

Partha Pratim Ghosh reviews Manik Babur Megh, a unique film blending childhood fantasy with melancholic adulthood, exploring themes of loneliness and absurdity in a monochrome Kolkata setting.
A still from Manik Babur Megh
In Satyajit Ray’s short story ‘Shibu and a Demon,’ we explore the mind of a boy who imagines his Mathematics teacher, Janardan, as a demon. The story revolves around Shibu’s anxious mind, fearing the demon. His friend, Crazy Fatik, gives Shibu a stone from a big fish’s belly, which he tells Shibu contains the demon’s vital force. Having the stone, Shibu thinks he has gained control over the demon and finds relief from his fear. Similarly, in Leela Majumder’s short story, ‘A Pill of Badyinath,’ a boy imagines his teacher transforming into a monkey after taking a magic pill. In these two stories, two children live in their fanciful magical worlds, where they see things, others don’t. Shibu had Phatik as a saviour, while Kalu, the boy in Leela Majumdar’s story, had Badyinath.
As a precursor to the discussion of a Bengali film, Manik Babur Megh (The Cloud and the Man), glimpses of these two children’s stories come to mind, since like the stories, this film also explores the mind of a loner, Manik Babu, who dwells in similar childlike magical reality. He fears the cloud as much as Shibu feared the demon. Later, we see Manik Babu to befriend the distant cloud. He talks to it, romances and eats together. When it rains, Manik Babu thinks the cloud has come down to embrace him. He flies a kite, sending it to the cloud. When the kite returns, he smells the scent of the cloud in it. Sukumar Ray’s world of fancy is woven throughout this film, opening the door to Manik Babu’s absurd world.
While teaching a child, Manik Babu recites from Sukumar Ray’s nonsense verse — “In the land of clouds in hazy night, under the rainbow, caught in beats-off beats, I sing as I wish.” The moment Manik Babu smells the kite, we’re reminded of Sukumar Ray’s lines from another verse: “The sky is like a sour smell!” The childhood world and absurdity of Satyajit, Leela, or Sukumar’s stories and verses may find a similarity, but it needs to be said, Manik Babur Megh is not a film about childhood fancy. Absurdity and a melancholic adulthood are painted on the same canvas in this film. When a child’s magical world spills over into a lonely adult’s mind, we hasten to name it ‘paranoia’ or ‘lunacy’.
To keep it in mind, the film starts with a quote from Don Quixote: “When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies?” Manik Babu’s mind is orchestrated with traces of old Kolkata, visually evident in his old tape recorder, roof garden, with a broken case of an old CRT TV, a table clock and carefully landscaped trees. Instead of a cell phone, he keeps a five-cell battery flashlight next to his pillow. There are no modern digital gadgets for him, but just a shabby old tape recorder. North Kolkata’s dingy lanes, alleys, trams, tea shops, office lunches at Dacres Lane, and an old house with broken walls are part of Manik Babu’s alienated space.
His companion is a world full of sounds and trees. The old tape recorder does not play any modern song, but the ones of Rajanikanta Sen or Dwijendralal Roy, two composers of the 19th Century, which Manik Babu regularly plays for his father. His daily routine is mundane and mechanical — watering trees in the morning, feeding his disabled father Madhav very carefully, handing him the newspaper, running the tape recorder, going to the office in the tram, and then coming back in the evening. At times, he goes to Kali Babu, who is the only person he talks to. The uniqueness of the film is in its apparent plotless-ness and yet so much can be perceived with our senses. To the director’s credit, in a span of 96 minutes, he could create an empathic world, shot in black and white, carefully crafted with images along with adequate blending of a rich and nuanced soundscape. Only the ending of the film shifts to colour although that colour is muted.
As mentioned, the film opens the doors of our senses and leaves a lot to the viewers’ interpretations. For example, a viewer may reflect, why Manik Babu’s world is monochrome? Among the many possibilities, the answers can be — 1) Melancholy 2) Denoting Manik Babu’s isolated fantasy world that is different from the usual colours 3) An old Kolkata carefully preserved in the womb of modern Kolkata, a past hidden in the reservoir of the present. The third interpretation significant as all signs of modern Kolkata are absent in the film. We don’t see lighted flyovers, metro rails, an ambitious metropolitan Kolkata growing on either side of the Eastern Bypass or shopping complexes. Next to the old lane of North Kolkata, we see only an old bank of the River Ganges. Intermittently, at a distance, a lone launch honks away with a melancholic undertone. But at least twice, at a distance nearing the horizon, we have glimpses of one ultra–rich housing complex with four tall towers. This was enough to suggest that this film is not set in the past, but is of contemporary times with a different point of view.
A muted exclusion of the signs of modernity along with a tacit refusal of it, appears to be an important subtext of Manik Babur Megh. Just as the symbols of modern metropolitan Kolkata were visually eschewed, Manik Babu also refused to accept all the trappings, sounds and music of the present-day Kolkata. The modern times that leave especially able adults like Manik Babu out of their ambit, making them marginalised, we see Manik Babu also rejecting his society equally. This exclusion means a tragic loneliness. The lonely Manik Babu, who lives in his childhood magical reality, is at the same time a biological adult. To suggest, how a man is torn between the dichotomy of dual existence, the film offers a very telling shot in the beginning, when we see Manik Babu for the first time in bed just after a long-distance view of the Howrah Bridge. The bridge still remains unchanged as a symbol of Kolkata, in spite of sweeping changes of the face of the city. It is not difficult to recognize the indication of sexuality in the scene, a reminder of Manik Babu’s adult carnal desires.
A theme of loneliness is not scarce in world cinema. Examples are plenty, from Satyajit Ray’s Jalsaghar, Michel Haneke’s The Piano Teacher, Theodore Angelopoulos’s Eternity and a Day to Vittorio de Sica’s Umberto D, Mani Kaul’s Uski Roti and even Goutam Ghose’s Dekha, to name some. Yet, Manik Babu’s loneliness is different from all its predecessors in tone, mood and narrative style. Manik Babu’s closest relative in terms of his specific trait of absurdity, is probably Bimal, the protagonist of Ritwik Ghatak’s Ajantrik. As Manik Babu humanised a cloud, engaged in a dialogue with it, so was Bimal with his relationship with a very old-fashioned car.
We may also trace echoes of this film in Wim Wender’s A Perfect Day. But similarities are restricted to loneliness, love for trees and a daily routine of respective protagonists. While A Perfect Day is anchored on joyfulness in mood, Manik Babur Megh rests on absurdity and melancholy. With all debts to its predecessors, the film stands out as unique in every sense. It is not a silent film, but almost without dialogues. It would have been impossible to create the craft of such a nonverbal film, without adept support of a very competent team, which includes Boudhayan Mukherjee, the producer and co-scriptwriter, the cinematographer Anup Singh and Shubhajit Mukherjee for background music.
In the dimly lit Manik Babu’s room, the way the camera captures the different shades of light and shadows, is incredible. One scene in particular has to be mentioned, where Manik Babu hangs a mosquito net and puts his father to bed. He closes the windows one by one. As the windows close, the camera captures a gradual dimming of light almost like a poetry of painting. The white mosquito net in a pitch-dark room can be compared to Subrata Mitra’s work in a similar scene in Satyajit Ray’s Devi.
Chandan Sen is immaculate in his portrayal of Manik Babu. His nuanced interpretation of the character brings us flashes of another great actor Tulsi Chakrabarty, who immortalised the character of Paresh Babu, in Satyajit Ray’s Paras Pathar. Well synchronised with sensitive image and sound, nuanced acting of all other actors is one of the major high points of this film.
The sublimity of the last scene, which drops from the dark just after the onslaught of a dramatic moment, a moment of derangement, lifts the film to a level of great ambivalence. The black and white leaves, so lovable to Manik Babu, turn into light green. A plastic cover, an element integrated in Manik Babu’s daily routine, turns from grey to reddish in the fore ground. Manik Babu transcends to a space of magical duality. Where is he? He is both there and also not.
The young director Abhinandan Banerjee, and his competent team raises our expectations. He has to be careful since all his subsequent films will have to compete with his very first.
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