during an exhibition of his fathers photographs at mumbais nehru centre but the film arrived from adlabs only on the morning of the screening and when he played it he discovered to his shock and horror that the sound was not in sync theres a technical issue when you transfer sound from film to video so the ganga song at the beginning started after the boat had passed and played on in