Late filmmaker Mrinal Sen’s son, Kunal, and daughter-in-law, Nisha, have decided to dispose off his Calcutta house where he lived for the last 15 years. Although Sen did not leave behind too many costly belongings, the son and daughter-in-law, who don’t have children, have given away a lot of his personal belongings to whoever wanted them. The only thing Kunal and Nisha Sen insist on is that the person who takes any of the possessions of the filmmaker should take good care of the items. In this way, the late filmmaker’s shawls, kurtas, hospital bed, chair, pen, telephone instrument, books, film stills etc. have been taken away by relatives, archivists and commoners.
Kunal and Nisha Sen have also decided to sell off the filmmaker’s house in Calcutta where he lived for the last 15 years. The couple had taken the filmmaker’s Padma Bhushan, the Silver Bear he won from Berlin, the French award (Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres) and an award bestowed on Mrinal Sen’s wife, Gita Sen, on their last visit to Calcutta. They will take back some more awards. The Sens intend to donate 80% of these awards to the University of Chicago and the Stanford University. A white idol of Shiv-Parvati was given away to one of Mrinal Sen’s favourite actors, Mamata Shankar. Nandita Das had requested for a shawl and so the Sens have kept one aside for her.
According to Kunal, this is how his parents would have liked it. His logic is that by distributing the belongings to common people, relatives, archivists and universities, he has ensured that at least some of the things would be available hundreds of years from now for research by scholars.