Shyam Benegal (1934-2024)Street art: Shyam Benegal From Public Domain
“If I enjoy the film I have made, then I am quite certain viewers will too. And what business do I have to burden viewers with what I myself do not enjoy?”
–Shyam Benegal (in an interaction with Ratnottama Sengupta)
Art is not elitist. Nor is artistic experience one that only the elite can enjoy. The world’s greatest art has been accessible to all mankind. Taj Mahal was erected in memory of Mumtaz Mahal but it is for the world to access and admire. The cave paintings at Ajanta propagated a certain philosophy but thousands of years later too they mesmerise one and all. And, anyone who goes to Tanjore temple experiences its magnificence. Cinema too is capable of providing such universal experience. What is more, it is possible to provide such an experience without distorting or oversimplifying an idea.
Shyam Benegal (1934-2024) had dinned this belief into me when I interviewed with him for the first time — in Bombay of 1980. Seven years before that he had proved it to the world with his debut film, Ankur (The Seedling, 1974). It had announced itself to cineastes through its nomination for the Golden Bear at the 24th Berlin Film Festival and had gone on to win three National Awards. In the wake of stylised trendsetters like Bhuvan Shome (directed by Mrinal Sen, 1969), Uski Roti (Others’ Bread, directed by Mani Kaul, 1969) and Maya Darpan (Illusory Mirror, directed by Kumar Shahani, 1972), everyone expected Ankur to be another “arty” film. In other words, “pretentious”, “pseudo intellectual”, even “boring”. Far from refusing to peter out of theatres due to lack of footfalls, the Rs 5-lakh budget film went on to garner millions because it engaged audiences of every shade and strata. And it was hailed as marking a new beginning in Indian cinema that had roots in the narrative tradition of earlier masters such as Bimal Roy and Benegal’s own cousin, Guru Dutt.
No, Ankur was not a fluke, Nishant (Night’s End, 1975) had proven. Once again, Benegal had set his film in Telengana, that part of Andhra Pradesh which had seen him grow up with his siblings in the household of his father whose livelihood came from a photo studio. “Alwal was a semi-rural semi-urban area, so I had seen both sides of a feudal society coming to grips with modernity setting in,” Benegal had explained to me.
Ankur had touched upon several ills of the feudal system: class difference, caste inequity, sexual exploitation of women, of the physically challenged, and even alcoholism among the poor. It had a sequence of thrashing, and it closed with the indication of violent protest. Almost all these themes would flower into independent saplings in Benegal’s subsequent films. Because the important thing for him, as he once said to BBC, was that “post-Independence India was changing its feudal character to the kind of society we wanted to create. Industrialisation at one level, creation of the middle class at another level, and disappearance of the regressive values of the feudal life.”
At that time, when I was yet to step out of my teens, I was deeply impacted by the oppressive ‘liberty’ of the caste person who thought he had a right over the lowborn woman. The empowerment of women was a theme Benegal felt strongly about. “The idea had started during the national movement with Gandhi, who first talked about women having equal responsibility,” pointed out the director of The Making of a Mahatma (1996). “They have to become aware of their strength and empower themselves because 50 percent of your population comprises of women.”
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From the birth of a new nation to the birth of a nation, Benegal constantly grappled with these themes. With “the whole business of tradition and modernity,” to borrow his words. “In an ancient society like India where so much of tradition is still valued and revered, when will we get rid of the dubious virtues?” he wondered.
Benegal functioned with a sensibility that was native to the length and breadth of the land that was his canvas. “As long as one functions with one’s sensibility, it will resonate with every person of that sensibility,” he maintained.
To me the most endearing trait of a Benegal film is the simplicity of its narrative. His incidents came out of life, his characters were from his surroundings. And his unfolding, though devoid of gimmick, was not bereft of drama nor of violence. He learnt to steer clear of artifices while making ad films where, “because you have to make your point in one minute, you tend to fall back on gimmick.”
Clarity of purpose and simplicity of narration were the two rails that never let his script go off into a meander of ultra mystical or complex metaphors. Magic realism? Hyper realism? High pitched melodrama? Benegal had need for none of these ploys. “The most complex of ideas have a simple way of projecting themselves,” he’d say. That, and not its reverse, was the most valid mantra of his life.
Why did the Phalke or the Padma Bhushan awards like simple story telling? “Because I like to involve people, and that happens when there is a dramatic juxtaposition of characters.” The use of drama did not in any way dilute the significance of his subject — be it casteism (Samar, Conflict, 1999), women’s empowerment (Bhumika, Role, 1977), portrayal of the principles of national heroes (Making of the Mahatma), or the struggle to wrest power from an oppressor (Junoon, The Obsession, 1978). Be it in feudal Telengana (Nishant), in a Borgadar’s Bengal (Arohan, The Ascent, 1982), an industrial Bombay (Kalyug, The Age of Vice, 1981), in Bose’s Burma (The Forgotten Hero, 2005), or Mujib’s Bangla (Mujib: The Making of a Nation, 2023).
In the process he dispelled the notion that showing our reality in cinema cannot engross or entertain. In fact, he questioned the very definition of the word ‘Entertainment’. “If a serious talk or a news holds you spellbound, isn’t that also entertainment?” he had asked me.
So, in order to engage the viewers, Benegal plunged into problems and miseries of the marginalised Indian: the milkman (Manthan, The Churning, 1976) and the weaver (Susman, The Essence, 1978), the untouchable (Samar) and the glamorous (Bhumika), the royals (Zubeidaa, 2001) and the entertainer (Sardari Begum, 1996), the middle class households where women are mere birthing machines (Hari Bhari, 2000), or the illiterate voters of Sajjanpur (Welcome to Sajjanpur, 2008).
Through all these voters, men and women, landlords and servants, on the banks of Katha Sagar (A Sea of Stories, 1986, TV series) or in the arid Birbhum or in the Mandi (Market Place, 1983) of flesh, Benegal made spectators of us. “Even a road accident turns us into spectators, some mute, some aggressive, some caring,” he’d pointed out. “What is it we want to experience when we rush to the window when we hear a car screeching to a half?” he’d asked. “Why is an unanticipated death — or murder — part of the entertainment formula? Because the adrenaline rush, the excitement in these exorcises our fears,” he had explained.
But Benegal’s wasn’t a conventional definition of entertainment. Nor did he decry the use of violence in mainstream cinema. “Indeed, it helps society because viewers find vicarious release from the stress that builds up in the tension filled life in urban societies.” As for his own films rooted in the remote pockets away from the metros? “Sometimes we need to use force because some social problems have got so deeply entrenched,” he was unabashed about violence in his films. “Change in certain situations can come only from the use of violence. But be careful never to lose your moral compass,” he immediately warned me. “Violence cannot be indiscriminately justified nor universalised. And in no circumstance should it be glamourised.”
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So human impulses, and social well-being were his prime concern. The constant interaction between an individual and his or her milieu; suffering inequities, and standing up against exploitation — we gained insight into these when we sat in darkened auditoriums to watch Arohan, Sardari Begum, Mammo (1994), Well Done Abba…(2010)
Socio-economic. Socio-political. Socio-legal. No label of genre could own Shyam Benegal. Because? “That will restrict my own thinking. How can I keep pace with the galloping changes that come with the ticking of centuries? And when the march of science unleashes computers and cellular phones, Internet and digital filmmaking?”
But what prompted his choice of subject every time he sat down to work on a script — with Shama Zaidi or Girish Karnad, Satyadev Dubey or Khalid Mohamed[1]? “There’s an electic streak in me that will not let me go where I’ve been before or do what I’ve done before,” Benegal was clear. So historical patterns to saw him go from The Making of a Mahatma on Gandhi, the advocate of non-violence, to Bose, The Forgotten Hero who escaped home incarceration and travelled through Himalayan hurdles and joined the Japanese to fight the British colonisers of India. From the Junoon of the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857, to Bharat Ek Khoj (India, a Search, 1988 TV serial) exploring the roots of India. From my Samvidhan (2010, TV mini-series), the formulation of the Constitution that is the firm foundation of the nation he mapped through his films, to Mujib on the birth of Bangladesh.
This refusal to be contained in a box had seen Benegal go from making promotional ads to documentaries on Steel Authority of India and Artificial Insemination in Animal Husbandry, on Nehru and Satyajit Ray. Benegal’s refusal to be boxed and labelled saw him make
Manthan and Hari Bhari — two prime examples of turning a documentary subject into a feature film. Why, his varied interest saw him making a documentary that mapped the course of a raga which originated with Mallikarjun Mansur hearing a leaking tap in the kitchenette of a friend in Bombay – and went on to capture the spirit of the financial capital!
What explains the prolificity of the man who celebrated his 90th birthday on December 16 and bade goodbye a week later? His indomitable and indefatigable spirit.
Unusual Concerts: The documentary on Mallikarjun Mansur (1910-1992) and Bombay
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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Apnake jana amar phurabe na/Ei Janare shongo tomai chena/
There will be no end to my discovery of myself/And this discovery keeps coming with my discovery of you
On the one hand, Rabindranath Tagore [1861-1941] has been with me almost all my life. On the other, I only began to discover that I had Rabindranath so centrally in me relatively late in my life. In fact, I have now realised that the process of discovering the way he has been embedded in me is part of the process of discovering my own self in the course of the life that I have been leading till now. Indeed, at this stage of my life, it seems to me that there will be no end to my discovery of the way Rabindranath has become part of my consciousness since I feel that there will be no end to discovering myself till I lose consciousness once and for all. The one thing I can say with certainty, using his words but in my translation is “There will be no end to my discovery of myself.” For sure, this process of discovering myself endlessly keeps happening with my continuing discovery of Rabindranath.
Surely, the process through which Rabindranath had become embedded in me began in childhood. However, I did not encounter his work in my (English medium) textbooks since I did not learn Bengali in school for a while. How then did I come to remember poems such as “Tal gach ek paye dariye/shob gach chareea/ Uki mare akaashe” (Palmrya tree, Standing on one foot/Exceeding all other trees/Winking at the sky”) or “Amader Choto Nadi chole bnake bnake” (“Our little river keeps winding its way”). How do I remember these opening lines even now? And why do I still associate such palm trees and winding little rivers with these lines even now whenever I am in the Bangladeshi countryside? Surely, it must have been my mother who planted Rabindranath in me in my seed time so that he would become embedded in my unconscious, only to surface in my consciousness decades later. It is surely no coincidence that she taught me Bengali and made me learn Rabindranath’s poems indirectly.
As a boy growing up at a time when the radio was the main source of entertainment in middle-class Bengali houses, my siblings and I were made to listen to Rabindra Sangeet in our house by my father, who felt that he had to share his favourite songs and singers in the musical genre with us, whether we wanted to listen to them or not. Of course, at that age I would have much rather not listen to those solemn-sounding, soulful songs, and whenever I could put my hands on the radio dials, I would listen to English popular music on Radio Ceylon. My favourite singers were Pat Boone, Elvis Presley, Cliff Richards and—a little later—the Beatles. In school, when we were not playing or talking about sports or girls, we boys would be discussing the pop music we heard on Radio Ceylon. By the end of the 60s, we would be talking about the English thrillers and comedies we saw on Dhaka television. What place could Rabindranath have in one’s life then? If Rabindranath had been placed in my innermost self by my mother through her reading of his poems to us children or my father through his addiction to Rabindra Sangeet, for the moment he was getting occluded deep inside me and, it would now seem, all but forgotten!
But from the middle of the 1960s, our lives in Dhaka began to change as the claims of Pakistan on us East Pakistanis started to loosen, little by little. It was a time when in neighbourhoods and on streets, processions would come out singing gonosangeet—literally songs of the people, but in effect music of protest and patriotism. First, the Six Points Movement and then the Agartala Conspriacy case were on everyone’s lips and East Pakistanis everywhere were becoming activists in one way or the other. There was no escaping songs like “Shonar Bangla” (“Golden Bengal”) or “Banglar mati, banglar jol, banglar baiuo, banglar phol/Punno houk”” ( “Let the land, the waters, the air and fruits of Bengal be blessed…) and “Bartho Praner Aborjona Purea Phele Agun Jalo” (“Burn the frustrated soul’s detritus and light up a flame”). In my school where we boys now studied “Advanced English” and “Easy Bengali”. There was no way we could have learned enough Bengali to read Rabindranath or Nazrul in the original in any sustained attempt, but how could we escape the call from such songs and poems like Nazrul’s “Bidrohi” (“The Rebel”) or the call from the streets to protest and even burn for our emancipation? At home, three of my four sisters would be practicing Rabindra Sangeet regularly, since this was what my parents wanted them to do, and so there would be no evading Rabindranath’s songs at home for this reason as well, but I was more interested in friends and sports than staying home and so I would hear the songs only in snatches at this time.
By the end of the decade though, Rabindranath was everywhere in our lives since becoming Bengali became first and being a Pakistani only came later. Even on Dhaka Television, Rabindranath’s songs and dance numbers were being aired fairly regularly then. Outside, one could get to see his plays and dance dramas being performed every now and then in functions and cultural events all over the city. He would soon become an important part of Pohela Boisakh, which itself would become instantly popular amongst us all almost as soon as Chhayanaut[1] organised the first event in Balda Garden as the decade came to a close. But while Rabindranath was everywhere around me all of a sudden, I was still not reading him at all, preferring English thrillers and westerns initially, and later, when I became a “serious” reader from college onwards, contemporary classics of English and European literature available in English editions.
In the early seventies, however, you could not be in Bangladesh without imbibing Rabindranath at least a little, for there was a process of osmosis at work at this time. Glued as we were to Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendro[2] during our Liberation War[3], we kept listening to his patriotic songs on our radios; the promise of Shonar Bangla seemed alive and possible then. The years after liberation, my generation was exposed to Rabindranath in new ways; we would get to hear and view singers like Kanika, Debobroto and Suchitra Mitra on stage in Dhaka; their songs became freely available in tapes in our shops; and Satyajit Ray’s film version of Rabindranath’s fiction and Ray’s documentary on him became staples of Dhaka’s film societies. I was finally growing up intellectually and was hungry for culture, and so how could I have escaped the poet’s works totally at this time?
But the Rabindranath that I was imbibing thus was almost entirely coming to me aurally and visually. Because he was becoming embedded in my consciousness through songs and the silver screen as well as television, he still inhabited the surface of my consciousness. And I was certainly not making any conscious bid to savor him. The seventies and the eighties were, in fact, decades when I was becoming an even more “serious” student of English literature than before and getting “advanced” degrees in my subject and acquiring expertise for my teaching career; where would I get the time to read Rabindranath then? As an expatriate student for six years in Canada and as a visiting faculty member for two years in the USA, I would be getting small doses of Rabindranath in those countries through the songs I kept hearing in the cassettes I had brought along of my favorite singers and in the occasional film versions of his work that I would get to see because of campus film societies, and I suppose nostalgia played a part in my yearning for him then, but I had no time to spare for him and not enough exposure to his works to let his ideas and his achievement resonate in me in any way.
To sum up my encounters with Rabindranath till then, I was discovering Rabindranath in small doses all the time and experiencing him directly here and there, but my knowledge was all very superficial and my understanding of him too limited. And nothing much had happened that would allow me to tap into the unconscious where all the memories of poems and songs by him I had first come across through my parents’ enthusiasm for his works were hidden.
“Dekha hoi nai chokkhu melia/Ghor hoite shudhu dui pa felia”/
“I haven’t seen with my eyes wide open/what was there only a stride or two away from my house”
In the 1980s, I became smitten by theory, especially the works of Edward Said, and suddenly questions of postcoloniality, ideology, power and location became all-important for my understanding of literature. I was coming around to the belief that I could not be a good and truly advanced student of English literature in Bangladesh, let alone a good teacher of the subject here, unless I sensitised myself to my roots and look at the world around me. And now I remembered some lines I had been hearing since childhood without realising their relevance for me and everyone else around us then: “Dekha hoi nai chokkhu melia/Ghor hoite shudhu dui pa felia” (“I haven’t seen with my eyes wide open/What was there only a stride or two away from my house”). Rabindranath had been all around me and yet I had not opened my eyes wide enough to learn from him. I had not read his works with any kind of sensitised attention at all and I had not been able to arrive at any kind of appreciation of his achievements except the smug sense of self-satisfaction at the thought that this Bengali had once won the Nobel Prize.
Towards the end of the 1990s, for the first time really, I plunged into Rabindranath and found—to quote Dryden on Chaucer— “here was God’s plenty”. Having opened my eyes to him I realized that there was so much to him than one could take in at any one time. He had once said in a song about the infinite contained in the finite and I now thought, “How appropriate of him!” He had said in one of his most famous poems, “Balaka[4]” about how one must not succumb to stasis and how the essence of life is motion and I thought, “how inspirational!” He had written in a song about viewing the Ultimate Truth through music and I thought “Exactly!” He had looked on in amazement in a starry night at how humans have a place in the cosmos (Akaash Bhora Surjo Tara[5]) and I thrilled at the idea now. He made me see the monsoonal kadam flower that I had passed every year without blinking an eye as immensely lovely. Every poem that I read enlightened me, every song lent my soul harmony, every short story or novel took me to eternal truths about human relationships. Who would not learn from a man who had been given some of the highest honors the world has offered any human being, when he says with such unambiguous humility, “Mornam ei bole khati houk/Aami tomaderi lok…” Let this be my claim to fame/I am all yours/This is how I would like to be introduced.” And so I kept reading him in between teaching and writing, finding him an endless source of inspiration, creativity and wisdom. I strove to learn about nature, the universe, people, relationships, beauty and the dark side of humans through his works. And soon I felt compelled to translate some of them.
Rabindranath, then, opened my eyes not only to the world I lived in but also helped me discover my own self as a product of forces that had taken our nation past 1947 to true liberation. He helped root me in Bengali and Bangladesh as never before, making me discover myself not merely as a Bengali but as a citizen of the world, a product of a certain history but also of the history of mankind. My discovery of him and my place in the world was furthered by the work I did in co-authoring The Essential Tagore and authoring a collection of essays on diverse aspects of his work.
But Rabindranath truly contains multitudes. What I now realise is that it is impossible to discover him fully in one life, especially when one embarks on the process of discovery so late in life. By now, therefore, I have despaired of knowing the whole man and feel I will get to know only parts of him. But I also know whatever I read of him will enlighten me and make me know myself better in every way than before. And so I’ll keep reading him and translating him, if only to know him and myself better in the days left for me!
[1] Centre for promotion of Bengali Culture established in 1961
Ratnottama Sengupta relives the fascination of Sukumar Ray’s legendary Abol Tabol, which has just completed its centenary
Sukumar Ray (1887-1923)Abol Tabol
Sukumar Ray, the creator of Abol Tabol[1], came into my life long before Upendra Kishore Roy Chowdhury, the author of Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne. Pather Panchali, the timeless novel, cast its spell when I outgrew the ghost stories penned by the father for kishore-kishoris, the young adults of Bengal. And Satyajit Ray, Sukumar’s son, became an icon only after I got my primary lessons in film viewing.
But, to go back to the beginning: I was a pravasi toddler growing up in Bombay when I would lisp, Baburam Sapure, kotha jaas bapu re/ Where are you off to, snake-charmer Baburam! And I’d recite, Ramgarurer chhana, haanste taader maana[2]! No no no no, we shall not laugh, I’d say, trying to choke my own laughter at the thought of forbidding laughter. For, by now, I would also fondly spout, Maasi go maasi, pachhe haansi – Neem gaache tey hocche seem… Aunt dear Aunt, I’m rolling in laughter that broad beans are growing on the neem tree! The mushroom wants to be an umbrella for the elephant, and a crow’s hatching the egg of a stork! Yes, I would laugh too as I recited these lines. For I had learnt that contradictions are funny.
RamgarurHunko Mukho HyanglaIllustration made by Sukumar Ray in Abol Tabol
There were other poems that I learnt by rote without knowing they were limericks, not mere rhymes. Some, I later realised, told stories; some were satires aimed at Sukumar’s own Banga samaj – the Bengali society – and some were oblique critiques of the Imperialists then Lording over his land. Hunko mukho hyangla, bari taar Bangla, do you know his dour-faced compatriot? And have you encountered the three pigs maathay jaader neiko tupi? The three pigs wearing no hat!
But most of all, his critique of his compatriots comes through in Sat Patra, A Suitable Boy. I won prizes for reciting it, long before I understood the critique of a Bengali father’s keenness to marry off his daughter to a ‘suitable boy’ – even if the proposed groom is dark or deaf, drunkard or devil…
It took years of growing up, in the literary family of Nabendu and Kanak Ghosh, to realise that some of the lines I heard every day were not abol tabol katha, mumbo jumbo words spewed out perfunctorily. So, my mother never took ‘No’ for an answer: “Utsahey ki na hoy, ki na hoy chestaay?” She’d quote Haaturey to say, “what can not be achieved by enthusiasm and effort?” And if I screamed to protest, she’d simply smile and ‘admire’ like the he-owl, “Khasa tor chechani, how sensationally you scream!” While Baba, come winter, would keep repeating, “Kintu sabar chaitey bhalo, powruti aar jhola gur[3]!” Who would have thought of clubbing the daily bread of the rulers with the winter delicacy of the ruled rustics!
When I visited Kolkata, I often heard the phrases “Narad! Narad! (let the fight begin)”, “Gechho Dada (here now, off again now)”, and “Nyara beltala jaay ka baar (how often does a bald-pated man walk under the wood-apple tree).” And I wondered, did Sukumar Ray weave poems around the phrases, or did they become part of our colloquialism, thanks to Abol Tabol?
It was Baba who brought me alive to the literary merits of the verses sans sense. And even as I studied Edward Lear as a student of literature, I recognised that Sukumar Ray pulled off the harnessing of contradictions with as much ease as he surprised us with his endings. Ei dekho notebook, pencil e haatey,/ Ei dekho bhara sab Kil bil lekhatey[4]. Yes, Ray’s Kheror Khaata – handmade rough red cotton cloth wrapped scroll book — was overflowing with thoughts, words and illustrations. If he was talking of the lack of coherence in God’s own country, Shib thakurer aapan deshe, he was also making fun of Ekushey Aiin, The Law of 21, whereby Karur jodi gof gajaay, a man would have to pay a hefty tax for even the natural occurrence of whiskers! And Abaak Kando! How strange that he ate with his hand, se naaki roj haat diye bhaat maakhey!
Like Satyajit Ray’s reading of his granddad’s Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne,Larai Khyapa has nuggets hidden in the lines to protest the war mongering of nations. So, Saat German, Jagai eka, tabuo Jagai larey! And Paanch byata ke khatam karey Jagai Dada molo! Jagai, a homegrown brawny, alone takes on seven strapping Germans! And breathes his last only when the last of them is dead!
To conclude, I will quote Bujhiye Bola [5]and say, Ki bolchhili, esab sudhu abol tabol bakuni? Bujhtey holey magaj laagey, bolechhilam takhuni![6]
Didn’t I tell you, you need to read and re-read Sukumar Ray, to understand the truth lining his nonsense poems?
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Khuror KolGonf ChuriDrawings of Sukumar Ray from Abol tabol
“Sukumar Ray’s drawings are a unique part of our art tradition. And Swapan Maity has dared to give sculptural forms to those two-dimensional line drawings.” It is tough to put in words the significance of these miniatures in terracotta, of those humour-induced fun-filled drawings of the quirky protagonists of Abol Tabol, said Partha Pratim Deb. The former Dean, Faculty of Visual Art at Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata was speaking at the inauguration of ‘Ajab Kumar’, a weeklong exhibition of reliefs and miniatures in terracotta along with portraits of Sukumar, his father Upendra Kishore, his son Satyajit Ray, and grandson Sandip – each of them a legend in their own right. What made the portraits so special was that they were all done in a single stroke of one unbroken line.
Sukumar Ray – born October 30, 1887; died September 10, 1923 — is easily identified as a pioneer in Bengal’s literary art. His father was not only a writer, he played the violin, he painted, he dabbled in composing music, he was an amateur astronomer, and he was an entrepreneur in printing technology. Upendra Kishore Ray studied block-making, conducted experiments and set up a business in making blocks. His sister, Mrinalini, was married to Hemen Bose, elder brother of pioneer scientist Jagadish Bose, who was an entrepreneur of renown.
Sukumar too grew up to be an expert in Printing Technology. To master that, he travelled to London on a scholarship to train in Photography and Printing Technology at the School of Photo Engraving and Lithography. On his return, he worked to further the family firm, M/s U Ray and Sons, where he was involved with his brothers, Subinay and Subimal. And his sisters, Sukhalata Rao and Punyalata, too were involved in the magazine published by Upendra Kishore Ray, Sandesh[7], which carved a distinct place in the realm of children’s literature in Bengali.
Sandesh covers. The Journal was started in 1913
Born at the peak of the renaissance in Bengal when literature to art, religion to fashion, were all experiencing a regeneration after coming in contact with European lifestyle and industrial revolution, Sukumar had among his friends the literary genius Rabindranath Tagore, the scientists Jagadish Chandra Bose and Prafulla Chandra Ray, composer Atul Prasad Sen. Multitalented like his father, Sukumar was adept at photography and had joined the Royal Photographic Society. And apart from limericks, he wrote the stories of Pagla Dashu[8], technical essays on the new methods he had developed in halftone block-making in journals like the Penrose Annual, plays like Abaak Jalpan (The Curious Thirst), a wealth of literature for young readers in Khai Khai[9]. And within days of his passing was published Abol Tabol – mumbo jumbo that etched his name in the mind and heart of every child born to the language spoken by Tagore and Bankim, Nazrul and Sarat Chandra.
Pagla DashuKhai Khai
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The year was 1993. Swapan Maity, thirty years ago, was a student in the Visual Art Department of Rabindra Bharati University on the campus housed in the ancestral residence of the Tagores at Jorasanko. When his other batchmates spent time singing, playing, painting or simply leg pulling their friends, Maity would tirelessly bury himself in crafting figurines in clay. Some of these figures had naturally different tint – pink or red earth – determined by their source, Ganga in Kolkata or the clay of Rangamati near his hometown Midnapore.
Once satisfied with the finish, the learner would lay them out in the long corridors of the heritage architecture to let them dry in the sun. Even his friends who teased him over his ceaseless devotion to sculpture were left speechless when they recognised the life-like recreation in lifeless mud of the snake charmer, Baburam Sapure; of Uncle’s Contraption, Khuror Kal; of Kumro Potash, the Pumpkin Prince; of the Theft of the Whiskers in Gonf Churi.
Kumro PotashBaburam SapureArt of Sukumar Ray in Abol Tabol
The expressive miniatures have added volume to the body of illustrations imaged by the genius of Sukumar Ray. The miniatures, unique then, are still a marvel. Reviewed in the popular magazine Desh[10]of April 9, 1994, they were exhibited in the closing month of 2023 – at Kolkata’s celebrated Academy of Fine Arts – to mark the completion of a hundred years of their creation in a Bengal – nay, an India that was ruled by the imperialist government in the name of King George V of Britain.
Along with the miniatures Maity – whose statue of Don Bosco is a landmark of Kolkata’s busy Park Circus area – had added a few relief sculptures to encapsulate the entire range of the satire robed in rhymes that amazingly continue to be repeated decade after decade by generation after generation, and still are so pertinent.
The Expressive miniatures of Sukumar Ray’s world by Swapan Maity in ‘Ajab Kumar’, a weeklong exhibition of reliefs and miniatures in terracotta. Photos provided by Ratnottama Sengupta
[1] Literal translation from Bengali: Mumbo Jumbo. First published on 19th September 1923
[2] Literal translation from Bengali: Ramgarur’s children, they are not allowed to laugh
[3] Bengali literal translation: But the most supreme food is bread with liquid molasses…
[4] Bengali literal translation: See the notebook, pencil in hand,/ See it filled with all squiggly writing
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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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
A writer, a painter, an actor too? Which of these have I known in my friend, Bulbul Sharma? Ratnottama Sengupta ponders as she reverses the gear in the time machine
Bulbul Sharma
I have never formally ‘interviewed’ Bulbul Sharma. That’s because I was editing her writings even before I met her, became friends with her, with her brother Dr Ashok Mukherjee, her sister-in-law, Mandira, whose brother-in-law, Amulya Ganguli, was a much-respected political commentator including with The Statesman and The Times of India which I joined after I shifted to Delhi.
There were many journalists in her family. Bulbul herself was a columnist with The Telegraph when I joined the ‘handsome’ newspaper. Her columns on ‘Indian Birds’ would always come with her own illustrations. These later combined to become The Book of Indian Birds for Children – and now she’s penning stories for neo-literates. So I have never been able to separate the two souls of Bulbul – a writer whose books have been translated into French, German, Italian, Finnish, and an artist in the collection of National Gallery of Modern Art, Lalit Kala Akademi, UNICEF, Chandigarh Museum, Nehru Centre, London, National Institute of Health, Washington.
Bulbul, born in Delhi and raised in Bhilai, studied Russian and literature at Jawaharlal Nehru University before going to Moscow for further studies, in 1972. When she returned a year later, she decided to pursue her other love and made a career in art. So, in mid 1980s, once I shifted to Delhi, I got to know the artist Bulbul at close quarters. By then she was an active graphic artist who worked in the Garhi Artists’ Studio.
She would do papier mache items – sculptures, or of day-to-day usage. Then, she was teaching art to children of construction site workers left in the care of the Mobile Creche. Soon she was handholding me in creating monoprints in printmaking workshops, while my son started taking serious interest in art even as he keenly participated in her storytelling sessions.
Paper mache sculpture: BowlAubergines & Onions: Etching from Ratnottama Sengupta’s collectionArtwork by Bulbul Sharma: Photos provided by Ratnottama Sengupta
And then one day Bulbul invited me to join her and Dolly Narang of The Village Gallery in Hauz Khas, to do a workshop with the inmates of Tihar Central Jail, one of the toughest in Asia, which had started off on its reformation trail under the no-nonsense IPS officer, Kiran Bedi, who dreamt of giving convicts “the hope for a better future once they stepped out as free people.”
The other avtar of Bulbul is the one you are most likely to encounter online. A gifted narrator who depicts people and places she has known and seen in person, styled with little complication, to bring out the beauty in everyday life. Her first collection of short stories, My Sainted Aunts (1992) had bewitched me as much as my son, then in his pre-teen years. For, it etched with endearing affection the reality in a Bengali household that abounded — especially in my childhood — with pishimas[1]and mashimas[2] who were eccentric yet lovable. These aunts are easily identifiable and not easily forgettable though few aunts today are widows in white, eating out of stoneware, shunning onions, or an ‘outsider’: caste, creed, chicken and dog — all were barred.
A few years down, Bulbul, a naturalist who grows herbs in her orchard in the folds of Himalaya and often etches carrots and onions, came out with The Anger of Aubergines (1997) which had cuisine and recipes layering the text. It is a collection of stories about women for whom food is passion, or obsession. “For some it is a gift, for some a means of revenge, and for some it is a source of power,” as Bulbul herself might summarise. Once again, my gourmet family loved it.
Food is the most elementary aspect of human society and culture. And Bulbul has repeatedly capitalized on this multi-contextual significance of food. Not surprising, when I was editing an Encyclopedia of Culture, for the publishing house Ratna Sagar, I directly went to Bulbul for the chapter on ‘Cuisine’. In quite the same way, when a literature festival in Amritsar’s Majha House got Bulbul and me together on a panel, it was to talk about food as an expression of culture. “Learn everything you can, anytime you can, from anyone you can. There will always come a time when you will be grateful you did…” Bulbul once told a classful of students what she herself has practiced through life.
But with all this, I had virtually forgotten that Bulbul had acted in a film by Mrinal Sen[3]. Bulbul herself reminded me of this after reading my interview with Suhasini Mulay[4] occasioned by the ongoing birth centenary of the director of watersheds in Indian cinema like Bhuvan Shome[5]. I promptly wrote to her asking her to remember the salient ‘truths’ she had learnt by acting in the first of Sen’s Calcutta Trilogy[6].
Interview (1971) was a slim tale – a uni-linear storyline that unfolds on screen as a non-linear narrative. Stylistically it was the opposite of Calcutta 71 (1972), the second of Sen’s Calcutta trilogy, which built on stories by eminent authors like Manik Bandopadhyay, Prabodh Sanyal, and Samaresh Bose. Interview was about Ranjit, whose love interest Bulbul, was enacted by Bulbul Sharma.
The story went thus: A personable, smart but unemployed Ranjit is assured, in Calcutta of the post-Naxal years, of a lucrative job in a foreign firm by a family friend – if he shows up in a suit. It can’t be such a big ‘IF’, right? Wrong. He can’t get his suit back from the laundry because of a strike by the labour union. His father’s hand-me-down doesn’t fit him. He borrows from a friend but, on his way home, a fracas ensues in the bus and the net result is Ranjit is without a suit to appear in for the critical Interview. Will he, must he, go dressed in the hardcore Bengali attire of dhuti-panjabi?
Just the year before, Pratidwandi (1970) had been released, and it too had an interview at the core of the script. The first of Satyajit Ray’sCalcutta trilogy[7], it had cast newcomer Dhritiman Chatterjee, who would play the pivotal role in Padatik (1973), the clinching film in Sen’s trilogy. But Interview had cast another newcomer who was crowned the Best Actor at Karlovy Vary for playing Ranjit. In subsequent years, he became a megastar of the Bengali screen whom Ray too cast in his penultimate film, Shakha Prosakha (1990). And even as he was scoring a century in films, Ranjit Mallick’s daughter, Koel, was scaling heights as a lead actress.
Bulbul Sharma and Ranjit Mallick in Interview: Photo provided by Ratnottama Sengupta
Contrast this with Bulbul: She did not pursue a career in acting. So how had she come to play the Bulbul of Interview? Let’s hear the story in her own voice.
Bulbul Sharma: I was visiting my cousin sister Sunanda Devi — Banerjee who was a very renowned Bengali actress in the 1950s. She had featured in New Theatre’s Drishtidan[8] (1948), directed by Nitin Bose; Anjangarh[9](1948), directed by Bimal Roy; opposite Uttam Kumar in Ajay Kar’s Shuno Baranari[10](1960) and Chitta Basu’s Maya Mriga[11](1960).
Sunanda Didi and her husband[12], who was a film distributor, had produced Mrinal Sen’s first film, Raat Bhore[13](1957). Mrinalda had come to her house to discuss something with her husband and he saw me. He asked my cousin if I would like to act in a Bengali film. I was 18 years old and a student at JNU then. I was thrilled but my parents were not keen at all. However, though reluctantly, they agreed since it was Mrinal Sen. By this time he had won national and international awards with Bhuvan Shome.
Me:How did you prepare for the character? Did Mrinalda brief you? I don’t think he had a script in hand…
Bulbul: I did not do anything to prepare. My name in Interview is ‘Bulbul’, and Ranjit Mallick is ‘Ranjit’. Mrinalda said, “Be your natural self. Don’t try to act.” In fact I am an art student in the film. The only problem was that since I had lived all my life in Delhi, my Bengali accent was not very good. He often teased me about it. “Keep that smile for my camera,” he would say to me.
Me:Tell me about your co-actors Bulbul. Do you recall any incident that stays on in memory?
Bulbul: I remember my co-actor, Ranjit Mallick, was a serious, very quiet person. I think he got fed up of my constant chatter. He asked me once if everyone in Delhi talked so much. I was not surprised that he became one of the biggest stars in Bengali cinema but we did not keep in touch, alas.
Me:Why did you not think of pursuing acting as a career?
Bulbul: Acting was not something I had ever thought of doing. This film just happened by chance. Painting and creative writing was my passion and still is. But don’t lose hope! Recently I was offered a role of a grandmother. I might just do it!
Me:How did you respond to Interview when it released more than 50 years ago? And how do you respond to it now?
Bulbul: When I saw the film almost fifty years ago I don’t think I really understood what a brilliant film it was. I was 18 and just happy to see myself on the big screen.
Now when I saw Interview again, I really admired the way the everyday situations in a middle class Bengali home are played out. The scene when Ranjit’s mother, the great actress Karuna Banerjee – who had played Apu’s mother in Pather Panchali – searches for the dry cleaner’s receipt is just heart breaking.
The interview scene itself is so sensitively done. You want Ranjit to get the job but you know it will not happen. There is such understated humour, anger and sadness in that scene. I wish I could tell Mrinalda all that today!
Me:Interview, the first of Mrinalda’s Calcutta Trilogy, is considered a milestone in his oeuvre because of its socio-political content as well as its naturalistic form. How does it compare with the other two films of the Trilogy – Calcutta 71 and Padatik?
Bulbul: Unfortunately I have not seen these two films.
Me:Would you compare it with Ray’s Pratidwandi which also centred on a job interview?
Bulbul: Yes, Ray’s Pratidwandi also deals with the theme of unemployment during that turbulent period – 1969 to 1971 – in Kolkata. Yet they are not at all similar.
I think Mrinalda’s slightly impish, dark humour is lacking in the other film. Both are amazing films by our most brilliant directors. Films you very rarely get to see now.
Silk Painting with Kantha stitch by Bulbul Sharma Photos provided by Ratnottama Sengupta
Okay Bulbul, now my son and I will both wait to meet your onscreen Grandma avtar!
[6] Three films by Mrinal Sen: Interview (1971), Calcutta 71 (1972), Padatik (The Guerilla Fighter, 1973)
[7] Known collectively as the Calcutta trilogy, The Adversary (1970), Company Limited (1971) and The Middleman (1975) documented the radical changes Calcutta.
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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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Durga Puja, a community- based festival. Courtesy: Creative Commons
Long ago as children, we looked forward to the autumnal festival of Durga Puja. For those who lived outside Bengal, there was no holiday but it was still a break, a season filled with joie de vivre, when family and friends would gather to celebrate the community-based festival, Durga Puja. Parallelly, many from diverse Indian cultures celebrated Navratri — also to do with Durga. On the last day of the Durga Puja, when the Goddess is said to head home, North Indians and Nepalese and some in Myanmar celebrate Dusshera or Dashain, marking the victory of Rama over Ravana, a victory he achieved by praying to the same Goddess. Perhaps, myriads of festivals bloom in this season as grains would have been harvested and people would have had the leisure to celebrate.
Over time, Durga Puja continues as important as Christmas for Bengalis worldwide, though it evolved only a few centuries ago. For the diaspora, this festival, declared “Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity” by UNESCO, is a source of joy. While devotees welcome the Goddess Durga and her children home, sons and daughters living away would use this event as a reason to visit their parents. Often, special journals featuring writings of greats, like Satyajit Ray, Tagore, Syed Mujtaba Ali, Nazrul would be circulated in the spirit of the festival.
The story around the festival gives out that like an immigrant, the married Goddess who lived with her husband, Shiva, would visit her parent’s home for five days. Her advent was called Agomoni. Aruna Chakravarti contends in her essay, Durga’s Agomoni “is an expression, pure and simple, of the everyday life of women in a rural community –their joys and sorrows; hopes and fears”. While some war and kill in the name of religion, as in the recent Middle Eastern conflict, Chakravarti, has given us an essay which shows how folk festivities in Bengal revelled in syncretism. Their origins were more primal than defined by the tenets of organised religion. And people celebrated the occasion together despite differences in beliefs, enjoying — sometimes even traveling. In that spirit, Somdatta Mandal has brought us travel writings by Tagore laced with humour. The spirit continues to be rekindled by writings of Tagore’s student, Syed Mujtaba Ali, and an interview with his translator, Nazes Afroz.
We start this special edition with translations of two writers who continue to be part of the syncretic celebrations beyond their lives, Tagore and Nazrul. Professor Fakrul Alam brings to us the theme of homecoming explored by Nazrul and Tagore describes the spirit that colours this mellow season of Autumn
Poetry
Nazrul’s Kon KuleAaj Bhirlo Tori ( On which shore has my boat moored today?), translated from Bengali by ProfessorFakrul Alam, explores the theme of spiritual homecoming . Click here to read.
Tagore’sAmra Bedhechhi Kasher Guchho (We have Tied Bunches of Kash), translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty, is a hymn to the spirit of autumn which heralds the festival of Durga Puja. Click here to read.
Somdatta Mandal translates from Bengali Travels & Holidays: Humour from Rabindranath. Both the essay and letters are around travel, a favourite past time among Bengalis, especially during this festival. Click here to read.
ProfessorFakrul Alam brings to us Tagore songs in translation and in discussion on the season that follows the scorching heat of summer months. Clickhereto read.
“May is pretty, May is mild,
Dances like a happy child…”
Annette Wynne (Early twentieth century)
Each month is expressed in a different form by nature in various parts of the world. In the tropics, May is sweltering and hot — peak summer. In the Southern hemisphere, it is cold. However, with climate change setting in, the patterns are changing, and the temperatures are swinging to extremes. Sometimes, one wonders if this is a reflection of human minds, which seem to swing like pendulums to create dissensions and conflicts in the current world. Nothing seems constant and the winds of change have taken on a menacing appearance. If we go by Nazrul’s outlook, destruction is a part of creating a new way of life as he contends in his poem, ‘Ring Bells of Victory’ — “Why fear destruction? It’s the gateway to creation!” Is this how we will move towards ‘dancing like a happy child’?
Mitra Phukan addresses this need for change in her novel, What Will People Say — not with intensity of Nazrul nor in poetry but with a light feathery wand, more in the tradition of Jane Austen. Her narrative reflects on change at various levels to explore the destruction of old customs giving way to new that are more accepting and kinder to inclusivity, addressing issues like widow remarriage in conservative Hindu frameworks, female fellowship and ageing as Phukan tells us in her interview. Upcoming voice, Prerna Gill, lauded by names like Arundhathi Subramaniam and Chitra Divakaruni, has also been in conversation with Shantanu Ray Choudhuri on her book of verses, Meanwhile. She has refreshing perspectives on life and literature.
Devraj Singh Kalsi has written a nostalgic piece that hovers between irony and perhaps, a reformatory urge… I am not quite sure, but it is as enjoyable and compelling as Meredith Stephen’s narrative on her conservation efforts in Kangaroo Island in the Southern hemisphere and fantastic animals she meets, livened further by her photography. Ravi Shankar talks of his night hikes in the Northern hemisphere, more accurately, in the Himalayas. While trekking at night seems a risky task, trying to recreate dishes from the past is no less daunting, as Suzanne Kamata tells us in her Notes from Japan.
May hosts the birthday of a number of greats, including Tagore and Satyajit Ray. Ratnottama Sengupta’s piece on Ray’s birth anniversary celebrations with actress Jaya Bachchan recounting her experience while working for Ray in Mahanagar(Big City), a film that has been restored and was part of celebrations for the filmmaker’s 102nd Birth anniversary captures the nostalgia of a famous actress on the greatest filmmakers of our times. She has also given us an essay on Tagore and cinema in memory of the great soul, who was just sixty years older to Ray and impacted the filmmaker too. Ray had a year-long sojourn in Santiniketan during his youth.
Eulogising Rabindrasangeet and its lyrics is an essay by Professor Fakrul Alam on Tagore. Professor Alam has translated number of his songs for the essay as he has, a powerful poem from Bengali by Masud Khan. A transcreation of Tagore’s first birthday poem , a wonderful translation of Balochi poetry by Fazal Baloch of Munir Momin’s verses, another one from Korean by Ihlwha Choi rounds up the translated poetry in this edition. Stories that reach out with their poignant telling include Nadir Ali’s narrative, translated from Punjabi by his daughter, Amna Ali, and Aruna Chakravarti’s translation of a short story by Tagore. We have more stories from around the world with Julian Gallo exploring addiction, Abdullah Rayhan with a poignant narrative from Bangladesh, Sreelekha Chatterjee with a short funny tale and Paul Mirabile exploring the supernatural and horror, a sequel to ‘The Book Hunter‘, published in the April issue.
All the genres we host seem to be topped with a sprinkling of pieces on Tagore as this is his birth month. A book excerpt from Chakravarti’s Daughters of Jorasankonarrates her well-researched version of Tagore’s last birthday celebration and carries her translation of the last birthday song by the giant of Bengali literature. The other book excerpt is from Bhubaneswar@75 – Perspectives, edited by Bhaskar Parichha/ Charudutta Panigrahi. Parichha has also reviewed Journey After Midnight – A Punjabi Life: From India to Canadaby Ujjal Dosanjh, a book that starts in pre-independent India and travels with the writer to Canada via UK. Again to commemorate the maestro’s birth anniversary, Meenakshi Malhotra has revisited Radha Chakravarty’s translation of Tagore’s Farewell Song. Somdatta Mandal has critiqued KR Meera’sJezebel, translated from Malayalam by Abhirami Girija Sriram and K. S. Bijukuma. Lakshmi Kannan has introduced to us Jaydeep Sarangi’s collection of poems, letters in lower case.
There are pieces that still reach out to be mentioned. Do visit our content page for May. I would like to thank Sohana Manzoor for her fantastic artwork and continued editorial support for the Tagore translations and the whole team for helping me put together this issue. Thank you. A huge thanks to our loyal readers and contributors who continue to bring in vibrant content, photography and artwork. Without you all, we would not be where we are today.
Ratnottama Sengupta time travels fifty years back as famed actress Jaya Bachchan recounts her first day on the sets of Satyajit Ray’s Mahanagar
In this event, Jaya Bachchan recounts her days while acting in Satyajit Ray’s award-winning film Mahanagar or The Big City. Photo provided by Ratnottama Sengupta
When Shanti Di, my eldest aunt’s eldest daughter, had got married in 1964, she was already working. So she did not have to face the resistance Arati, the pivotal character of Mahanagar had to face from her in-laws and son. But prejudices and cryptic comments she did face — from her male colleagues. “Women in workplace? They only deprive deserving men of a livelihood,” they would say. “Because, men have to run entire households on their earnings while women work only for the ‘sauce’ — jewellery and saris!”
Mahanagar poster designed by Satyajit Ray. Photo provided by Ratnottama Sengupta
I remembered this at the screening of a restored print of Mahanagar (The Big City, 1963) at Nandan, the West Bengal Film Centre, to mark the 102nd birth anniversary of Satyajit Ray. Based on Narendra Mitra[1]‘s novel, Abataranika (Staircase), the film followed the trials and triumph of Arati, a housewife who steps out of the narrow domestic walls when she finds her husband Subrato bending under the weight of fending for a superannuated father, an aged mother, a school going sister, and their little boy along with themselves.
But once she starts working, she enjoys her new role of conversing with and convincing women with deep pockets to buy her products — and soon her confidence in her work grows along with her empathy with other women who are yet to be empowered like her sister-in-law, Bani, her mother-in-law, Sarojini, her Anglo Indian colleague, Edith Simmons… When her husband loses his job, Arati firmly negotiates a raise. And when Edith is fired for absence due to ill health she takes up cudgel for the ‘insult’.
The remarkable sensitivity and the eye for details with which Satyajit Ray etched the ordinary lives of a middle class family earned him the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival 1964. The director’s son, Sandip Ray, remembers attending the ceremony with his parents. “Why were you not there?” a voice from the audience asked Jaya Bachchan, who was in conversation with the maestro’s son, now a renowned director in his own right. “Why would they invite me, who was just a ‘cameo artiste’ as someone mentioned this evening?”
Jaya Bachchan and Sandipt Ray conversing at the event on May 1, 2023.
Jaya Di[2] — as I am privileged to address her, much like Sandip ‘Babu’ Ray — was much more than a cameo artiste in Mahanagar. Her ‘Bani’ was a flesh and blood character as she brought to life a marriageable sister who, in my childhood and not just in Bengal, was a part and parcel of any Indian household. Bubbly, sincere, attached to her Boudi as much as to her little nephew whom she mothers when the housewife is earning the family its bread, she is pampered by her brother even as she is being trained by her mother to pick up the haata-khunti…spatula-spoon…in the kitchen!
“I distinctly remember the first day of shooting in Indrapuri Studios. It marked my debut in films. Madhabi Di and Anil Kaku were in that shot which is reproduced whenever something is written about Mahanagar. I am at the study table, trying to write something. Those days I used to wear specs when I was reading. Manik[3] Kaku must have made a mental note of that, he said, ‘Don’t take off your specs, keep them on for the shot.’ I didn’t have any dialogue for the scene. So, although I had not even been on stage before this, I didn’t feel that I was acting. The camera in front of me with Subrata Mitra behind it was not daunting. I was comfortable, just my usual self…”
Little did Jaya Bhaduri know, then, that this ‘girl-next-door’ identity would become her calling card in the years to come, storming even the glamorous boulevards of tinsel town Bollywood.
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How did Jaya reach the sets of Mahanagar? She didn’t: Ray had sent for the girl in her teens. In all probability, she was recommended by Robi Ghosh and Sharmila Tagore. “They were shooting for Tapan Sinha’s Nirjan Saikatey (1963) when I had gone to Puri with my father, Tarun Bhaduri,” Jaya Di recounts. “We met them and on their return to Kolkata both Robi Kaku[4] and Rinku[5] Di told Manik Kaku that ‘the girl for that role (of sister) has been found at last!'”
The first time she met Ray he did not ask her anything special. Nor did he ask her to do anything particular on the set. Young Jaya was told to read her lessons aloud, which she did, just as any school going child in Bengal did half a century ago. “I remember that Baba told Jaya Di to continue reading after the camera had moved on because he wanted an audio track of her reading in the background,” Sandip recalled in the course of the conversation. “She continued to read, but suddenly there was a sound of coughing. What happened?? In reply to everyone’s anxious query she coolly replied, ‘Why? Can’t a fly wing its way into my mouth while I’m reading?'”
Jaya Di herself has no recollection of this prank, but she vividly remembers that she would pester people on the set, incessantly asking questions. She especially questioned Subrato Mitra for taking time to light up! “It was as if we were out on a picnic,” she smiles. “The entire unit indulged me like a little girl. I was very comfortable because I had no burden to carry. In the presence of major actors I was required to do very little!”
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Jaya Bhaduri was not given any express direction — neither about how to speak her lines nor about action or emotion. She had full freedom to interpret the scene and react to the other characters. “Manik Kaku used to call all the artistes and read out all the dialogues to us. His intonation would give us an idea of what he wanted from us. We interpreted the scene according to our capacity and gave our best shot. He went about canning it, he never had any problem with my delivery.”
But lessons in acting she did learn on the sets of Mahanagar — by observing how the director groomed the lead actress. “I have seen Manik Kaku directing Madhabi Di to grow into the role of Arati. He literally groomed her in acting. ‘Look this way, through the corner of your eyes. Turn your head like this. Say it like this. Wear the sari in this manner…’ The fact is that Satyajit Ray had a strong visual sense. He envisaged how the character would look and behave at the outset, how she would change, how she would resolve her dilemmas.”
In other words, his actors were not puppets: he allowed the spontaneity of some, like Jaya; he moulded the emotive action of some, like Madhabi Mukherjee who would soon storm the silver screen as Charulata (1964).
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“Mahanagar was a very modern film, and not just at the time it was made,” Jaya Bachchan observes. Her critique of Ray’s first urban development film gains greater weight from the fact that, in the intervening years, she has ‘grown up’. From a school girl to a trained actor. From the heartthrob of every Indian family in 1970s to the heartthrob of her ‘Lambuji[6]‘ — Amitabh Bachchan — whose charisma straddles two centuries, three generations, five continents. From a reclusive personal life to a vibrant political presence in the upper house of India’s Parliament.
Young Jaya Bhaduri (now Jaya Bachchan) in between lead actress Madhabi Mukherjee and Anil Chatterjee. Photo provided by Ratnottama Sengupta
So let me elaborate on her observation, taking off from a scene between her and Subroto, her elder brother in Mahanagar, enacted by Anil Chatterjee.
Subrato has come home from work and his sister asks him for his pen as hers has run out of ink. He enquires when her exams are to commence, then he comments, “What use is this reading and writing? Sei toh henshel thelte hobey, you’ll end up dealing with only pots and pans!”
“Sekhaay toh,” Bani is quick to revert. “They teach us that too – it’s Domestic Science.”
That statement portrayed Ray’s attitude towards housewife. It was and still is a commentary on the identity — role — of a contemporary wife. It is in fact every woman’s attitude in contemporary India,
Jaya Di has observed: “Today every woman also has to and does work. Not only for economic reasons but for identity, purpose in life. Those who have had higher education, certainly do. Those who have not studied much, who help with housework also have such dignity. I see their confidence in the way they carry themselves. They know their mind and they don’t hesitate to say up front what work they will do and what they won’t; how much time they will apportion to a household and when they will leave. And like urban working women, they too save a little from their earnings, use some of it and keep some for emergencies.”
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Ray’s masterstroke is seen in the way he sketched the nuances of the bank clerk husband, complete with his angst and jealousy. He is proud of his wife’s charming appearance, he is confident she can steer herself through the career of a salesgirl, he is happy when the second income flows in. Yet — and especially when he loses his job — he suffers from insecurity, jealousy, suspicion. To the extent that the man who wrote her application letters, goads her to write a resignation letter. He is redeemed by the stand he takes at the very end when she gives up her much-needed job to protest a wrong against a colleague.
Critics have found Ray to be more kind to the protagonist than Narendra Nath Mitra, the Bengali author who also penned Ras[7] (made into the Hindi film Saudagar (Trader, 1973) which again builds upon how economic realities can make or mar a marriage. About a decade later Jaya Bachchan co-starred with husband Amitabh Bachchan in Abhimaan[8](1973). In it Hrishikesh Mukherjee takes to an extreme the consequences of a husband’s ego trip when his wife fares better than him, professionally and financially.
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Earlier Hrishikesh Mukherjee had, in Guddi (1971), given the young sister of Mahanagar a full canvas to come into her own as an actor. The same bubbly girl matures into a woman who can differentiate between love and infatuation. “After Mahanagar I was very selective. I chose to work only with directors who had a ‘Bengali’ sensibility,” Jaya Di says without a hint of hesitation.
And the rapport she struck with Ray? It lasted a lifetime. When she joined the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) she asked her Manik Kaku for a letter of commendation to go with her biodata. He wrote back saying that she doesn’t need an institute but join it, “it is the place for you”.
She went thinking she would not last beyond a few months but with batchmates like Anil Dhawan, her co-star in Piya Ka Ghar (1972), and Danny Denzongpa, she stayed the full course. “And when Manik Kaku came with the print of Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne (1969), I felt so proud! I went to the airport to pick him up!”
That bonding would show every time they were in each other’s vicinity, Sandip Ray reiterates. “Once we were in Bombay and Baba stepped out of the Taj Mahal Hotel to leaf through books in the stall just outside. Suddenly a shrill voice screamed, ‘Manik Kakuuu!’ Jaya Di was passing by in her car and had spotted him!” “And I hugged him!” Jaya Di adds, “I took liberties others would hesitate to.”
So why was she was not seen in his films again? “There were talks of casting me in Pratidwandi (1970) opposite Dhritiman Chatterjee,” Jaya recalls, “but I was in FTII then. Later I accosted him for not giving me a thought (for the role) – ‘You could have at least called me!’ His reply? ‘It was not necessary.’ That’s all!
“As if to add insult to injury, Manik Kaku got Amitji to do the voice over for Shatranj Ke Khilari (The Chess Players, 1977) but a role for me? No! I was so angry I went and met him in Rajkamal Studio. His reply? ‘ Ha ha ha…’ Not a word more.”
Amitabh Bachchan doing the voice over for Satyajit Ray in Shatranj Ke Khilari. Picture from Bachchan’s FB, provided by Ratnottama Sengupta.
That did not stop Jaya Bachchan from going to Bishop Lefroy Road every time she happened to be in Kolkata. She had, after all, seen the films the ‘Towering Inferno’ made even before Mahanagar. “Every time I watched a film by Ray I felt this is his best. Until the next one came along…” So, when Charulata came, Mahanagar paled. But wait, to this day Debi (The Goddess, 1960) continues to haunt Jaya Bachchan.
And to think that, when Ray had sent for her, the young girl growing up in Bhopal was beset with doubt and hesitation. “I was studying in a convent school, and I feared that the nuns would disapprove of my acting in a film. But my father said, ‘It’s the opportunity of a lifetime — don’t let go of it.'”
Cut to the convent when she went back after Mahanagar. The same austere nuns came and said, ” ‘You have acted in a Satyajit Ray film?! You are so lucky!!’ That is when I first realised, even before he was crowned in Berlin, what a major director my Manik Kaku was!”
Jaya Bachchan on 1/5/2023. Photo provided by Ratnottama Sengupta
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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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
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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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Satyajit Ray(2 May 1921-23 April 1992) in New York. Courtesy: Creative Commons
A film-maker, writer, musician and more, perhaps Satyajit Ray can best be described in the maestro’s lead actor (Seemabadha, 1971) Barun Chanda’s words:
[O]ne would like to remember Ray as one of the last truly great renaissance men of Bengal, moulded much in the tradition of Tagore, in the sense that his genius manifested itself in manifold directions: film-making, photography, writing, composing poetry, limericks, music, designing, drawing, developing new typefaces, you name it.
For a long time, he was also our most distinguished cultural ambassador to the world.
-- Barun Chanda, Satyajit Ray: The Man Who Knew Too Much
Barun Chanda, introduces Satyajit Ray, the film maker, to us in his book, Satyajit Ray:The Man Who Knew Too Much. This in-depth conversation with the author and a review of his book introduces us to the unforgettable world of Satyajit Ray. Click here to read.
In When ‘they’ Danced…, Ratnottama Sengupta discusses the unique Bhooter Naach or the Ghost Dance, in Satyajit Ray’s Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne. Click hereto read.
Satyajit Ray, Bibhuti Bhushan & Nabendu Ghosh and a Famous Triology: Pather Panchali(Song of the Road) by Bibhuti Bhushan Bandopadhyay was a classic novel, immortalised further by Satyajit Ray’s films, also known know as the Apu Triology. Here is a translation from Nabendu Ghosh’s autobiography which introduces how the film came to be. This portion has been excerpted from Eka Naukar Jatri (Journey of a Lonesome Boat) and translated by Ratnottama Sengupta as a celebration of the Satyajit Ray Centenary. Click hereto read.
Borderless 