Categories
Paean To Peace Slices from Life

Magic of the Mahatma & Nabendu

Ratnottama Sengupta shows the impact of Gandhi and his call for non-violence on her father, Nabendu Ghosh as she continues to emote over his message of Ahimsa and call for peace amidst rioting

The ferocity and senselessness of riots — Nabendu Ghosh had personal experience of both. In his autobiography, Eka Naukar Jatri (Dey’s Publication, 2008, Journey of a Lonesome Boat), he writes at length about grappling with the riots that had rocked Calcutta, Bengal — nay, the entire Subcontinent on 16th August 1946. 

The Direct Action Day call was given out by Mohammad Ali Jinnah to press the demand for a separate Muslim State, Pakistan. The epicentre was Calcutta, a flourishing centre of business and education, that had Suhrawardy of Muslim League as its chief minister. On that black Friday, they unleashed unprecedented bloodletting along communal lines. At least 4000 deaths were reported on the very first day of the ‘Great Calcutta Killing’ that continued for more than four days. Many women were raped, many were kidnapped, many killed and hung naked in public areas… Dismemberment, forced conversion, bustees set on fire… Violence spread to Khulna in East Bengal, and Bihar. Within a year the hatred ignited on religious grounds culminated in the Partition of India.

The savagery of the mindless bloodbath had left such a deep dent on the yet-to-be-thirty writer, that he wrote a number of stories and novels on the theme: Phears Lane, Dweep, Trankarta, Ulukhar, ‘Chaaka’(Full Circle), and ‘Gandhiji.

 Gandhiji builds majorly on the author’s own memories of a darshan[1] of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi while he was passing through Patna, sometime in early 1931. This is how he records his ‘encounter’ with the Saint of Sabarmati who worked magic on the masses with the mantra of Ahimsa, non-violence.

“By 1930 all of India and its British rulers too were uttering one name with awe: Gandhi. One evening it came to my ears that the Mahatma would reach Patna at 7 am the next morning, spend the day in the city and leave by the Punjab Mail at night. 

“I did not sleep well that night. I was up at the crack of dawn and left home at 5 am on the pretext of getting a book from a friend. But I could not get anywhere near the Patna railway station, which was teeming with people who had arrived before sunrise. It was no different along the path he would be driven down. I hung around at one end of the platform, eyes glued to the exit gate. 

“Policemen on horseback trotted past me. A police van was parked close by. Those patrolling the platform carried bayonets and batons. Because of my green years and my small built, I was allowed to inch ahead. From time to time the sky was rent with the cry of ‘Mahatma Gandhi ki jai! Long live the Mahatma!’

“All of a sudden, perhaps to steel myself, I started to whisper: ‘Vande Mataram!  I salute you, my Motherland!’ As if on a cue, the man next to me cried out aloud: ‘Vande Mataram!’ The crowd roared in an echo: ‘Vande Mataram! Vande Mataram!!’

“Suddenly a train rolled in with a long whistle. And people all around me broke into the cries of ‘Mahatma Gandhi ki jai!’ ‘Bharat Mata ki jai!’ ‘Vande Mataram!’ I found myself matching their voice…

“Soon people started saying, ‘There he goes…’ Some cars came forward with Gandhi-topi clad volunteers. And then, there was the face so familiar from the newspapers, peering out of a hood-open Ford. Mahatma Gandhi, clad in a knee-length khadi dhoti, a chadar draped over his bare torso, a volunteer on either side, was greeting everyone with folded hands. What an inspiring image!

“I also broke into the cry of ‘Mahatma Gandhi ki jai!’‘ The crowd had started running behind the moving car. I joined them, without a pause in the slogan. A few paces later, I bumped into someone and fell down by the wayside. As an elderly gentleman lifted me up and soothingly dusted me off. I felt a resolve surface in my thoughts: ‘Freedom must be won!'”

 *

Nabendu Ghosh may or may not have had another prototype for the protagonist Ratan in Gandhiji. But it is said there actually lived close to College Street — where Nabendu lived at the time — a person named Gopal Mukherjee who owned a meat shop. He was a devotee of Subhash Chandra Bose and a critique of Gandhi. Reportedly this ‘paatha‘ — butcher — was funded by some Marwari businessmen and he led his team to retaliate from the fourth day of riots. After Independence, when he was urged to surrender his guns, knives and sword to Gandhiji, he apparently refused, saying, “I would willingly lay down my arms for Netaji, but not for Gandhiji. Why didn’t he stop the killings in Noakhali?”

The author may have woven in some traits of Gopal Paatha but, like a mirror image that is identical yet opposite, his protagonist Ratan is transformed by the iconic personality so that he surrenders his weapons — expressed symbol of violence — at the feet of the Mahatma.

*

As I watched Kamal Hasan’s Hey! Ram (2000), I was reminded of this story, ‘Gandhiji’ that was published in the collection Raater Gaadi (The Night Train) in 1964. Perhaps unknowingly the character played in the film by Om Puri reflects the protagonist Ratan. 

In Hey! Ram, A rioteer who has snuffed out scores of lives walks up to the fasting Gandhi in Beliaghata, throws a roti towards him and says, “I have bloodied my hands with many lives but I will not have your death on my conscience.” He resonates Ratan, the butcher who finds his biggest high in draining out human blood but once he rests his eyes on the frail sage, something happens deep inside him. He who wondered why his taking a life should matter to ‘Gendo’, stakes his own life to protect a Muslim.

*

Nabendu Ghosh experienced the magic of the Mahatma at age fourteen, long years before he became my father. 

I felt the magic of the man whom Rabindranath Tagore gave the name of Mahatma when I was well into my forties, and was doing a Fellowship in Oxford, on a Charles Wallace award, on John Ruskin and his Influence on Gandhi and Tagore. 

Then, almost 20 years later, we were at the critical juncture in time when we were completing 70 years of Gandhi’s passing and approaching his Sesquicentennial Birth Anniversary. That is when I started wondering: “What does Mohandas Karamchand mean to those acquiring voting rights in India now? Is he only the face on every Indian currency note? Is he only ‘M G Road’ — the high street of every city in India? Is he a boring memory who forces every one of his countrymen to shun drinking on his birthday?” 

Or, is there any valid reason to recall what he said — in Natal and Transvaal and Pietermaritzburg; in Kolkata and Noakhali, Chowri Chowra and Dandi, Bombay and Delhi? Is there anything in his actions that can change the lives of not only Indians but everywhere in the world where people are tired of terror strikes and gunshots and discrimination in the name of caste or creed or colour?

For, influence he certainly did, the lives of so many personalities… Not for nothing was Mohandas of Porbandar to become Gandhiji, Mahatma, Bapu, Father of the Nation

[1] To go to view a great or holy man

.

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. 

.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon International

Categories
Essay

Which Way, Wanderer? Lyric or Screenplay…

Ratnottama Sengupta explores the poetry in lyrics of Bollywood songs and scans the title song of the Hindi film, Guide, to conclude that a film song can be more than a lyric, a screenplay…

“If you want to be famous, do not write screenplays,” Jean Claude Carriere once told film students in a workshop. The legendary screen writer could have just as well said, ‘Do not write for films!’ For, it is the same story for lyricists as well. The better a film and performance of the actors, the less people remember the writer. Similarly, the better the rendition of a song, listeners remember it by the voice that rendered it — the singer; the man who scored the music, the actors who embodied the persona; or the film for which it was written. Seldom do people remember or even know who had penned the ditty that has got woven into the warp and weft of not only the script but, over time, of our life! 

Festival of Letters 2023. Photo: Ratnottama Sengupta 

So where’s the question of according them the literary status of a poet? Yet, speaking in Sahityotsav 2023 – the Festival of Letters hosted March 11-16 by Sahitya Akademi, India’s national council for literature, Tamil lyricist Vairamuthu refuted that there is no literary value in writing for cinema. “Yes, in a commercial art like cinema, everything cannot be literature, but surely literature is not utterly absent!” The seven times National Film Award winner admits that all movie songs are not poetry but he is ready to tussle with those who demean songs by saying they do not have the charm or aesthetic of poetry.

The role of songs in cinema is different, and therefore the aesthetics is different from that of poetry, the celebrated song-writer elaborates. “Lyrics are written to fit into a script; a character; and a social clime. So a lyricist has to bow to politics, humanities and sociology. And still a film song becomes a feast for the tastes of common people, because it contains in its folds the seeds of nuanced literature.” When a poet becomes a lyricist, he does not have the same freedom: his imagination is bound by the barriers of melody. He has the added responsibility of creating poetry by overcoming the constraints of the situation and the tune scored to heighten the emotion of the moment. When the lyrics of a song transcends these constraints it attains the heights of aesthetics, not necessarily of poetry but of its own particular identity. “Why must banana be described as poor man’s apple?” Vairamuthu poses.

*

I can recall countless songs that fit the bill of poetry. But, as I prepared to speak to Film Appreciation students of the Film and Television Institute of India on Literature in Cinema, it struck me that some songs track a different course and go on to presage the yet-to-unfold narrative, or even the final resolution of the film. And, in doing so, they sometimes equate the screenplay. Here I can readily mention two songs, both penned by Shailendra for two films released in 1966. One is the Mahua Ghatwarin song from Teesri Kasam (The Third Vow). In it Hiraman, a bullock-cart driver, recounts the story of Mahua who is sold off for money by her own family to Hirabai, the Nautanki dancer, who eventually defies that fate. The second is the title song of Guide, directed by Vijay Anand with Dev Anand and Waheeda Rehman leading the cast, which I will scan today. 

R K Narayanan’s masterpiece was a rather unusual story for a Hindi film made so many years ago. The fact is that it started as a Hollywood venture. Pearl S Buck, the first woman to win the Pulitzer award with The Good Earth, was the screen writer for the English version. Unfortunately, that reached neither here nor there. The Hindi version, on the other hand, turned out to be a cult film – particularly for its unmatched songs and dances that were shorn off for the Hollywood version. Just goes to show how integral song and dance are to Indian life.

Genius, they say, always evokes admiration and provokes curiosity. My attention to this song was drawn when a handful of cine lovers got together to understand why its unconventional profiling of adultery succeed in tradition-bound India when it failed miserably in the ‘advanced’ society that is Hollywood?  Both the versions had the same plot, nearly the same cast and crew, and yet the difference was stunning. Their urge to analyse its extraordinariness led Blue Pencil to publish Guide The Film: Perspectives. And, while answering interviewer Antara Nanda Mandal, I realised how Wahan kaun hai tera is unique in the way it knits the past with the future of the character, grafting a seamless flow of flashbacks and offering a glimpse of the narrative as it will unravel on its way to the finale…

The story goes that Dev Anand and his brother Vijay Anand had approached Shailendra when the film was almost ready. Not being in a particularly obligatory mood, he demanded a fortune– Rs 1 lakh. Nearly 60 years ago, this was indeed a king’s ransom but without batting an eyelid, the producer-director duo of Navketan Films agreed – after all, they needed a mounting fit for the epic that was at once radical and traditional. And, set to music by Sachin Dev Burman, what a memorable number it turned out to be!

A brief synopsis of the film based on a 1958 novel: Freelance guide Raju meets Rosie, the daughter of a nautch girl married to Marko, a wealthy archaeologist who is a philanderer. But dancing in public was not only infra dig back then, it was an absolute no-no. Dancers were regarded as social outcasts, little better than prostitutes. One day, after a showdown with her womanising husband, Rosie seeks relief in a burst of Kalbelia, the dance of Rajasthan’s snake charmers, in the marketplace. As Raju watches her hypnotic passion, he is convinced that dance is Rosie’s calling, and he convinces her to leave Marko and move in with him. The repercussions? His mother leaves home, he is ostracised in the small town, he starts losing customers. But acting as her manager, Raju establishes Rosie as a star on the dance stage. However, without the bonding of marriage to hold them together they start to drift apart. Raju feels insecure because of her fame and fortune, and is jealous when Marko sends a cheque for her. To keep him away, he forges Rosie’s signature and is forced to go to jail.

Thus far is a ‘flashback’ – the film opens on the day of his release. Both Rosie and his mother arrive only to learn that he was released six months before his term. Narayanan’s multi-layered narrative now follows Raju who, disillusioned by Rosie’s reluctance to protect him, had set off by himself on an uncharted course towards a bleak future. Along the way he joins an itinerant group of sadhus and travels till he reaches a small village that spent many monsoons facing drought. There he finds shelter in a derelict temple, and the unshaven wanderer is mistaken for an ascetic. The simple villagers flock around him to unburden their woes as he offers them the wisdom rising out of his churnings. That becomes their solace, and soon they believe he’s a Sadhu sent for their deliverance. This takes the form of an announcement: the Saint will starve himself until the skies relent and relieve the villagers from the scourge of drought!

Will Raju, an outcast with a criminal past, now act like a mere mortal and devour the offerings for the gods? Or will he live up to their faith and find redemption by making possible the impossible?  Let’s study how the title song prepares the viewers for this mature narrative to unspool.

The song opens with one single string of sitar that goes on playing almost discordant notes. So you are not lured in by a melodious tune or tarana until the signature voice of Sachin Dev Burman breaks in, forcing you to follow the words. They don’t necessarily match the action on the screen which has a man coming out of a jail, pausing at a crossroad that points to the city, then walking in the opposite direction that gradually leads him into an unknown terrain of wilderness and desolation.

As the protagonist keeps walking and the titles appear, the song goes into its successive paras, and you realise that it is a song that could not have belonged to any other film. Nor was it an add-on number that you could take out if you so wished, without impacting the film negatively. For, the song is a planned part of the script and serves as an index to the narrative that will unfold in the next couple of hours.

It strings together glimpses of the past, the present and perhaps the future, in a way that resembles joining a musafir, a traveller, on the highway, to keep pace with him, strike up a conversation, and before long, you have plunged into his life. Your curiosity is aroused and you want to know why he was jailed and what will befall now when a criminal is mistaken to be a Swami, a sage, who must prove himself to be a saint, no less, so as not to destroy the faith of the trusting villagers. In doing so, the song becomes an index for the actions that will make the characters.

What is a more, it prepares the viewer for an unconventional structuring of the narrative which opens with the Epilogue, where the convicted becomes Conscience keeper; resorts to the flashback technique and reverts to the prologue, where a frustrated Rosie repeatedly attempts suicide; and then arrives at the main drama between the Guide and the Dancer. He, who helped her come out of her failed marriage and ride the crest of success in her dream career; She, who fails to plumb the depth of emotion in the man who loved her so much that he commits a crime rather than risk losing her to her legal husband.

Anyone waiting for you out there?!
Oh wanderer
Which way are you headed?
Come, rest a while here,
This bower's a shelter of greens
You will find nowhere...
 
Days untold have passed.
Those fleeting moments, those
Boundless nights of love,
They're but a dream
They've forgotten...
Why not you??
Those encounters, trysts of love!
Pitch dark, as far as your eyes go...
Where are you headed, wayfarer?
 
Not a soul's watching out for you.
No eye's on the winding road
Waiting for a sight of you.
No one squirmed when
You were in pain,
Not an eye shed tears...
So who is your dear,
Drifter? Where to...??
 
You guided them on their way.
Now you, Guide,
Have lost your way?!
You eased the knots in their lives,
Now you are twined in threads!
Why, oh why??
Why swings the charmer,
Not the serpent,
To the music of the Been?
 
Words of wisdom from the ancients:
This world's but a writing
On the face of a stream!
Watch 'em all, know it all but
No, don't belong to One...
Bonding is not for you, nor for me
Ambler... Where are you off to?

(Transliteration by Ratnottama Sengupta of the original lyrics by Shailendra that can be found below)
 
 
Wahan kaun hai tera, Musafir, jayega kahaan?
Dum le le, dum le le ghari bhar, Yeh chhaiyya payega kahan...
 
Beet gaye din pyar ke palchhin, Sapna bani woh ratein...
Bhool gaye woh, tu bhi bhoola de, Pyar ki woh mulaqatein!
Sab door andhera, Musafir, jayega kahaan?
 
Koi bhi teri raah na dekhe, Nain bichhaye na koi,
Dard se tere koi na tarpa, Aankh kisi ki na roi...
Kahe kisko tu mera, Musafir, jaayega kahaan?
 
Tuney toh sabko raah bataayi, Tu apni manzil kyoon bhoola?
Suljha ke raja, auron ki uljhan, Kyoon kachhe dhaagon mein bhoola?
Kyoon naache sapera, Musafir, jaayega kahaan!
 
Kehte hain gyaani, duniya hai paani, Paani pe likhi likhaai,
Hai sab ki dekhi, hai sab ki jaani, Haath kisi ke na aayi...
Kuchh tera na mera, Musafir jaayega kahaan?

Here, I must stress that Guide would not be the evergreen film it is sans the songs and dances. In particular, this opening number places the story in its context. Everytime it plays. 

Sapna bani woh raatein… the dizzy heights of love, fame, riches that did not last, alas! Night is what Rosie will celebrate when she sings, Raat ko jab chaand chamke, jal uthe tan mera… And Raju will lament, Din dhal jaaye haay, raat na jaaye

Koi bhi teri raah na dekhe, bhool gaye woh tu bhi bhoola de… endless roads, journeys on bus, on tonga, on foot, over hills, dales, and forests… matching his state of  mind.

Dard se tera koi na tarpa, aankh kisi ki na roi… One word of denial from Rosie and he would not have been convicted of forgery, but she simply watches him being taken into custody! Later, this would be echoed in the divergent perspectives of the twin numbers – Kya se kya ho gaya bewafa tere pyaar mein, Oh what have I not undergone by falling in love with a loveless woman, he sings while she dances to Mosey chhal kiye jaay, haay re haay! Saiyaan beimaan, Oh how he fakes love, my faithless lover!

Tuney toh sabko raah dikhaayi, tu apni manzil kyoon bhoola … Raju guide, how could you – who took others to their destination – forget your own and get waylaid?! For plain love?

And then the remarkable twist: Kyoon naache sapera! The snake swings to the tune of the snake-charmer; how come your tale is reversed? It could be the voice of destiny commenting on what has transpired in the life of the guide. This imagery in particular is so unique that celebrated lyricist Javed Akhtar is reported to have said, “The day I pen a line like this, I will  become a poet!”

Then, look at the layers within these three words. Both naach and sapera will be seen to be crucial motifs in the film. Rosie, born to a dancer, sought respectability through marriage but is stifled because it takes dance out of her life. The guide realises her passion when she dances the snake dance in the market; Raju establishes Rosie as a star performing artiste and not a mere homemaker, his ghar ki rani...

For me, the ultimate irony lies in the words, Kehte hain gyaani, duniya hai paani, paani mein likhi likhaayi.. The temporal world is ephemeral, much like words written on water. So, belong not, to anyone! And yet, it is the want of this very element — water — that will put his will to test, and ultimately claim his life. For, Swami must expiate for Raju Guide’s lapses, and when his followers are praying Allah megh de, paani de/ Send us the clouds, the rains, the droplets of water O Lord, he must fight the temptation to devour even a morsel, and be rewarded for it by a downpour in the parched land. 

How remarkably does philosophy dovetail into poetry!

.

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. 

.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Categories
A Special Tribute

In Memoriam: Star of the Stage Shines on Screen

Ratnottama Sengupta trains the spotlight on actress Swatilekha Sengupta(22nd May 1950- 16th June 2021)

Swatilekha Sengupta in action in Shanu Roy Chowdhury. Photo sourced by Ratnottama Sengupta

“Swatilekha is more talented and far better actor than I. Still, everyone keeps asking for me!” Rudraprasad Sengupta was not boasting to me – the helmsman of  the celebrated Nandikar Theatre Group was citing just one instance to show that “women in theatre still suffer bias[1].”

He wasn’t far from the truth: Swatilekha Sengupta, who passed away exactly a year ago on June 16 at 71, had graduated in English, mastered Western classical music in England, received guidance in theatre from iconic names like Tapas Sen, B V Karanth and Khaled Chowdhury. She composed music for, directed and carried on her shoulder Nandikar productions like Madhabi, Shanu Roy Chowdhury, Pata Jhore Jaay (Dry Leaves Fall), Naachni(Dancers).

Madhabi was adapted from Bhishm Sahni’s Mahabharat based play; Shanu Roy Chowdhury was adapted from Willy Russel’s Shirley Valentine; Naachni encapsulated the exploitation of the nautch girls of tribal Purulia. She wrote some, she composed the music for some, she travelled to UK and USA, Germany and Norway and Scotland… with husband Rudrapasad, with daughter Sohini, even to stage a one-woman play.  Yet, she is most recalled for playing Bimala in Satyajit Ray’s Ghare Baire (Home and the World, 1985) – although, ironically, she faced fierce criticism for its critical failure!

Growing up in Allahabad Swatilekha – then Chatterjee – had repeatedly watched Charulata (1964) and Mahanagar (1963) with her school friends. She even wrote to Ray seeking an opportunity to work under him. Of course the letter went unanswered – or perhaps it went astray? For, Ray watched Swatilekha in Nandikar’s Galileo and zeroed in on her for the dream role of Bimala: the wife of a forward-thinking zamindar, Nikhiliesh, whose concern for the welfare of the peasantry under his care is critiqued and upended by an upstart revolutionary, Sandip.

Tagore had written the novel, told through the personal stories of the three protagonists, in 1916 when the Nationalist movement was peaking. The 1905 Partition of Bengal had outraged both, the Hindus and the Muslims, and the protests against the religion-based partition also saw Tagore set Bankim Chandra’s Vande Mataram to music and singing the song to protest the imposition of foreign rule. But after the ‘administrative division’ was rescinded, the call to boycott foreign goods in favour of Swadeshi, indigenous, appealed to the masses – and that led to tensions between the anti-British activists and the idealists. Swadeshi was critiqued as being unaffordable for the peasantry by Nikhilesh in the film and by Tagore, who contended that humanity came before nationalism. Effectively, then, the drama had pitted the conservative versus the radical, rational versus the emotional, East versus West. In short, the home versus the world.

So keen was Swatilekha’s appetite for the character that, on the first day, she’d defied a local bandh[2] and walked from her home in north Calcutta to the legend’s Bishop Lefroy address across the city. On learning that she’d not read the Tagore classic the iconic director had insisted that she should NOT read it. On noticing that she was staring at a harpsichord Ray had asked her if she could play it, and on hearing that she played the piano he’d asked her to play a Beethoven and he had himself whistled along!

Swatilekha Sengupta & Soumitra Chatterjee in Satyajit Ray’s 1985 film, Ghare Baire. Photo sourced by Ratnottama Sengupta

All this camaraderie must have passed on to his actor: when the film released to the world, a prestigious American newspaper praised the “immense grace” of the “pretty, surprisingly wilful Bimala”. But the demanding viewers at home tore her to pieces saying “she neither lived nor looked the role”. Suddenly her ‘home’ had turned into a horrid world… “I sunk into depression and wanted to end my life!” Swatilekha had confessed to my young screen-writer friend, Zinia Sen, while preparing to return to the screen 30 years later — with the same co-star, Soumitra Chatterjee, in Bela Sheshe (In the Autumn of My Life, 2015), which is now considered a cult film.

The story of Arati and Biswanath Majumdar takes a curious turn when, on the eve of their 50th anniversary, the husband seeks to divorce his wife. Because? Arati, a typical, traditional housewife, happily spends her life cooking and cleaning, washing and nursing. For, in her vocabulary, those are just other words to say ‘I love you’ to her husband; for looking after her in-laws; for expressing her concern for her daughters and son and grandchildren… This is a far cry from her husband’s definition of a dream partner. For Biswanath, the proprietor of a fabled bookstore, has unending curiosity about the world and wants to travel beyond the map… 

The five relationships depicted in the film attempt to define the life-long companionship we brand as marriage. Do marriage vows ensure the fairy tale ending of happiness ever after? Is married life built upon promises kept and love requited? Or do unfilled expectations and unarticulated expressions also cement the friendship? Is it possible to walk into the sunset hand in hand?

Soumitra Chatterjee and Swatilekha Sengupta in Belasheshe. Photo sourced by Ratnottama Sengupta

Bela Sheshe made on a budget of Rs 1.1 crore reaped Rs 2.3 crore. More importantly, while reviving faith in institutionalised partnership it also breathed new box office appeal in the screen partners, Soumitra Chatterjee and Swatilekha Sengupta. In Belashuru (A New Beginning, 2022) the latest outing of Nandita Roy and Shiboprasad Mukherjee, the director duo have again cast them as Arati and Biswanath. This time, though, it is a new beginning for the husband is eagerly striving for his Alzheimer afflicted wife to recognise that the ‘stranger’ who follows her everywhere, even her bed, is her now-aged groom. For, Arati now lives in the past she left in Faridpur, along with the pond she’d fish in with Atindrada and the textile shop of her comrade in crime, when she got married…

The film pivots on Arati, and Swatilekha outshines one and all in the cast. Not surprising: the actor’s total commitment to the character is borne out by Zinia. She recalls that, “when the rest of the unit sat listening to Soumitra Da’s [3]enthralling anecdotes and Kharaj Da’s [4] humour filled recitation, Swati Di[5] refused to join in. Instead, she retired within herself, just as Arati would.”

Swatilekha Sengupta as Ammi in Dharma Juddha, a film that will be released in August 2022. Photo sourced By Ratnottama Sengupta.

This is echoed by Raj Chakraborty, the director of Dharma Juddha (Religious War ) which was screened in the recent Kolkata International Film Festival. He recounts that the film was shot in Purulia that suffers extreme summer, but “since the sequence was set on a winter night, she kept her warm clothes on all through the shoot. Such was her dedication to the character and the script!”

Having followed her theatre over a long time Raj counts it amongst his blessings that he could work with her. “I’m certain there was more left to learn,” he sighs as he awaits the masses’ response to the film which once again, rests on the sturdy shoulder of Ma/ Ammi/Dadi[6]. Raj could envisage none but Swatilekha as the protagonist who shelters to two sets of men and women when Ismailpur is seized by an apocalyptic night of communal rage. The pacifier succeeds in instilling brotherhood in the four victims from rival camps – until the tragic truth about her son’s death is revealed. It drives home the realisation that the foremost religion is humanism.

Like Swatilekha, Soumitra Da too had a strong presence on the stage. And fortunately, the screen pair’s daughters – Sohini and Poulami, respectively – are also deeply into theatre.  “I had chosen theatre when I wanted to direct,” he’d said to me when Sangeet Natak Akademi had decorated him, “because, if I make films, people will always compare me with Manikda[7].”

That is why I am doubly delighted that the makers marked the release of Bela Shuru [8]– the duo’s last film – around Swatilekha’s birth anniversary[9], with a unique exhibition. it showcases Soumitra’s typewriter, the script he penned for a play, a collection of pipes acquired on travels abroad; his paintings, poems, letters to his daughter from his Jaisalmer shoot for Sonar Kella (1974)… And it showcases Swatilekha’s violin and mouth-organ; the costumes she wore in Nachni and Bela Shuru; and, a congratulatory letter to Swatilekha, from a star admirer — Amitabh Bachchan…[10]

Soumitra Chatterjee and Swatilekha Sengupta in Bela Shuru. Photo Sourced by Ratnottama Sengupta

Surely a far cry from the bias that you lamented when you celebrated the 150th birth anniversary of Notee Binodini [11] in 2013, Rudra Da[12]?

*

Yes, theatre people the world over agree, that the ‘Moon of Star Theatre’ was deprived of her rightful honour when the theatre that was founded by her not named after her. Why? Because “the aristocrats would not like to enter a place named after a noti.” Thespian Noti Binodini might have been, but she was a fallen woman, wasn’t she? So what if this contemporary of Tagore was the first South Asian actress to pen her own story – Aamar Katha — a lucid memoir that portrays the 19th century society in Bengal which was at ease with European ideas but confined women to homes. So what if the sage Ramakrishna had gone into a trance as he watched her essay Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (1884)? Such was her portrayal that thespian Amritlal Bose wrote, “Whenever I bow to any wooden or painted image of Sri Chaitanya, I see Binodini before my eyes.”

Binodini Dasi had gone onstage at age 12, under mentor Girish Ghosh (1844-1912), and her career had ended when she was just 23. Merely 11 years, but those were the years when the proscenium theatre modelled after European convention was spreading in Bengal. In those 11 years Binodini enacted 80 roles, playing Sita, Draupadi, Radha, Kaikeyi or Pramila, Mrinalini, Motibibi, Ayesha. Please note: She pioneered modern stage make-up by blending European and indigenous styles.

“Because of this, people who had seen her in one role could not recognise her in another,” Girish Ghosh himself wrote. Yet this same stalwart of theatre, to please whom Binodini had drained her own resources and founded Star Theatre in north Calcutta, refused to write a foreword for My Story as it contained uncomfortable truths about Binodini’s patrons!

Why did the chroniclers of Bengal Renaissance overlook the contribution of this marginalised star to the land’s cultural mileu? “Because of the class-caste divide,” Soumitra Chatterjee suggests in his foreword for the memoir. “How could the Brahmo-Brahmin dominated upper crust acknowledge the talents of a lowborn ‘prostitute’?”

More than a century later, Swatilekha took it upon herself to train the spotlight on the fact that the years had failed to change the plight of another set of dancing artistes – the Nachnis.


[1] Women in Theatre suffer bias.’ – quoted from Times of India, article by Ratnottama Sengupta.

[2] Strike where transport was halted

[3] Soumitra Chatterjee (1935-2020)

[4] Kharaj Mukherjee : Actor and comedian

[5] Swatilekha Sengupta (1950-2021)

[6] Grandmother

[7] Satyajit Ray

[8] Release date: 20.5.2022

[9] 22. 5. 1950

[10] Amitabh Bachhan, one of the most nationally and internationally awarded and influential actors

[11] Play based on the life Binodini Dasi

[12] Rudraprasad Sengupta, husband of Swatilekha and a theatre personality

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. Ratnottama Sengupta has the rights to translate her father, Nabendu Ghosh.

.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Categories
Essay

Can Songs be the Musical Conscience of a Film?

Prithvijeet Sinha uses Gaman (Departure), a Hindi movie around the pain of migrant workers, as a case study to highlight his contention that lyrics and songs convey much in Indian films.

 As my essay dives into the realm of the personal intermingling with the universal, I have found that the quintessential point of a space, definitive of our existences and livelihood, flows seamlessly in our lives. A collective omnibus houses our private churnings, moving from one point to another as life scripts new adventures of the mind and the spirit to discover valuable assets and find that sacred space — a home to give refuge to our true and innate selfhoods. The idea of the heart as home of our fiercely personal torrents of thoughts is something I adhere to. As such, the heart is a lonely island and much as personal journals and diaries have a secretly lush inner world to communicate, the subtle and implicit art of songwriting is the external synonym and outlet that universally connects our inner world with the outside.

 The functional meaning of a song is actually born out of the discerning of listeners. Khairun, the lonely young woman at the heart of the film, Gaman (1978), is one such example in a sea of millions around the world, one of countless women left to tend to the hearth while the responsibility of corralling finances snatches their men away from them prematurely. Such is the dilemma that a newly annointed marital union becomes essentially a platonic one, testing the sombre beginnings of this lifelong intertwining of two strangers. As if it’s a rite of passage for their individual selves after they have taken their vows in the public eye and been pronounced as man and wife. They burn for that warmth and familial touch of companionship with these songs sung by playback artistes (conveying from the prism of Khairun) becoming spiritual constants when the physical reality of them staying together is rendered impossible. Through her fortitude and its equal mirroring in her husband’s predicament in the city, we find the power of this union to sustain itself in two different places. Their mindscapes merge and Khairun is a conduit for this film’s portrayal of pain of separation and social anxiety. As if she has a telepathic connect with her beloved as when, through voice-overs, we find her letters informing Ghulam of her own angst and her brooding face and eyes loom over Bombay’s skyline.

 It’s the language of our soul or Aatma as we call it in Indian canon.  We are not alone then. There is no conflict in this union and the words, it seems, flow out of our own being.  The beauty, melancholy and dignified distance invested in them bring the pining heart and the hopeful soul together in perfect tandem.

In Gaman, both protagonists live in the shadows of crumbling aristocracy, in a village in North India where the present is bleak and like a ghost informs the poor population about its impending desolation. In a post-colonial nation, the humbler occupants of this social compartment still have survival to contemplate upon and their lands and farming have given them no respite from debts. As the central characters are Khairun (the iconic actress, Smita Patil) and Ghulam Hasan (another stalwart actor, Farooq Sheikh), the film shot in the erstwhile Muslim and predominantly secular princely state of Kotwara, could be reflective of the dilapidated shells of a centuries old lineage which may have had connections in the past and seen better days. But rampant unemployment, educational lacuna and a hand-to-mouth existence contextualize a move to the big city for the man. The name Khairun itself has a certain melancholic ring to it, I think and Ghulam as his name goes becomes a slave of his fated new beginnings.  Their taciturn marital bond is presented in brief moments together.

 In simple but rousing poetry, the real challenge of moving ahead in the big city while leaving behind the rustic stronghold and a real home is poignantly conveyed.  Identities are at stake and have to find a home, even if it is the most modest resort of reassurance. The womenfolk have no real say or stake in this scenario and Khairun’s silence is a witness to that. The song then that appears is ‘Aap ki yaad aati hai raat bhar’ (Your memories were all that remained all night long).

Composed by Jaidev, written by Makhdoom Mohiuddin and sung iconically by Chaya Ganguly, who won the prestigious National Award for playback singing, love and longing are two sides of the same coin. When I heard this song few years back, it came like a lilt from beyond, the central melody captivated me and made me croon its perfectly structured lines. There was a distinct local character to it and the realism of the situations converged with the romanticism of natural images. These images were stages in their marked separation and the passage of time was invoked. The opening lines translated are, “Your memories were all that remained all night long, moist eyes kept smiling all night long.”  The stoic quality of internalization is very succinct here. “Muskurati Rahi”( a smiling wayfarer) in feminine form reflects the mindset of Khairun, the young bride and woman. There is a brevity of conveying the lull within the heart’s storm. A pensive directness addressed to oneself in isolation and to the beloved is like a pithy interior monologue; a missive to the one who yearns for an established bond.

The song is unique as it’s one of the few ones to begin with the chorus or central refrain which clearly elucidates its personal nature of pathos. The first verse continues with the imagery of the still night and dark, private chambers of the heart where longing is given rest and an assured hand. It goes like, “the flames of pain were burning/alighted all night long /melancholy’s flicker was trembling throughout.”

 The fickle spirit is putting up a brave front and is vulnerable, spending its time in contemplation. From the opening plucking of strings, which I think is the instrument santoor and burgeoning flutes, the intimate incandescence of the couple is set into motion in a composition set in the pure classical mold. Khairun’s dialogue travels all the way to us. There is a shine to their passion for each other which refuses to interfere with their earnest pursuits. 

The second verse is more tilted towards romanticism. Its mesmerising notes are referenced with the flute to symbolise love and its dimensions. In Indian lore, Krishna played the flute for self-definition and courtship. Here, its transcendental spell is cast on a lonely soul as attested in the lyrics, “the tuneful, charming notes of the flute/come as reminders of memories all night long.” The speaker is in third person and omnipresent thus the personal becomes the universal and the use of night imagery can make it the last moorings of an individual before sleep gets the better of her/him and every recollection is committed to memory’s animated storehouse. The invocation of the flute is a sweet token for the promise of every stable relationship. The foundation has to be lovely and full of warmth even though it is an ephemeral ideal.

The talent of the lyricist here is that these escape from falling into a basket of random cliches as its essence is in Urdu poetic tradition.  Look at those plangent eyes of Khairun, deep vessels of wait and ceaseless langour, akin to an Amrita Shergill paintings.  

The mystery of the night has direct approximation in the next verse, “the night moon entered depths of the heart/ its glow illuminated the night.”  The moon is a personal symbol as it’s cast in the image of Ghulam for Khairun and vice versa. The unattainable height of its location is related to the profound number of miles separating husband and wife. Its dim light is the only source of illumination thus hope is enshrined in these lines for the little kernel of happiness that may bless them sooner or later.  The desire for union is prevalent here. In the video of the song, notice how the lyrics pertaining to moonlight are juxtaposed with streetlights and neon lights of Bombay where Ghulam drives a taxi for a living and Khairun tends to the household lighted by a dim bulb. Light plays a crucial role in their overlapping narratives. Winter has set in the village and Bombay is the metropolis on whose streets Ghulam has to ply his cab. 

Finally the gypsy heart that celebrates isolation and is detached from unnecessary expectations finds its way in the final verse, “a lover wanders around lanes/ a voice echoes all night long”

 This is not the blabbering of a madman but the deep call of the soul’s recesses. Should both Khairun and Ghulam adopt detachment till they are united or celebrate their individual and in a larger sense collective isolation? Their private musings do their bidding for the heart. The head and heart dilemma is hence paramount.  The lover’s wandering minstrel like ways approximate the private reserves of love and longing. Dual interplay of inner and outer personas match wits and still lucidity is sought and achieved in the quietude of this composition via slender, elegant employment of guitar, drums and flutes.

 Chaya Ganguly’s voice dominates the sway of restrained pathos and hope here while Smita Patil’s eyes and Farooq Sheikh’s stoicism endure as he posts letters and Khairun holds them. ‘Seene Mein Jalan, Aankhon Mein Toofaan’ (A burn in the chest/ a storm in the breath) captures the rush and milling crowds of big cities where individuality hankers for identity while ‘Ras ke bhare tore Nain’ (your eyes are full to the brim) addresses the aesthetics of longing from the same soundtrack. The playbacks by Suresh Wadkar and Hira Devi Mishra respectively are pitch perfect.  The panorama of humanism under duress finds its true form and content in the direction of Muzaffar Ali (auteur of iconic Umrao Jaan), cinematography of Nadeem Khan, lyrics by Shahryar, writer Hriday Lani and crisp editing by Jethu Mundul.

The music of Gaman won Jaidev a National Award too for best music and deservedly so. The film also won a special mention accolade.

Gaman in Urdu signifies transit, passage, migration, departure or movement but I was surprised by how according to Zen Buddhist currency in Japanese, it is an equivalent of stoic endurance and patience. These markers ultimately are a natural corollary of movement of any kind. The music of Gaman is a perfect amalgamation of the personal and universal and devolves meaning to the idea of distance. Timeless musical exemplifications like these simply don’t exist anymore. It is the soul of Khairun that ultimately guides us to that point of personal transit.

Prithvijeet Sinha has been prolifically publishing works of various hues in journals and magazines like   Cafe Dissensus, Confluence, The Medley, Borderless, Wilda Morris’ Poetry Blog, Screen Queens, Rhetorica Quarterly, Lothlorien, Chamber Magazine, Livewire  among others. He believes writing to be the true music of the soul.

.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL.