Victor Banerjee’s Padma Bhushan honours a lifetime of achievement

Victor Banerjee had burst on the silver screen in 1977 as the hookah-smoking Madr-ud-Daula, 'prime minister' of Awadh, in Satyajit Ray's 'Shatranj Ke Khiladi', and he maintains that it was the biggest break of his career that has seen him appearing in English, Hindi, Bengali and Assamese language films, working with marquee directors such as David Lean, James Ivory, Roman Polanski and Ronald Neame, and closer home, with Mrinal Sen, Shyam Benegal and Ram Gopal Verma.