Film-maker Mrinal Sen is turning 80 tomorrow. Congratulate the maestro and you get a Mrinalesque answer: ‘‘When you hear of 80 you get afraid (of death). But I don’t see death around and I would like to go on for many many years.’’ After all, the man has always preached optimism in his films.In his film Ek Din Achanak, the main character echoes Sen’s thoughts when he says: ‘‘The biggest tragedy of life is that you live only once. If I write my epitaph it will read Here lies a man who wanted to live long and die young.’’Sen is presently busy working on his autobiography called Happenings: Discreet Entries of a Non-descript. The 250-page book to be published by MacMillan will be complete by September this year.‘‘It’s autobiographical but it’s not my autobiography,’’ says Sen who was born in Faridpur, now in Bangladesh. ‘‘The happenings do not conform to chronology,’’ he explains.As far as his films are concerned, Sen says after completing every film he always wished he could afford a ‘dress rehearsal’ before making the actual film. ‘‘There is always an area of mediocrity in every man’s life. I thought I could make a better film when I watch any of my films.’’ An unsparing critic of his own work, Sen finds his first film Raat Bhor terrible. The next film Neel Akasher Neechey was ‘‘better and Jawaharlal Nehru really liked it’’. But he was satisfied with the third one — Baishe Shravan — which he found really good.
