Uttam Kumar's dedication

Uttam Kumar did some forgettable Hindi movies in sixties and seventies like Chotisi Mulakat, Shakti Samanta’s Amanush.

But he used to reign supreme in Bengali screen. No one till date enjoyed his popularity or charisma. He might have been the last star to be mobbed on the streets of Calcutta. Even the great Ray thought none other than Uttam Kumar for his ‘Nayak’. When Uttam Kumar died Calcutta came out on streets; (I was only six years old; I remember his cortege being taken through Lansdowne Road where our maternal uncles stayed and I accompanied my grandfather to Uttam Kumar’s Sradh (last rites) ceremony!).

Anyway let me not deviate from his professional dedication. I am recounting a story that I heard from my maternal grandfather Dr. Murari Mohan Mukherjee, a pioneer plastic surgeon.  Bengali screen legend Uttam Kumar was known to him. Every Bengali knows that Uttam Kumar starred in a famous movie ‘Agneeswar’ made in the seventies. But not everyone knows that the character he played is actually a shadow of an erstwhile legendary surgeon Dr.Panchanan Chatterjee. In honor of his memory Association of Surgeons of India still holds a Panchanan Chatterjee memorial oration which is a coveted and prestigious one among the surgeons. Agneeswar was written by Banaphool a.k.a. Dr.Balai Chand Mukhopadhyay, a native of Bhagalpur and a senior to my grandpa in Medical College, Calcutta. Banaphool told my grandpa that he wrote Agneeswar with their medical college teacher Dr. Panchanan Chaterjee in mind. If you see the film you will note the central character Dr.Agneeswar Mukherjee was a small-town doctor, upright and acerbic, who defied the British rulers, helped the freedom fighters and wrote revolutionary literature as well. A Rabindrasangeet ‘Tobu Mone rekho’ sung by Sumitra Sen and a Dwijendrageeti ‘ Dhana dhanyo pushpo bhora’ sung by Hemant Kumar are still popular. When Uttam Kumar got to know from my grandfather that Agneeswar is a shadow of Dr.Panchanan Chatterjee he came into our house to learn the mannerisms of Dr.Chatterjee from my grandfather since he was Panchanan Chatterjee’s favorite student. You will notice the unmistakable leaning gait with hands folded on back, the specific way of looking over the spectacle glasses and the pithy, barbed talking of Uttam Kumar …. All reminiscent of Dr.Panchanan Chatterjee on whom the novel and the movie are based on. After watching the movie in Purna Cinema Hall in South Calcutta, my grandfather commented “As if I saw our revered teacher walking and talking on screen!” …such realistic was Uttam Kumar’s rendition.

 

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.