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They shot their movies in Kolkata — Calcutta again then — throughout the identical time when, in contrast to different cities that had been starting to kindle goals, Calcutta, having lengthy reached the top of glory, was on the decline. But even then, the depictions had been totally different. For Ray, Kolkata was extra of a socio-political entity on whose huge floor humanity performed out its half. For Sen, it was the ‘El Dorado’ — the magical, mystical metropolis he adored.
Ghatak’s portrayal, nonetheless, was distinctive. To him, the town itself was additionally a personality, giving refuge to the displaced. A spot, itself devoid of feelings, like a strict, non-demonstrative father or instructor, seemingly unsympathetic and uncaring, however which had hidden humane nerves.
City on the transfer
Ghatak’s 1958 movie Bari Theke Paliye opens with a mischievous boy, who has a dislike for his strict father, working away to Calcutta, which he calls “El Dorado”, “the place night time is as vivid because the day”. The metropolis is launched with the solar rising over the Howrah Bridge. That’s precisely how Kolkata is launched to a whole lot of latest arrivals each morning even right this moment. Not precisely a metropolis of alternatives or goals, however nonetheless a metropolis the place many run away carrying hope, or for survival.
If you low cost the absence of trams (nearly extinct now) and in case you ignore the telephones in individuals’s fingers, one might nonetheless be in 1958: the bridge occupied with individuals on the daybreak; staff carrying hundreds on their heads, their motion someplace between a stroll and a jog; males pushing carts laden with a mountain of sacks. Every labourer seems to be — and is — busier than a physician or a CEO: they haven’t any time to lose; Kolkata strikes as a result of they transfer.
If Howrah Bridge depicts arrival, seek for alternatives occurs in locations with tall buildings. Much of these locations stand even right this moment, a lot in order that if Ghatak had been to return along with his digicam, he wouldn’t discover a lot lacking besides the trams and maybe telephone cubicles and hungry individuals on the streets.
Actor Madhabi Mukherjee (far left) with director Ghatak (excessive proper) on the units of ‘Subarnarekha’.
High-ceilinged workplace buildings with broad staircases and huge home windows; a parallel ecosystem thriving on the pavements proper outdoors — barbers, meals distributors, stationery sellers; and on the extensive roads a stream of humanity, every with a narrative that might be one other Meghe Dhaka Tara or Subarnarekha. Since Kolkata takes satisfaction in being a once-upon-a-time metropolis, it’s unlikely these watching Ghatak’s movies, for not less than one other few many years, will discover a lot of a distinction between then and now.
Meeting of two migrants
Yet, numerous water has flown below the Howrah Bridge since his time. Ghatak dwelt with reference to Bengal’s partition, dedicating a trilogy to it within the first half of the Sixties. But these refugee colonies his tales had been set in are right this moment a factor of the previous: they’ve advanced into neighbourhoods that belong to the City of Joy. In any case, in contrast to in Punjab, the refugee motion was not a one-time occasion in Bengal: individuals migrated over many years, the ultimate huge exodus happening within the early Nineteen Seventies. Memories of dangerous days, subsequently, usually are not confined to 1947 alone.
One of the organisations to first maintain an occasion this 12 months to mark Ghatak’s centenary was the West Bengal Hindi Speakers’ Society, which had a screening of Subarnarekha, the third within the filmmaker’s Partition trilogy, as lengthy again as on June 8. Ashok Singh, common secretary of the society, who’s a former head of the Hindi division at Surendranath Evening College, had stated on the time, “He is my most favorite filmmaker. If you see Ray’s movies or Mrinal Sen’s movies, you will discover Hindi-speaking individuals proven as both drivers or doormen. Whereas in case you watch Ghatak’s Bari Theke Paliye, you will notice a boy working away from his village to the massive metropolis of Calcutta being proven kindness by a Hindi-speaking man on the highway promoting sattu. Such a humane portrayal of the assembly of two migrants!”
Every metropolis is a metropolis of migrants. Ritwik Ghatak, maybe the one one to dwell on the topic, confirmed that even Kolkata is one.
bishwanath.ghosh@thehindu.co.in
