Rituparno Ghosh: Shaking you out of your comfort zone

Miss not the quiet by lanes of Kolkata, for oft they conceal great minds; although, if you ask, even the paan-bidi wala, he will lead you to their home. Nor must your eyes overlook the aesthetically done with beautiful antique furniture and large paintings, dimly lit dark rooms, whose walls tell stories, no less than half a century old.  In one such home, resides, India’s pride, the brilliant film maker, Rituparno Ghosh.  His name and work go far beyond the domain of the ordinary to reach out to the sky, where freedom of expression weds the colours and hues of human relationships, in its diverse alternate shades.

Engaged with presenting human relationships from two points, loneliness and companionship, finding a friend in unlikely places, indeed, all of Rituparno Ghosh’s films talk recurring same subject and bring the viewer to address realities they do not acknowledge consciously. Questioning the institution of marriage, it’s happily ever after cover which hide deeper schism between couple, the film maker’s representation of the urban middle class families is unprecedented on Bengali screen.

“I was the first at least in Bengali films to deal with the urban middle class home in a manner that some poignant truths of their lives came out which have not been spoken of before. For the first time the audience was watching things that had remained buried within them; in fact, there was a denial of this truth. So in a way it was some kind of getting into the unchartered waters, at the same time dealing with loneliness and companionship and questioning the whole notion of the two.”

In Dahan, the first film that talked about marital rape, or the National Film Award winner, Unishe April (19^th April) depicting the stressed relationship between a divorced couple, and the strained mother-daughter relationship, Utsab, which show complex set of problems in a family who have gathered for the annual Durgapujo, or Shubho Muhurat,  showing parallel relationships running from past to present, a sleuth and a victim find companionship in each other, even as a medley of human emotions, compassion and empathy come to the fore and leave the audience with much food for thought, there is no right and wrong, no judgment made at any time. This reflects Rituparno Ghosh’s own aspiration as non-judgmental. His films, in Hindi, English and Bengali, are his voice to artistically reach that destination.

When asked whether he thinks a committed live-in relationship is better than a marriage, he is wise.

“I don’t condemn marriage nor is it something I am immediately elated about; it is how you want to conduct yourself, and we can’t preempt our behavior at any stage. Marriage is not about two individuals; it is two families. When you are staying together there are certain odds you are facing. Are you staying together just to challenge the institution of marriage, or are you really living together happily? Quite often, just because, we have chosen to live together over marriage, there is an extra effort to prove that we are happy, which may be artificial at times. In the face of being marginalized for living lives that do not conform to society, it is entirely upon our fortitude and patience, our  ability to complement each other that make the relationship last.”

Rituparno Ghosh (49) is blessed with fingers that give away his parents’ profession as artists. These long, perfectly manicured hands learned their first lessons in film making with his father, who made low budget documentary films, converting the family’s dining table into his editing table! Further, his love of cinema took a serious turn when at 12, in 1975, Doordarshan Kolkata started airing Hindi and Bengali cinema on Sunday evenings. ‘It was then only a matter of scale,’ he says when armed with the technique of making films and ten years in advertising experience, the final push came while shooting a documentary, Vande Mataram with Shabana Azmi. She suggested that he take up making films for the larger screen. Hirer Angti, a children’s film, was his first.  He was young and hungry for fame and recognition. With Unishe April, his second, he rose to become one of India’s best known film-writer and Directors.  From 1994 to 2010, almost year on year, Rituparno Ghosh won Awards at the national and international level.

With his latest film, Chitrangada (A), released in Kolkata, in August, 2012, now available across India, on DVD, from 11^th February, 2013, Rituparno Ghosh has ventured upon a yet again widely discussed subject of same sex relationships and the Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS).

“After Article 377, it has actually given visibility to homosexuality and there is a clear line drawn in the minds of people between homosexuality and heterosexuality. What lies with the entire gender matrix of various kinds of sexual desires had not been discussed before on screen. Chitrangada wanted to talk about the liminality of one’s desire to belong to a particular sexuality and the entire debate of gender and sex and the need to have an altered body, which everyone can wish to have. We are all working toward sculpting our own gender identity; women alter their bodies at Beauty Parlours, men get six packs. No transformation is actually over, it is a process; it is fluid.”

Clearly, Rituparno Ghosh’s mind is larger than life. The world will confer, in life and on the silver screen. 

This article by Julia Dutta was first published in Atelier India, March 2013 Issue of  the magazine. If you are not in India, write to: Creative Nest Media Pvt. Ltd, M-66, Punj House, Outer Circle, Connaught Place, New Delhi - 110 001 Email:info@creativenestmedia.comAdd caption

Mission Junoon: Sanjna Kapoor talks of her latest passion

She is what dreams are made of: beautiful looks, elegant, mysterious with a mind that has inherited the best of both worlds, where east meets west and blends perfectly, creativity flows from theatre and cinema, and a vibrant intellect pursues what only passion, perseverance, imagination, rigor and discipline can achieve. Yes, her name is Sanjna Kapoor, India’s most loved diva of the world of theatre.

Recently, her resignation as Director of the very elite and intellectual Prithvi Theatre in Mumbai, caused a flutter in the industry, but as she says, she needed to move on to do something more, to add more fuel to her already existing passion, to impact the environment in more ways and to begin her own trist with destiny, Junoon Theatre. For more than 22 years she had carried the challenge of Prithvi Theatre, started by her parents, Shashi Kapoor and Jennifer Kendal. It was both her passion and her learning grounds. When she put the sceptre down, she felt it needed other eminent people to carry the work forward, while she took the experience of Prithvi Theatre, to hoards of Indians out there that wanted and dreamed of making theatre an integral part of their daily lives, as natural as taking a walk in the park.

Contemporary theatre, which is all of 200 years, exists mainly in urban and semi-urban areas. Inaugurated on February 29, 2012, Junoon Theatre, with a core team of four, wants to break that trend. It desires to create multiple platforms of creativity by using the large network of people in the field and make theatre accessible, welcome and engaging to a wider mass of youth, children and adults across India, through workshops, Plays, interaction, discussion and going beyond that space. Like what exists in many countries abroad, Junoon Theatre hopes to increase the total theatre ‘experience’ from booking to finale, and raise it to another level, never experienced in India before. It envisages involvement of masses by building capacity, through its network, so that the experience becomes a social movement, a junoon, as it were. She dreams of an India, where theatre is woven into the very fabric of society in a manner that it becomes a way of life.

This creative unrest to affect the total experience of theatre has its root in her grandfather, the late Geoffrey Kendal, whose Shakespeareana Company brought the bard, William Shakespeare to Indian schools, who had never heard of him before. For thirty years, the extraordinary theatre personality along with his wife Laura and daughters, Filicity Kendal, and Sanjna’s own mother, Jennifer Kendal, toured the country taking Shakespeare to schools, public halls, places of maharajas and every nook and corner of the country. It can be said quite accurately, that Junoon Theatre is not only a transition as Sanjna calls it from Prithvi Theatre, but an urgent compulsion of her genealogy to spread the fire of imagination across the country, widely.  

Sanjna Kappor, the theatre and film personality is an able administrator; she may have the fire of her grandfather and the history of Indian cinema in her DNA, but she is careful, diligent, patient, slow, but sure. Her footsteps are small and gradual, and while she has big dreams for Junoon Theatre, she is careful not to go, so fast that she can trip on her own ghagra skirt. Through the India Theatre Forum, of which she is a founding member along with six others from the same field, she undertakes, legal, copyright issues, food and nutrition, insurance, Policy decisions affecting theatre personalities.  

Going out to the theatre has become as lucrative as going for a movie, because nothing comes close to a stage performance, for both audience and dramatist - so intimate, so engaging and responsive, such a fulfilling experience is live performance. As buying power of the people increases, Universities, parents, children are looking seriously at making a profession of Management in Arts and Theatre.

Finance is always a concern though. Sanjna is working on a Sustainable Economic Model, which will cater to premium pricing, and go to make the 25% reserved for the masses, possible. While there will be ongoing smaller shows and workshops in schools, and Plays, the yearly major event will bring in the best talent from across the globe and India, and tour India in true Shakespeareana Company style.

Sanjna Kapoor admits she has no life outside theatre. Perhaps she means what Sheakespeare had said  - all the world’s a stage – for there is her 10 year old son Hamir, who is the apple of his mother’s eye, presently passionately engaged with Sports cars, a far cry from his mother’s passion for theatre or his father’s passion for tigers! Her husband Valmik Thapar, is a prolific well-known writer and tiger enthusiast, with many books to his credit.

In a way, both Sanjna Kapoor and her husband are engaged with the eco-system around them, the former with the world inside, the power of imagination of the human mind to create, sustain and evolve newer ways of evolving itself, while the latter with the preservation of India’s national animal, the tiger. And their little one is on a fast track, but loves drama and must approve all stories his mother tells the world outside.

Such a cute drama queen!

The article written by Julia Dutta was first published in the January 2013 issue of Atelier  Magazine. To buy  write to: Creative Nest Media Pvt. Ltd, M-66, Punj House, Outer Circle, Connaught Place, New Delhi - 110 001 Email: info@creativenestmedia.com

 

Up close: Another colour of the rainbow

The hurried exchange of addresses and stolen glances hid my destiny for the next sixteen years of my life - our lives.

In the first ever national three days conference held in Mumbai, 1996, in between, talking politics of love between same sex women, watching films, discussing, making new friends, I fell in love with a woman from Delhi. She was the sole reason why I left everything behind me in Mumbai, to start from scratch in Delhi.

Yet, it was not a fairy tale story right from the start.

Our letter crossed and in each, in indelible ink was written the same story in five words – I am attracted to you. Then onwards, our love was a journey fraught with difficulties, doubts and deliberations, in spite of over powering love for each other. At the end, having held the torch for over three years, in November, 1999, we met finally in Delhi. The physical sparks went off immediately and we were on the carpet, making love before the welcome lunch had time to settle in my stomach! After fifteen days of bliss, I went back to Mumbai, knowing I had to return, to the first major love with a woman in my life.

It’s now thirteen years that we have been together. There is no contract between us, no written or spoken document that says that we are in a committed relationship. I prefer, therefore, to acknowledge our same sex relationship as companionship; we are sakhis. We do have many things in common and lots where we are differ from each other.

A same sex relationship is different from a heterosexual one.

First things first, the sex is fantastic as long as the 18-months major invasion of hormones in your body is there and then you have to work at it. This is common to both. And sexual intimacy is not about penetration, but being there for each other, sharing, touching, loving, kissing, fondling and of course, the big ‘O’ which in the case of heterosexual sexual contact may just be one sided, or result in women faking it and men asking that dreadful question: how was it? However, I am told by some that many ‘hets’ do make it, to the orgasmic oneness, not one after another, but together. I must confess, I haven’t been able to match the ‘het’ claim to cosmic contractions, together in my same sex relationship. Nor have sexual encounters given rise to pregnancy, thank god!

In our relationship, the political power lies with Tamil Nadu, but if you ask her, she will say, that all Bengali Didis are dominating and hold the feudal sceptre as if they were born holding one. But I ascertain power politics in a relationship by the cuisine that dominates the kitchen. Ours is kapi in the morning, followed by sambhar, rasam, paparam.

Naturally we fight a lot! We suffer spouse deafness, malicious gossip sessions with our friends and family. It’s in fact just as ‘het’ as it can get! However,  the big difference is, there are no laws in the land that can save a drowning same sex partnership/relationship, and very little family intervention to save it too, in most cases. Thankfully, gender driven roles, don’t plague our partnership – cross dressing, emotionally and otherwise is highly appreciated.


Our relationship is governed by never sleeping on an augmentative pillow, talking things through, if possible, and if we don’t sound like all the utensils in the kitchen falling on the floor with a loud clatter, which is increasingly becoming a trend, by the way! No wonder then, we have taken recourse to yet another strategy, that being, maintaining silence on the subject of argument and making as many spiritual trips together.

For me, all relationships are part of a self actualisation process. We are constantly changing. In thirteen years, our needs have changed, our priorities keep changing. We have some commonalities which are timeless, but change is permanent and finally, even if we are like our bel tree rooted in one place and branching out in different directions, or do take our togetherness to another level, we will still say, we are sakhis, emotionally, physically and spiritually.


Julia Dutta is author of this piece and author of Until death do us part and other books available on Kindle version from Amazon.com

The article was first published in December 2012 issue of Atelier Diva

To buy write to: Creative Nest Media Pvt. Ltd, M-66, Punj House, Outer Circle, 

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