"I can say the country and the world are passing through very bad times. So much killing and bloodshed! Who can like what is going on? the father of the new wave cinema in India said.

Asked what should have been done to make history take a different road, he said, "I do not know what could be done. I am not a politician."

Life, however, has not yet turned full circle for Sen who turned 85. "No I don't see anything special about this day. I keep telling my friends -- I am a year younger than what I would be next year," he said.

Sen, whose autobiography "Always Being Born" reflects his penchant for new responses to contemporary social problems, however, has no plan at present to make any film to comment on contemporary history.

Though his films have earned wide accolades in festivals like Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Moscow, Karlovy Vary, Montreal, Chicago and Cairo, Sen likes to describe his work as "popular failures at the box office.

"With every failure, I collapse a bit. But I still keep making films," said Sen, who admittedly came to film making by accident and likes to describe himself as "an author by compulsion".

Maker of 27 features, 14 short films and four documentaries, the Padma Bhusan and Dadasaheb Phalke Award winner does not agree that a few of his films were too cerebral for the average viewer, saying he wanted all his films to reach the widest possible audience.

"It would not be true for a filmmaker to say he did not care for the audience," he said, adding it was a defence mechanism that such filmmakers built for themselves.

Starting life as a seller of patent medicines, Sen's interest in films was triggered by a book on film aesthetics which he came across at the then Imperial Library, now National Library.

His love for films egged him on to take up a technician's job at a studio in Kolkata and he went on to make his debut with Raatbhor (1958), followed by Neel Akasher Nichey and Baishey Sravan that gave him an international exposure.

Five films later, Sen made Bhuvan Shome with a shoe-string budget from the Centre and the film arguably launched what is known today as the new wave cinema.

A Marxist, Sen was profoundly influenced in the seventies by the Naxalite movement which changed the course of politics in Bengal. During this period, Sen shifted the focus of his films from criticising external enemies to his own middle class society.

Never tired of experimentation, his films have explored the development of ideologies like Marxism, Existentialism, Surrealism, German Expressionism, French Nouvelle Vague and Italian Neo-realism.

Often compared with Woody Allen, Sen's works offer no happy ending or a definite conclusion. Like Allen, he invites and involves his audience with the development of the plot and keeps it open for multiple conclusions.