A Taxi Tête-à-Tête with Sankar

Peeyush da,

Chowringhee is indeed the most engrossing novel. It is my all time favorite novel. I completely agree with you – the film fell miles short of the book. Uttam Kumar was perfect and so was Shubhendu, Utpal Dutt, Bhanu, Anjana Bhowmick and Deepti Roy.

Well said Sayan, truly, no one can do a Sayta Bose like Uttam. Also Shubhendu fits Sankar to a T – the typical, inhibited, shy, sensitive and yet educated otee bhadralok – Shubhendu has that written on his face and bearing. Deepti Roy with her impressive personality is the perfect Mrs Pakrashi, Bhanu the golden hearted laundry keeper and no one can do Marco Polo better than Utpal Dutt.

The people who pulled the film down completely were Surpriya Devi (Karabi Guha ) and Biswajit – this pair undid the entire good work in the film. Besides the film left out many crucial elements in the novel which should have been woven into the script. Pity it could have been a classic but is let down badly because it also does have some great music.

The one line of Chowringhee that I will never forget and I quote often which loosely translated means – when one is alone with oneself, one thinks of what I have gained and what I have lost. More so, one thinks of what I gained and then lost.
So true.

Sayan,

I don’t know if you remember, the film Chowringhee we had seen as kids – it was screened in the local Bengali club Vivekananda Vihar to raise funds for the club library and you and I and two other kids had gone around selling tickets for the show to all the Mashis and Kakus of our colony. The impact hadn’t been all that much.

But when I read the novel in college, it just blew me off. An immediate comparison had been with Arthur Hailey’s Hotel but I found Chowringhee more deeper and richer in terms of human relationships, plot and narrative. Hotel fares no where close.

Jana Aranya and Seemabaddha of Sankar and the films made by Satyajit Ray are not comparable. Ray has his own style and objective. He seems to have borrowed the theme content. The films are very different from the novel.

Peeyush da,

I look at the novel and the film differently. If we look at Jana Aranya as Ray’s stinging comment on the moral decay of society, it stands tall as a film not only in terms of its social context but also in terms of the craft of filmmaking. Compared to Sankar’s novel, the film is similar only in the social context. Ray keeps the focus sharply on Somnath whereas in the novel as far as I can remember Sukumar has an equally powerful role and his personal struggles, frustrations and his disillusionment with the society is greater than Somnath’s.

Sukumar’s sister Kauna too has a much bigger and better spaced out role in the novel than the smaller but impactful role in the film. Sankar had a much larger canvas to paint, Ray concised it to pin point precision.

In terms of the technique of filmmaking Jana Aranya is a masterpiece… the dash of humor in this very dark film is also something you remember after the film has ended.

I can watch the film and read the novel multiple times – every time I would find something new in both. 🙂

~ Antara