The year1955 is precious in the annals of Indian cinema. That year had seen the release of the Bengali classic, Pather Panchali in August and the Hindi evergreen, Devdas, in December. The opening month of that very year, a certain Mandakini Nursing Home in Bandra, the western suburb of Bombay had seen Manobina, wife of director Bimal Roy, give birth to a son, and Kanaklata, wife of writer Nabendu Ghosh, give birth to a daughter.
“Mita (Friend) Bina was expecting after three daughters and Kanak Boan (sister) was also in labour for the fourth time, after two sons (her first born had gone within months). And we were all praying that Mita should have a son, and Kanak should have a daughter – not the other way around!” This family lore comes from Mary Jethima, wife of music director Arun Mukherjee, first cousin of thespian Ashok Kumar.
So, every time the month of January came around, I would wonder, what if the Roys had a fourth daughter and the Ghosh family a third son? I have wondered but never needed an answer. Because? I have been ever grateful to the powers that be to have Joy as my virtual ‘twin’ born six days apart.
This bonding was forged years before our birth – when Nabendu Ghosh had watched Bimal Roy’s directorial debut, Udayer Pathey[1], in a theatre in Rajsahi, now in Bangladesh; and Bimal Roy had read Nabendu’s allegorical novel, Ajab Nagarer Kahini[2], wanting to film it before Pehla Aadmi[3]became a reality. “Never have I seen a film like this!” Nabendu had echoed what hundreds, thousands, were saying when Udayer Pathey released in 1944. And he had prayed, “If ever I get to work with this director, my dream will be fulfilled!”
Bimal Roy, on his part, had said to him, “Your writings have a graphic visual quality that is so important for cinema.” And when he took up Ashok Kumar’s offer to make Maa for Bombay Talkies, and moved to Bombay in 1951, he invited Nabendu to join him as his screen writer.
That momentous journey has moulded our lives.
*
My earliest memory of the Roys at Godiwala Bungalow on 5 Mount Mary Road is of a toy horse-drawn carriage that had come from some distant land, and a life-size doll – both properties of Joy. I would take turns to ‘drive’ the carriage through the giant hall. And the doll? It opened its eyes and shut them too and even said ‘Maw!’
Outside the bungalow was the garden, a beautiful landscape hemmed in by boulders that created nooks and corners where we children could play hide and seek. But wait, there was a swing and a seesaw too, and I had all the time in the world! There was a spoilsport well at the far end of the garden that I stayed as far away from as I could. “There are ghosts in the well!” – I remember Joy telling me in a hushed tone that was perhaps meant to fool me. But when Joy said something, could I ever doubt it?
The aforementioned giant hall indoors was dominated by an imposing photo of Jethu foregrounded by 11 identical statuettes. These dancing ladies, I later learned, were the coveted Filmfare awards he had won in his illustrious career studded with unforgettables like Do Bigha Zamin[4], Devdas, Madhumati, Sujata, Bandini. As long as he lived and for years after that, Bimal Roy was the sole ‘owner’ of that many ‘Black Ladies’. But, to a girl yet to grow up, more attractive were the Japanese beauties in colourful kimonos adorning another end of the hall. However, what struck even greater awe was a ‘mosaic’ image of Madonna that Joy had crafted while in school — at age 12? It still adorns a part of his world at 6 Mount Mary Road.
Joy had a natural gift for drawing cats: One large O, another horizontal O, a curve that was an inverted C, two bright eyes and perked up ears… How effortlessly he breathed life into the lines! Joy and Bubundi’s house is now overrun by cats but back then only two brown dogs ruled, Toto and Burikin.
*
Joy was the reason I trailed into a shooting floor for the first time in life. We were maybe seven when Benazir[5] was under production at the now-extinct Mohan Studios. As the producer, Bimal Roy need not have stood next to the camera when Meena Kumari, half lying on a mehfil-style chaise lounge, would sit up, sing a single line of a tarana, discant, and the director would say ‘Cut!’ Since the fans would all stop whirring as soon as a voice called ‘Action!’, every ‘Cut!’ was followed by the make-up person trotting up to the diva and retouching her beautiful face. How many ‘Cut!’ did we survive before Joy and I skittered off the floor? No idea. But to this day I remember the deep affection in the eyes of Jethu[6] who became an icon when Joy and I were yet to outgrow the tenth year of our lives.
We were not yet teenagers when Teesri Manzil[7] released in Bandra’s New Talkies which normally screened Hollywood films. Ma and I arrived when Joy, Bubundi and friends were heading for an evening show. I got included naturally. The super hit entertainer had smashing songs in a tautly constructed suspense tale – yet I was not floored. When I said this to Jethima[8], she said, “You are speaking like a critic Uttama!” Unknown to me, that comment had perhaps set me on the course of dissecting a film like an initiated viewer.
After our school finals, Joy took to studying Commerce at Sydenham College, while I marched on with the Arts. So, I joined the Elphinstone College where all the Roy sisters – Rinkidi, Tatudi and Bubundi – had studied English Literature. Bubundi – Aparajita is her bhalo[9] name — was in the final year of BA when I joined the institution. And after she graduated, I inherited all her books and notes. With her benign presence she has been the Didi I never had in the Ghosh house, I realised in the process of preparing the short Aparajita, for her 70th birthday.
The Ghosh’s and the Roys at a family wedding. Photo provided by Ratnottama Sengupta
And when she got married, just like Joy I missed classes for days and weeks. More so because my elder brother, Dipankar, married Lesley Christine around the same time. Consequently, both Joy and I were least prepared for our MA exams. Together we shared our doubts with Mouni Baba, our spiritual guide who had come from Ujjain. “Do not entertain any doubt or fear,” Baba had drilled into us. “If you utter the word ‘No’ you say that to your inner self, and you will not succeed.” This priceless lesson has been my ‘Kindly Light’, leading me on at every turn of life.
*
* Jethima passed away when the 33rd International Film Festival of India was celebrating seven accounts of Devdas in Indian cinema, in 2002. In the chill of Delhi’s winter, Joy and I sat down in the Siri Fort lawns, clung to each other and howled away, oblivious of the curious stares darting in our direction.
* Joy was in Italy when Baba passed away in December 2007. The biggest bouquet at his funeral had come from Joy.
* Along with Aparajita and Yashodhara – that’s Tatudi’s formal name – Joy had completed Remembering Bimal Roy, a centenary tribute to their father. He had commenced its shooting with Nabendu Kaku, the most authentic and reliable resource person, having been with his father from Maa (1952), through Parineeta ( Wedded, 1953), Biraj Bahu (1954), Naukri (Job, 1953) and Yahudi ( The Jewess, 1957), till the very last Bandini (1964). There was another reason, as Joy himself wrote on Baba’s 90th birthday in March 2007. “He has expressed faith in my abilities even in my darkest moments of self-doubt and always encouraged me to come out of shell and move ahead in life.”
* Year 2008. Bimal Roy’s birth centenary was round the corner. Joy and I met my friend Neelam Kapur. As director, she lost no time in scheduling the tribute in the IFFI [10] at Goa. Serendipity! That very year, IFFI also paid a homage to Nabendu Ghosh who’d passed away the previous year.
The screenings, the press conferences, the purchases, the idling on the beach – more than all of these, I recall the time we spent on a boat that had ladies from Commonwealth of Independent States dancing away to glory. While most of the guests toasted with whiskey or wine, Joy and I sipped on our mineral water. Because? It happened to be a Sunday, the one day in a week we were enjoined by Mouni Baba to forego every food except one salt free vegetarian meal before sunset!
*After Remembering Bimal Roy had been feted internationally and enhanced Joy’s fan following at home, he said to me, “Here’s the entire conversation with Nabendu Kaku. I’ve used only a few minutes of it. I’ll be glad if you can use it.”
I can never thank him enough for this generosity. For, I culled 20 minutes out of the 2-hour conversation, added clippings, posters, stills, book covers, letters, reviews and critical comments to the hour-long documentary And They Made Classics… This centenary tribute traces the unique bonding Nabendu Ghosh shared with his Film Guru.
*
But let me circle back to the birth of a Bundle of Joy and the Best of Jewels in the Roy and Ghosh families respectively.
Days before 21 January 2015 Tatudi called me up. “Joy is turning 60, and how can the celebration be complete if you are not there?” Needless to add, I put on hold my preparation to retire from The Times of India just five days later, and boarded a flight bound for Mumbai. I alighted with just enough time to change into a joyous outfit, for I’ve always revered Tatudi’s good taste and Joy’s flair for dressing just right for any occasion. And was I glad I did so! For, when I reached the venue, I was speechless.
Filmmakers Behroze Gandhy and Dilesh Korya’s documentary,Kekee Manzil – The House of Art offers a glimpse into the interiors of a heritage home, shedding light on its iconic residents Kekoo and Khorshed Gandhy. Kekoo established the only picture-framing company in Asia in the 1940s and later opened the city’s first contemporary art gallery, Gallery Chemould, now known as Chemould Prescott Road, run by his daughter, Shireen Gandhy. The documentary captures how Kekoo and Khorshed displayed compassion during challenging times, stayed true to their secular ideals, and remained engaged civically, while building frameworks within which art could grow in post-colonial India.
What did I admire most? The heritage Kekee Manzil overlooking the Arabian Sea? The gathering of friends and family, including Gen-X of Bimal Roy’s team? The drinks, the amsatta paneer, the grand Birthday Cake? All of this, yes. But most of all, I will cherish for the rest of my life the taste of another cake that Tatudi and Bubundi and Joy had got. Inscribed on it were these words: “Happy Birthday Uttama!”
Some bondings start with our birth, but they live on beyond our life.
Ratnottama Sengupta, formerly Arts Editor of The Times of India, teaches mass communication and film appreciation, curates film festivals and art exhibitions, and translates and writes books. She has been a member of CBFC, served on the National Film Awards jury and has herself won a National Award.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
(Excerpted from Ramblings of a Bandra Boy by Ratnottama Sengupta)
Joy Bimal Roy looks back at the many 21 Januarys, his birthday, that have dotted 70 calendars
On 6th February 1950 Baba and Nabendu Kaku arrived together in Bombay to work on Bombay Talkies’ Maa. I wasn’t born then, so I can only wonder if either of them, or their illustrious fellow travellers Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Asit Sen even imagined what a life changing experience that journey would be for each of them and, ultimately, for Indian Cinema.
This small but immensely talented and visionary team — Baba as director, Nabendu Kaku as screenplay writer and Hrishi Kaku as editor — created some of the best loved and most remembered classics of the golden ’50s and early ’60s: Do Bigha Zamin, Devdas, Madhumati, Sujata and Bandini.
When I was born on 21st January 1955, this team was already well established and feted in Bombay film industry. Co-incidentally (or perhaps not, because is there any such thing as coincidence?) six days after my birth, a daughter Ratnottama — Uttama to me — was born to Nabendu Kaku and Kanak Kakima in the same, Mandakini Nursing Home in Bandra. Uttama and I instinctively formed a bond which continues till today and seems to strengthen over the years. For me this became the link between our two families.
*
Some silly astrologer told my parents that they should not celebrate my first seven birthdays — else, ill-luck would befall me. So I grew up going to birthday parties of other children and wondering why I never had one.
That could explain why to date I hate my birthdays. It is a day of introspection and soul searching, assessing the past year of my life for gains and losses. No wonder I am more depressed than usual by the end of the day.
All that changed on my 40th birthday thanks to Sriram, my college classmate, and my sister, Aparajita, who was in Mumbai from Kolkata at that time. Together they conspired to have a small celebration at home. Sriram, ever generous, brought the champagne and glasses as well because he was not sure we had any.
Paradoxically it was possibly the worst time in our lives. We had lost the eviction suit our landlords had filed against us in the Small Causes Court, and had been given four months to vacate the premises, of which two months were already up. My birthday was on 21st January and three weeks after that, on 14th February, we were supposed to vacate our home of 46 years — unless we got a Writ Petition admitted in the High Court.
Plonk in the middle of this mess, the thought of celebrating my birthday had not even crossed my mind. But when Sriram entered holding the champagne bottle aloft like a trophy, along with his petite and demure wife Enakshi, and my classmates Divyakant and Ajay, their love and concern were so palpable that suddenly my spirit soared and I felt free as a bird. If I was blessed to have friends like them, Life couldn’t be so bad after all.
It’s not that I celebrated every year after that but I was no longer traumatized on my birthdays.
*
The first birthday we celebrated after moving into our cottage was my 50th birthday. It doubled as a housewarming party, so it was a riotous affair. Everyone got high thanks to the ministrations of a bartender called Greenville and danced to blaring music like whirling dervishes. Our neighbours complained and the cops turned up.
Not bad for someone who started out in life with no birthday celebrations at all, eh?
*
When my 60th birthday dawned I was not feeling particularly celebratory. But my sister was coming down, this time from Hyderabad, my niece from Dubai and my nephew from England, and I didn’t want to disappoint them.
Our home at that time was overrun with cats and the garden was a mess, so I looked for a more welcoming venue. The only place I could think of was Kekee Manzil, home to our old family friend Kekoo Gandhy, founder of Chemould, India’s first commercial Art Gallery — and his daughters Rashna, Behroz and Shireen. I asked hesitantly but they agreed enthusiastically and I will always be grateful for that.
Kekee Manzil is an elegant and gracious villa, a heritage structure overlooking the Arabian Sea at Bandstand. At one point of time the Gandhy family also owned the adjacent property which once went by the name of Ville Vienna and housed Baba’s mentor Nitin Bose — and now is famous as Mannat, owned by Shah Rukh Khan.
The venue was the hero on that evening filled with friends, food and fun, not me. Because I was feeling singularly ill at ease about my appearance.
I hadn’t had the time or the bandwidth to figure out what to wear for this milestone birthday, so I had to settle for the only new kurta I had. Unfortunately it looked like tent on me. To make matters worse I had burgeoned to 95 kilos, so I felt like a beached whale.
I made a mental resolution. I HAD to lose weight that year. But as they say, the way to hell is paved with good intentions. So my resolution remained just that — until months had gone by…
*
But before the year dovetailed into my 61st birthday, by sheer synchronicity I stumbled into the right dietician for me — and in eight months I lost 16 kg. Cereno, a trendy batch mate, told me about Zara and gave me a style tip for my hair. He said I would look much better if I had a very short haircut, like a crew cut. I didn’t like the idea of a crew cut but I realised I needed a makeover to go with my new clothes.
At the end of it all my reflection in the mirror was unrecognisable. A strange bald man looked back at me. My sister shrieked when she saw me but she was mollified by the favourable reaction of Cereno and other classmates.
The coup de grace was when a poker-faced Cereno borrowed my phone, fiddled with it, and handed it back to me saying he had put my profile on a dating app. “Just wait for five minutes,” he said, “and you’ll get your first hit.” Sure enough, after five minutes my phone went beep!
So in my 60th year I reinvented myself. Better late than never?
About the Book
Ramblingsof a Bandra Boy is a compilation of Joy Bimal Roy’s posts on social media between 2017 and 2020. These slices of life “served without any extra seasoning or fancy garnish” as he puts it, have been described by Rachel Dwyer, professor of Indian Cultures and Cinema at SOAS, London, as jottings in kheror khata, the traditional cloth bound notebook that Satyajit Ray — and his father Sukumar Ray before him — used to pen down thoughts and visuals that are world’s treasure. It covers life in the glitzy Bandra where most of the Bollywood crowd resides… giving glimpses of real life of the giants peopling the cinema screens.
About the Author
Joy Bimal Roy is the son of legendary Indian filmmaker, Bimal Roy, and one of India’s pioneer woman photographers, Manobina Roy. He started his filmmaking stint as an assistant director to Shyam Benegal.
Rabindranath Tagore spells different things to different people: National Anthems; the Nobel, Rabindra Sangeet, a veiled woman, Sriniketan or Santiniketan. A cineaste might think of Charulata or Kabuliwala, Chokher Bali (Best Friend) or Kadambari. But the subject ‘Tagore and Cinema’ would mean talking of Tagore’s exposure to cinema, his interest in the medium, the fate of his involvement with celluloid, the films based on stories penned by him, their interpretation in a world that is so far removed from his, in historical, economical, and cultural terms… In other words, it would mean talking of what about Tagore endures — and why it reaches out to the wide world of humanity.
To me, it is Tagore’s awesome, inspiring humanism that offers us immense scope to transcreate, reinterpret, relocate the socially relevant developments and rooted characters again and again onscreen. Like Shakespeare, his works are universal in terms of age, geophysical location, terrain of the mind and tugs of emotions…
Rabindranath was almost seventy when he exhibited his paintings that were so radically different from the style associated with the Tagore family artists, Abanindranath, Gaganendranath, Sunayani Devi, or Nandalal Bose. For, if the Bengal School looked East and sought inspiration in delicate miniatures, Chinese watercolours or the sparseness of Japanese zen, Tagore absorbed the boldness of German expressionism and created a unique style. It’s impossible for someone so open to avant garde trends to take no interest in cinema, the 20th century art form that was silently taking its juvenile steps in India when Tagore won the Nobel.
When he visited Russia, he watched Battleship Potemkin, the classic ‘handbook for editors’ (to quote Phalke winner Hrishikesh Mukherjee) that influenced a long line of filmmakers in India too. By 1931, the year when Alam Ara (Hindi) and Jamai Shasti’(Bengali) turned ‘movie’ into ‘talkie’, Tagore was in the last decade of his life. So, when he directed Natir Puja (The Dancing Girl’s Worship) at New Theatres, he was substantially assisted by Premankur Atorthi, who was the first to direct a film based on a Tagore composition. This was the only time when the Renaissance personality directly interacted with the celluloid medium. His nephew Dinendra wrote the screenplay, albeit under Tagore’s guidance, and students of Santiniketan acted in it. More importantly, Tagore himself essayed an important role in the dance-drama which was shot with a static camera over four days. However, the result was more a staged play than cinema. A greater tragedy is that the reels perished within 10 years, when a fire ravished the New Theatres Studio in 1941.
Atarthi’s own direction of Chirakumar Sabha (1932) set off a tradition that received a robust boost, first in the 100th year of the poet’s birth, and again in 2011, when he turned 150 and further. If literary treasures like Gora (1938) and Chokher Bali (1938) were adapted onscreen by Naresh Mitra and Satu Sen, they were remade and reinterpreted by Rituparno Ghosh who veered towards Tagore rather than Saratchandra, the more popular litterateur of Bengal who was a staple of Tollygunge for years. In fact all major names of Tollygunge, from Nitin Bose, Agradoot, Tapan Sinha, to Purnendu Pattrea, Partha Pratim Chowdhury and Rituparno Ghosh have announced their coming of age in cinema with a film based on a Tagore composition.
It is interesting to note that when Tagore visited Russia in September of 1930 members of the Cinema Board who had a conversation with him regarding his “new film stories” were deeply impressed by the short versions of the stories (as narrated) by the Poet, and they met him at his hotel to discuss in detail the possibilities of filming them. Tagore himself had enough interest in cinema to visit the Amalgamated Cinema Union, where he was received by its president M Rutin and was shown Eisentein’s Battleship Potemkin and portions of Old and New, we learn from his Letters from Russia.
Although evoking the Bengal of his time in divergent hues, Tagore’s stories continue to inspire man to go beyond divisions of nation, religion, caste or gender, perhaps because they explore how society shapes our love and relationships. This essay dwells on films that highlight the pervading themes of feminism, humanism and universalism in Tagore’s literary works.
Not Slave, Nor Goddess
The champion of women tells us to enunciate aami nari, I am a woman … with pride, because a woman is not a slave nor needs to be the other extreme, a goddess. That it is right for a woman, whether young, maiden, or widowed, to be a person of flesh and blood. That Tagore empathised so deeply with his women characters that today’s social historians are talking of an androgynous strain in the humanist.
* When Satyajit Ray filmed Ghare Bairey (The Home and the World), we got a glimpse of the regressive practices that ailed even the wealthy and educated households. However the most symbolic scene was the one where Bimala is inspired by Nikhilesh to step out of the inner quarters of the zamindar’s household. Even Sandip, the false god, hails it as a ‘social revolution’. Tagore the author goes on to criticise the pseudo rebel but at no point does he criticise Bimala — not even when her sister-in-law cautions Nikhilesh about the freedom his wife is abusing. We find a repeat of this theme in Char Adhyay (Four Chapters) – but we’ll come to that later.
* Chokher Bali, first filmed in 1938, turned the spotlight on the deprivations young widows were subjected to even after the reformist crusades of Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar. Very sympathetically, and most aesthetically, it held a brief for their sensuality — even sexual needs, especially when Rituparno Ghosh filmed it in 2003. But even here, before Mahendra’s mother dies, she urges that in her memory he should host a feast for widows — “people feed Brahmins, beggars, even animals, but never for the unfortunate widows,” he underscores.
* Nitin Bose’s bilingual Noukadubi was probably the first to take Tagore to Hindi cine-goers. Incidentally Rituparno and Subhash Ghai’s Noukadubi were also bilingual. In 1944, Milan afforded Dilip Kumar opportunity to mature as an actor, for here Ramesh upholds the flag of humanism. After being boat wrecked he comes home with Kamala, the ‘bride’ he has not deigned to look at, and realises that she is in fact someone else’s wife. The gentleman in him decides to take her to a convent and give her not just protection (from a par purush, stranger) but also proper education — even at the cost of his own spotless reputation and his chances of finding happiness with his beloved, Hem Nalini.
* In Charulata (1964), although Satyajit Ray continues to unfold her story from Amal’s point of view, his sympathy without reservation lies with the lonely wife. For half a century and more viewers have no doubt that Charu was an alter ego for Tagore’s Natun Bouthan – his sister-in-law Kadambari Devi, who took her own life. This story has inspired Bandana Mukherjee’s Srimati Hey and Suman Ghosh’s Kadambari (2015). Ray underscores this aspiration aspect in the film when Charu writes, gleaning from her experiences, and her writings are published in a magazine. This was unthinkable in the 19th century — and only a deeply humane soul could understand that a woman too needed to express her intellectual and creative self. (This aspect is completely missing in Charulata of 2011, directed by Agnideb Chatterjee, although it unfolds from the woman’s perspective and unabashedly speaks of her physical intimacy with Amal.)
* For Tagore, perhaps the stifling of this intellectual self was as great a tragedy as the ‘burying’ of her potentials within the walls of domesticity. In the poem ‘Sadharan Meye’ (Ordinary Girl), he urges his contemporary Sarat Babu to write a novel where the protagonist — a scorned woman — goes on to study, travel abroad, re-valued by several admirers, including the man who ditched her for being an ‘ordinary’ woman. The core thought of this poem had inspired a script by Nabendu Ghosh, an altered (and unacknowledged) version of which was made by Hrishikesh Mukherjee as ‘Pyar Ka Sapna’ (Dream of Love, 1969). In recent times the theme has been most successfully revisited in Vikas Bahl’s Queen (2014).
* In Megh O Roudro (Clouds and Sunshine), Rabindranath’s short story creates a protagonist whose struggle to affirm her dignity in the British ruled 19th century prompts her to read and write under the tutorship of a stubborn law student who is jailed for constantly challenging the discriminatory ways of the imperialists. By the time he is released, she is a prosperous widow who courteously acknowledges his role in her achieving self-confidence. In 1969, Arundhuti Debi, herself raised in Tagore’s ethos at Santiniketan, chose this for her second outing after Chhuti (Holiday) and her lyrical treatment brought her recognition as a director of substance.
* But what happens when a woman cannot fulfill her destiny, as in Streer Patra (A wife’s Letter, 1972)? How did Rabi Babu want his Mejo Bou — haus frau — to behave when the acutely male dominated household turns a blind eye to the injustice of marrying off the hapless orphan Bindu to a lunatic? Not drown her woes in the vast ocean at Puri but to slough off, in a moment of illumination, the shell of ‘Mejo Bou’ and become Mrinal, a woman with .her own soul and individual identity Why must she end her life like his Natun Bouthan — “Meera Bai didn’t,” he points out. And to us, even by today’s standards, it is the ultimate expression of feminism.
* Perhaps because of the class she belonged to, and with the support of a rebellious brother, Mrinal could do what Chandara couldn’t in Shasti (Punishment, 1970). Tagore knew that neither his ‘Notun Bouthan’ nor his own wife Mrinalini got the opportunities enjoyed by his ICS brother’s wife. Far from it: Chandara’s husband Chhidam places the burden of his Boudi’s death at the hands of his elder brother on his wife. In the prevailing patriarchal society it wasn’t unthinkable: a wife was expendable because you could get another, but not a brother. But the unlettered Chandara has her own estimation of the sanctity that is the conjugal bond. When her husband comes to meet the wife condemned to hang, she denies him the right of visitation by disdainfully uttering a single word: “Maran!” How should we read it today? Go, drop dead or go hang yourself!
* Jogajog (Connection) was written in 1929 in a society where there were caste/ class distinctions even amongst zamindars. Tagore had first-hand experience of this within his family. His crude protagonist is a johnny-come-lately who seeks revenge by marrying the educated and cultured Kumudini. He cannot stand any expression of respect for her brother and feels belittled at the slightest hint of will in his wife. Matters go so far that in the 2015 film, director Sekhar Das can effortlessly trace moments of marital rape in their conjugal discord.
* Chitrangada had poised the question: where lies a woman’s true beauty – in her outward appearance or her inner worth? Should the princess, raised to be as good as a prince, deny her essential self to please a man? Or is she wrong to sacrifice her being for one she loves? In 2008, Rituparno Ghosh gave a whole new androgynous reading of the dance drama, with Madan/ Cupid becoming a psychoanalyst.
Child — The Father and Mother of Man
Robi, who immortalised his childhood in Chhelebela (Boyhood), could never forget the restrictions imposed by adults and the suffocating effect it had on an imaginative soul. Therefore in Ichhapuran (Wish Fulfillment,1970), directed by Mrinal Sen for the Children’s Film Society of India, he effected a role reversal whereby their bodies get swapped. The naughty child Sushil becomes the father and the senior who covets the youthfulness becomes the free spirited son.
The comical confusion this ensues in the village leads both to realise the importance of their individual positions in life. They get back to their original self with the profound lesson for humanity – that each one of us has a place in the world no one else can ever fulfill.
* Of course the best known child in Rabindra Rachanabali (Creations of Tagore) is Amal. Essentially Dakghar (Post Office) was a testimonial against the crushing of childhood Tagore suffered. In the recent past actors Chaiti Ghoshal and Kaushik Sen have proved the enduring appeal of Dakghar — she in the form of a recorded audio play (CD); he on stage. Chaiti Ghoshal interprets the protagonist she had played with Shambhu and Tripti Mitra not as a Rabindrik character but as any child today, familiar with cricket and computer. Manipur’s Kanhailal has used elements of dance and drama to reinforce this message of freedom beyond frontiers. And, following the 2007 police firing in Nandigram (that killed 14 persons who were opposing state officials on land acquisition drive), Kaushik Sen had interpreted Amal’s desire to send a letter as a message to every household to raise awareness.
Sen’s Dakghar, then, was not about death but about liberation from life in bondage. “Perhaps that’s why, a day before Paris was stormed during WWII, Radio France had broadcast Andre Gide’s French translation of the play,” Kaushik had said while staging the play. “Around the same time, in a Polish ghetto, Janus Kocak had enacted the play with Jewish kids who were gassed to death soon after.” After such multi-layered readings of the text, Dakghar as filmed by Anmol Vellani in 1961 remains a simplistic viewing — perhaps because it was made for the Children’s Film Society.
* In The Postmaster the child – an illiterate village girl in this instance – metaphorically becomes a mother and a priya , or beloved, of the pedantic city boy who is stirred by beauty of the moon but can’t wait to go back. When he falls critically ill she dutifully serves him and cares for him like a wife. When he is set to depart by simply tipping her with silver coins, the child with a maturity beyond her years refuses to say goodbye. Rejection doesn’t need words: she can negate his very existence by her silence.
* Samapti (Finale) the concluding story of Teen Kanya (1965) remade by Sudhendu Roy as Upahaar ( The Gift, 1975), builds on the flowering of a woman in an unconventional girl child. Mrinmoyee is certainly not a Lakkhi Meye…a good girl , she’s a scandal in rural Bengal of 100 years ago. She escapes her wedding night by climbing down a tree, she spends the night on her favourite swing on the riverbank, she snatches marbles from her friend, a boy… When they try to tame her by locking her up in a room she throws things at Amulya. But when he returns to Calcutta and she’s sent back to her mother’s, she realises grown up love for the man she’s married to, and sneaks into his room by climbing the same tree!
* Buddhadev Dasgupta had woven Shey from Tagore’s late novel written for his granddaughter, and then scripted a feature based on 13 poems by the bard. When we read a poem, certain images arise before our mind’s eye. The director interprets Tagorean poetry through such images and experiences. “It is about how a poet responds to another poet,” he explains.
Of Zamindars and Servants
Robi, the ‘good for nothing’ youngest son of Debendranath, had to prove himself in his father’s eyes by successfully performing the job he was entrusted with – that of collecting taxes, ‘khajna’, from the ‘prajas’, subjects, no matter how impoverished they were. We all know that in doing the job he came across a vast cross section of people of the land whom he would not otherwise get to know so intimately. And while he could not be lenient as his father’s representative, he created caring characters like the zamindar in Atithi ( The Guest) who brings home a vagabond, gives him education, and even prepares to give his daughter in marriage to the free spirited boy whose restless soul drives him away…
* But having seen the reality of the lives of the subjects Rabindranath also created uncaring zamindars like the one in ‘Dui Bigha Jami’ (Two Bighas of Land) that had inspired the Bimal Roy classic Do Bigha Zamin (1953), set in a post-independence India that was rapidly industrialising. Debaki Bose attempted a more literal visualisation as part of Arghya, his Centenary Tribute to Tagore, along with his poem ‘Puratan Bhritya’, (Old Retainer).
* Robi, the motherless child who was raised in a large household in the rigid care of servants, said ‘Thank You’ to them through characters like Kesto, the old family retainer who refuses to leave even when he’s dubbed a thief or driven away. Instead, he saves his master from small pox at the cost of his own life. Tagore, in fact, goes a step further in his short story, ‘Khokababur Pratyabartan’. The trusted servant even raises his son to eventually give him up as the master’s child lost to a landslide in the river! Oppression of Religion
Pujarini (Worshipper) was immortalised by Manjushri Chaki Sircar’s dance. Although set in the revivalist times of Ajatshatru who was set upon putting the clock back and wipe out the Buddhist tenor of his father Bimbisara, we can easily identify with Rabindranath’s condemnation of any excess – violence in particular – in the name of Religion. Visarjan (Immersion) too raises consciousness against violence in any form, against even animals, in the name of religion.
* Nor can we overlook instances where he raises his angst ridden voice against the inhuman treatment of humans on grounds of caste or creed. In Chandalika, the untouchable gets a new mantra to live by when the Buddhist monk Ananda says “Jei manab aami sei manab tumi kanya (You, lady, and I are part of the same humanity).” The act becomes a beacon for Sujata, the eponymous protagonist of Bimal Roy’s film, who is on the verge of ending her life (following casteist discrimination).
* Tagore’s poem called ‘Debatar Grash’ (God’s Greed), lashes out against the cruelty people can unleash through the heart rending plight of the mother whose child is snatched from her and thrown into the raging waters to appease the villagers superstitious belief in god’s wrath. Shubha O Debatar Grash (Shubha and God’s Greed, 1964) remains a signature film of Partha Pratim Chowdhury.
* Tagore questioned the very concept of belonging to ideological boxes. His time-transcending novel, Chaturanga (Four Quartet), points out that human experiments (like, say, Communism) have failed because they put ideology in watertight boxes that do not have any room for flexibility. This inspired Suman Mukhopadhyay to film it in 2008. Tagore, who himself created walls and broke them, questions this through Jyathamoshai, his uncle, and Sachish, who invite Muslim singers and feed them at shraddha or funeral as much as through Damini, whom Sachish wants to domesticate much against her wish. She even questions her husband’s authority to will her away along with his property, to his religious guru. Tagore uses the graphic imagery of a hawk and a mongoose that Damini has as her pet (it is well known that these animals cannot be domesticated).
Nationalism to Internationalism
‘Where the world has not been fragmented by narrow domestic walls, and the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habits: into that heaven of freedom’ Tagore, forever and always, wanted his compatriots to awake. That is why Nikhilesh, in Ghare Bairey, does not condone violence even in the name of nationalism. That is why he decries Sandip, who uses the passion of young freedom fighters and the wealth of the poor to fill his coffers.
Beware the false god: Tagore repeats the criticism in Char Adhyay. In 2012 Bappaditya Bandopadhyay revisits the novel filmed by Kumar Shahani in 1997, the golden jubilee of Independence. But Ela’s Char Adhyay review it for its politics, its backdrop of ultras and violence, for the debate that acquired a new validity in the world after 9/11. Tagore was much in favour of non-violence, so much so that he criticised the nationalist movement too when it turned violent. How much of a visionary he was to ask a full century ago: “What will be the state of the nation that is based on violence?”
Young filmmakers are amazed by Tagore’s vivid criticism of the deterioration of party structures although he himself never belonged to any party. Sarat Chandra’s Pather Dabi (Demands of the Path), written about eight years before Char Adhyay, had taken a populist stand while Tagore didn’t hesitate to say through the protagonist Atin, ‘I am not a patriot in the sense you use the term.”
* That Rabindranath was against any form of regimentation is well established. His play, Tasher Desh or the land of cards, perhaps, written to criticise the submission of the conscience in Hitler’s Germany, remains the ultimate critique of regimentation. Directed by Q in 2012, the text layers his criticism of contemporary society by “trippy” visuals. By Q’s own submission, it is a “quirky” retelling of the Tagorean allegory.
* Gora (directed by Naresh Mitra in 1938) goes further: He bows to his adopted mother, hails her as his Motherland and says, every child is equal for a mother, she does not differentiate on any ground. Tagore here gives us a blueprint for an ideal Republic where a hundred flowers can fill the air with a hundred different colours.
* Perhaps the ultimate example of Tagore’s humanism is Kabuliwala, directed in Bengali by Tapan Sinha in 1958 and in Hindi by Hemen Gupta in 1961. An Afghan selling his wares in a Calcutta 150 years ago and striking a friendship with a child who reminds him of his own daughter back home, is a story that will strike a chord in anybody, anywhere in the world, at any given point in time — even in a world swamped with internet, chat rooms, mobile phones and multimedia messaging.
All of this reiterates the ‘forever-ness’ of Tagore. It also redefines the need to interpret his farsightedness, his comprehensiveness, his universality for our own times, in our own terms. Tagore himself had observed in a letter: “Cinema will never be slave to literature – literature will be the lodestar for cinema.” So we may conclude that since Tagore was primarily delving into human emotions, into the psyche of men and women placed in demanding situations that forced them to measure up to social, political, cultural or gender-based challenges, films based on his stories not only continue to be made but find an ever-growing audience in the globalised world.
(Courtesy: Tagore and Russia: International Seminar of ICCR 2011 held in Moscow. Har Anand publications, 2016. Edited by Reba Som and Sergei Serebriany)
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Ratnottama Sengupta, formerly Arts Editor of The Times of India, teaches mass communication and film appreciation, curates film festivals and art exhibitions, and translates and write books. She has been a member of CBFC, served on the National Film Awards jury and has herself won a National Award.
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