Yours Whimsically - Part 28: On the love of cinemas...

 Nearly a month ago, my exam process got postponed - indefinitely, thanks to the surging second wave of COVID19. Overnight, from being hard pressed for time, I now had time to kill. While certainly I couldn’t take the foot off the pedal entirely, I had to modify my strategy to prevent being burnt out. One can always say there is nothing called being “over-prepared”. However, to use a cricketing analogy, we are in the ‘middle overs’ of an ODI match: you have to conserve enough wickets and firepower, to go berserk in the final few overs.

I started looking for activities that would make my schedule, beyond preparation. The books were ever present. IPL and Bigg Boss (Kannada) seemed good enough to occupy time and mindspace. But then, we all know how it panned out. When IPL and the reality show were suspended within a few days of each other, I was lost for options. What was I to do? All of a sudden, the world seemed to go blank!

This was when I turned to movies. To be fair, watching a movie every weekend or two has been a practice for quite some time now, more so since we subscribed to Tata Sky’s “Binge”. But then, neither my brother nor I had come to watch movies with as much religious regularity as I do now, because there were other engagements. Movies were meant to be weekend de-stressors. Fortunately or unfortunately, for me, everyday has become a weekend (or a weekday). Sunday rolls over into Monday, in turn into Tuesday. Before long, it is Saturday already -with hardly any difference, except for the dates on the newspapers that I read. Even the news stories seem similar across days! Browsing through the listings on Amazon Prime, Zee5, Disney-Hotstar, and most recently, Netflix, I realized that there is a treasure trove waiting to be unlocked, across languages. All I had to do was to say “Open Sesame!”

Around the same time, my brother, having read about “Chotushkone” (Bengali), wanted to watch it. It was then I realized that my Bengali, though rusty, was largely intact, which led me to watch a couple of other movies by Srijit Mukherjee. Then came articles about the Satyajit Ray, whose birth centenary was on May 2^nd this year. I was curious about what makes him such a celebrated filmmaker globally and decided to explore his movies.

Irony: I began listening to Carnatic music in earnest only after going to Kolkata for my graduation; and here, nearly three years post-college, I am taking baby steps into the world of Bengali cinema – something which I should have done during the five years I spent in Kolkata. It is, perhaps, true that distance makes the heart grow fonder.

I have watched a handful of Ray’s movies now. What can I possibly write that has not already been written about him or his movies? Do I write about the use of dream sequences, heavy with symbolism, in “Nayak” that explore the insecurities of the matinee idol, or how it re-affirms the statement that “winners stand alone”? Do I write about how “Shatranj ke Khiladi” is a commentary relevant to all times, where the rulers – and nobility – are obsessed with everything but governance? Or how tightly the sequences are constructed in “Sonar Kella”, which is a thriller in its own right?

 After these movies, I turned to the novel-based “The Apu Trilogy” – “Pather Panchali”, “Aparajito”, “Apur Sansar”. While watching these, I was reminded of Kannada’s famous tele-serialized novel “Gruhabhanga” (by S L Bhyrappa). A struggling Brahmin family; a father who is unable to provide for the family – though in the trilogy, he is well-meaning and tries hard; a strong-willed mother, who aspires for her family to transcend poverty, into a life of dignity; children, whose dreams and spirit remain unbroken by the struggles; and of course, death – these are some elements that are common among the two.

Personally, I enjoyed watching “Aparajito” more. The train, which is a symbol of fascination in “Pather Panchali”, becomes a metaphor for the distance that emerges between Apu and his mother, Sarbajaya, after he becomes a college-goer in Kolkata. This conflict between the attractions of city life and rural life is a theme that is found across multiple languages (Shivaram Karanth’s novels in Kannada, for example). Sequences where Sarbajaya looks expectantly at the trains capture her state of mind, without being melodramatic or overly emotional. The difference in body language of Apu when he first enters Kolkata timidly as compared to the scene towards the end, where he boldly strides forward, munching on peanuts, speaks volumes of his evolution into a man of the world.

Across the three movies, we see storytelling and screenplay that capture the spirit of life, across rural Bengal, Benares and Calcutta. Be it Apu’s wide-eyed wonder at a play in a ‘jatra’; or Durga and Apu running across the fields to watch a train; or the irritability which Apu’s mother displays towards her sister-in-law; or Apu’s desire to explore life beyond his village; or of Apu eloquently narrating the gist of his novel to his friend; or of Apu and his wife Aparna finding love amidst struggle and poverty; or ultimately, the glint in Apu’s eyes as he makes way towards life once again, with his son, Kajol, across his shoulders.

It is interesting that every critical juncture in Apu’s life is marked by death: that of his sister, his father, mother and finally, his wife. With each of them, a part of Apu dies. However, a newer version of him emerges. Life triumphs over death. In these trying times, with disease, devastation and death all around, this can be a valuable take-away: despite individual, personal losses, as a community, there is always hope for a better tomorrow and coming out stronger at the end of it all.

Having watched more than fifteen movies this month already, I have come to appreciate, that there is much more to movies than mere entertainment. Of course, I am not talking of “Radhe”, which, sadly, fails to entertain even. Thanks to subtitles, I have watched movies in multiple Indian languages now. The logical next step is to explore the treasures of world cinema. All in good time.