Meghe Dhaka Tara, a Nobel laureate and Me

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This is about my correspondence with Professor Roald Hoffman, a Nobel laureate regarding Ritwik Ghatak’s Meghe Dhaka Tara. Roald Hoffman got Nobel in chemistry in 1981 for Woodward-Hoffman rules in organic spectroscopy. Apart from his expertise in academics he writes plays and poetry. He visited Calcutta in 1999 to deliver a lecture in Indian Association for Cultivation of Science. After his lecture he watched Meghe Dhaka Tara in Jadavpur University film club. I did not attend his lecture. I came to know all these from Anandabazar Patrika, a Bengali daily. I got a little inquisitive not because of a foreigner’s interest in Ghatak’s films but because of his appreciation of this melancholic movie in view of his troubled past. His father was killed by the Nazis in Poland and he fled to USA with his mother from a concentration camp at the tender age of eleven. Later on he had a peaceful life and an illustrious career (He got a Nobel). But I always had this question. Why did this man like and praise Meghe Dhaka Tara, a sad movie on the sadder events of sacrifice and exploitation of a Bengali refugee girl (Nita, portrayed brilliantly by Supriya Chaudhuri) in the aftermath of partition? Did his history of difficulties under the Nazis made him become touched by the sufferings of a Bengali girl in a movie whose backdrop is culturally much different from his?

I did not know. And I forgot this news item for a while. Why shouldn’t I?  I come from a family of Calcutta who never faced any pain of displacement after partition of India in 1947. Our ancestors were residents of Calcutta over the past century. So as a high school student when I watched this movie I was not impressed. I loathed the melancholy of suffering of Nita, the female protagonist who took charge of a refugee Bengali family almost single-handedly and sacrificed her whole life. She died of TB at the end when everyone of that helpless family got to their feet with her help.

But with a downturn of our family fortune and neglect we lost our prime ancestral property in Calcutta. Financial conditions went down gradually. We were forced to settle down in a suburb of Calcutta, away from the usual dazzle of city life that we enjoyed for long. I had to take charge of everything. My shoulders became heavy with duty. I could not even look after my career properly. The restructuring of my family came with my sacrifice. And with this loss and displacement from own piece of land I understood the greatness of Ghatak’s Meghe Dhaka Tara. When you don’t lose, you don’t suffer and if you don’t suffer you never identify yourself with the sufferings of others.

I left Calcutta to break away from the melancholy. I could not look after my career earlier. My peers got much ahead of me. Even my younger cousins and juniors went ahead and overtook me. After 2 jobs- one as a lecturer in a college and another in R&D of a biotech company I came back to Ph.D. in IIT Bombay which I wanted to do much, much earlier. I joined PhD at an age of 32 ! I am optimistic; things have changed and I am fighting back. After a successful PhD  I relocated to Hyderabad to join an IT company. Then I joined St Xavier's College Mumbai and did well for myself. I understood one fact : There is no point in glorifying suffering.

But now whenever I see this film I am touched with Nita’s sorrow. I understand how much pain she must have gone through. And I identify with her character more than before. I consider Ghatak’s Meghe Dhaka Tara as one of the greatest films ever made. I sob uncontrollably when I see Nita and her brother singing that Tagore song “Je rate mor duar guli bhanglo jhor e (The night my doors were broken by storm)”.

I shared these feelings on Meghe Dhaka Tara with Prof Hoffman through email. These days with internet and email you can do things which were unthinkable and impossible a decade ago. I know it is a bit strange to write a letter to an unknown person, that also to a Nobel laureate. I was hesitant to write initially, but then I felt if I do not share my feeling and get to know about his opinion on this film I would be unhappy.

And to my surprise he replied! He wrote …………..

Subject: Re: a letter on Ritwik Ghatak's Meghe Dhaka Tara
From:    "Roald Hoffmann" ......
Date:    Tue, May 19, 2009 5:45 am
To:      biswaprasun@iitb.ac.in

Hello, Biswa,
        It is remarkable that you remember that visit. Debashis Mukherjee introduced me to Ritwik Gathak's films, and I have viewed them since with pleasure. For a long time it was impossible to get them shown publicly in the US because of some complicated family struggle on the rights. But now DVDs are available; I have a ste of 5 or 6.
        You are right that among Western cinematophiles he was overshadowed by Satyajit
Ray, and I think unjustly so. Fashion makes these things happen, it's unfair. I have always liked the blend of social justice and depth of personal feeling that characterizes his films.  And you have undergone a great degree of personal suffering, that has allowed you to come in contact with the emotions Gathak so beautifully has his actors express.
        My own history of difficulties was in my childhood, and the cultural setting very
different. But emotions of loss are universal. I don't think it is because of his expression of suffering that I liked and like Gathak; I can't really say why...
        I have been editing an English translation of selected poems of Joy Goswami. It
does not differ from what came out in Calcutta as "Part Autobiography", but I have written a different introduction, and I think gotten the translators to improve their work. Getting it published here, my goal, is very difficult.
        I wish you well in your PhD studies, it has been a long road for you.
Cordially yours,
Roald

This letter is my treasured possession. Not everyday you get a letter from a Nobel laureate. Though it is quite personal and I shared a little bit of my life-story with the film-lover blog readers, I thought of doing this just to let you know how powerful the language of a movie can be so as to cut across the barriers of language or society.

Thank you readers.

Note: This blog written by me first came out in Passionforcinema.com in April,2010.