I had no personal friendship with Rituparno Ghosh,
not even an acquaintance. I have seen him in programs and functions a few
times, in film shows and festivals, have spoken to him a couple of times over
phone and exchanged messages with him a few times more. He had read a few
articles that I wrote on his cinema and when sometimes I enquired if he had
read them he would curtly text back – “Yes I have read, thank you”. Hence, the
entire gaga in the media where everyone tries to put forth how close they were to
Ritu (as he was fondly called) doesn’t apply to me – thankfully. In this
commercialization of death I atleast have the privilege to be objective about a
creative person who was seldom analysed when he was alive and now branded as a
messiah in his leaving. In this short remembrance I will try to find out what
Rituparno Ghosh is to me and to Bengali cinema or for that matter Indian cinema
in general.
As images of hoards of people defying the rain and
thronging the Nandan complex where Ritu was laid for public mourning before
cremated poured in it was obvious that he in death matched the popularity of
none other than Satyajit Ray for whom the city bade a magnum farewell 21 years
back. In a strange way Rituparno’s positioning in the Bengali cultural space
has similarities and parallel with two most revered film-makers of all times –
Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak. If Satyajit gave masculinity to the body of
Bengali cinema, Rituparno without doubt added feminity to it. This feminity is
of the mind – which many female film-makers with a patriarchal bent can never
think of bringing forth. Take the example of Sob Choritro Kalpanik (All
characters are imaginary). To me this is one of Ritu’s finest films for
being cinematic where he could blend visuals with sound effectively – lack of
which in general is one big drawback of Ritu’s cinema according to me. In this
film a woman finds solace in another woman – Radhika in Nando’s mother and
later, more interestingly Radhika in Kajari, Indranil’s literary muse. In some
deft montages the director mixes Radhika and Kajari in one soul – Radhika’s
transcendence from Indranil’s wife to the perception that she herself can be
his muse. The light and shade brings in Kajari and submerges her identity in the
cool sublime exteriors of Radhika. And during this immense turmoil of soul
exchanges we hear the marriage chanting of East Bengal, now Bangladesh.
These are folk songs that reverberate with the resonance of the marriage
between Radhika’s and Kajari’s identities… and possibly Nando’s mother’s?
Perceived from the director’s point-of-view it can be safely assumed that here
the gaze on the muse Kajari is a female gaze – Radhika’s illusive fantasies in
search of a girl or, is it the self she has long lost which she finally
discovered after her husband’s death. More importantly he talks about
sisterhood – something not known in Indian cinema in the popular mainstream
space.
Ritu has some more semblances with Ray – the former
bagged 12 National awards for his 17 released feature films, as compared to 32
for the 28 features of Ray. No comparison, but RItu could probably go closest
to the towering maestro whose international fame and elegance is no match for
any Indian film-maker till date and not even Ritu’s. Rituparno’s fame and influence on the
audience mind is primarily limited to Bengal
and slightly to a pan Indian audience much later. However to his credit Ritu
was intelligent enough to start off with measly budget, dialog-centric,
indoor-shot films and then later transcend to the pompous Chokher Bali
or Chitrangada. But what he ensured was to pack in enough quality to
make those early films box-office hits as well as achieve critical acclaim – a
blending of commerce with art which even Satyajit never enjoyed in such degrees
and with such regularity.
Ritu often commented he wanted to make films made
in the Bengali language but for an Indian audience – one of the reasons he took
stars of the Bombay
film industry quite often and at times made films in Hindi (Raincoat) or
even English (The Last Lear). This is unique of him since not even Ray
(apart from occasionally taking Sharmila Tagore and one hindi film in Shatranj
ki Khilari) ever reached out to the Bombay
stars in a conscious bid to make his films more acceptable outside of Bengal. In this effort and with moderate success, Ritu
not only broadened the horizons of Bengali cinema but has given the entire
fulcrum of ‘regional’ cinema a whole new dynamics – the debate, problems and
the future of which is beyond the scope of discussion for this article. The
reason why Ritu is so endeared amongst Bengalis along with Ray is probably also
because both of them would take up Rabindranath Tagore’s novels and short
stories and transform them into films which will remain important renditions in
the history of Indian cinema. If Charulata by Ray is an all-time great
movie of the world, Ghosh’s Chokher Bali will remain a fitting
adaptation of one of Tagore’s modernist novels. Like Ray, Ritu as well was at
the helm of the cultural identity that shaped the Bengali intelligentsia –
Ghosh would edit popular magazines and host two of the best talk-shows in
Bengali media of all times – Ebong Rituparno (And Rituparno) and Ghosh
& Co.. There is no doubt that his formidable literary and artistic
readings and knowledge along with a sensitive rendition of the acquired
information made these shows very popular.
The first decade of film-making for Ritu dealt
mostly with the urban Bengali middle-class who had no option but to eat out of
his palm. As clichéd it may sound but no article on Ritu can miss the fact that
in the 90’s his cinema brought the reluctant educated Bengali back to cinema. He
was intelligent enough to keep things simple, linear and yet sensitive enough
to touch upon the chords of the Bengali mind which, after being fed with a host
of sensitive films (and not by Ray or Ghatak alone) suddenly were left with a crude
imitation of the South films and at times Bollywood ones. During this time he
had to carry the heavy mantle left by the fore-bearers of Bengali cinema
prominently Ray – there was absolutely no one else which served both ways for
him. On the one hand, to turn a trend single-handedly was difficult and he
achieved that to his credit. On the other hand he didn’t face much of a
competition – had he been making films in the 1960s instead of the 1990s he
probably would be fighting for his place with an Ajay Kar or an Asit Sen or a
Tarun Majumder. However after those 10 initial years of careful gauging, in
2003 he ventured out to make a classic out of Tagore’s Chokher Bali –
and from then onwards his trajectory and his cinematic vision widened and
became varied.
Sooner than later Ritu turned everyone’s attention
towards him for his questions on gender and sexuality – of him and in general.
He believed in gender fluidity and in being a ‘parallel’ to the man-woman
duality. For him it was not important to be gay or a lesbian or a transgendered
– it is important probably to be something in-between but over-encompassing. He
probably had experienced this plurality in him which resulted in his decoration
of himself and also his choice of films. He took to acting probably to spread
his cause, his self more than anything else. In all these three films the
characters floated in gender fluidity. This is reason enough for Ritu being a
subject of denial by most – men and women alike though women probably
empathized with his cinema and characters in them more than men. He was jibed
at, jeered down and turned into a comedy in public shows and yet Ritu had the
guts and the will-power to carry on in what he believed was true. Unfortunately
with his death, a lot of interest in Ritu revolved solely round his sexual
identity and practice rather than his creative acumen.
In this regard he is closer to Ritwik in the fact
that Ritwik with his life-style and propaganda was equally stomped down by the
Bengali middle-class ‘bhadralok’ albeit in a different context altogether. If
Ritu’s sexuality and his ‘living one’s life’ the way he wanted was something that
the mass couldn’t digest, it was Ritwik’s alcoholism and his big-mouth which
never suited the educated. In both cases the person was more the point in
discussion and not the oeuvre he left behind – utterly unfortunate and a bitter
reality. Interestingly enough for both their last films have elements of
autobiography and would remain hallmarks in their own career and in
understanding them within their creative space. With Jukti Takko aar Goppo
Ritwik opened up a new window of personal cinema where the creator gets
juxtaposed with his creation and his visions – extremely political and rooted
within critical cinematic flaws and shortcomings. Nonetheless, this last film
is one which has a didactical influence in understanding Ritwik’s nuances and
his dichotomies. Ironically, in similar veins, Chitrangada’s Rudra will
be one rubric for analyzing the critical dilemma of the artist in Ghosh and the
physical turmoil he had to undergo. There were two prevalent themes in many of
Ritu’s films based on his own script/story – the relation with the parents and
the embracement of death. Time and again from his first film Unishe April,
through Asookh and finally in Chitrangada it is the relation
between generations which he deftly touches upon and gives importance equal to
the one between genders. In parallel, in all of these films it is the shadow of
death in different forms – suicide, death of near ones and of relations – not
the physical death alone but more importantly ‘biraha’ which transcended the
physical, mortal separation. This feeling of loss of the self for the other is grounded
in Ritu’s experience of Tagore – something which he could use to tap the
Bengali mind with élan. Both Ghatak and Ghosh experimented with their body but
in different ways – and used their ‘body’ as the canvas of their denial of the
system and their own revolt against the society. Tragically for both it was
their very body which did a renegade and both died soon after making the films
in discussion above – Ritwik at the age of 51 and Ritu at 49!
There will always be a temptation of
scratching beneath the cover to find spices of Ritu’s life which defied
convention – but that alone cannot save him as a creative film-maker of the
country. As the furor dies its natural death and the personal reminisce fades
away with the tides of time what will remain are the films of Rituparno Ghosh.
There are a few in them which expanded the medium of cinema and championed the
creator’s vision and beliefs. The others died with a damp whimper. Only time
will tell how it wants to remember Rituparno Ghosh – the ‘enfant terrible’ of
contemporary Indian cinema.
