The City, Crime and Middle Class Vulnerability in Tapan Sinha’s Films

Tanuja in Adalat O Ekti Meye

Tapan Sinha’s Adalat O Ekti Meye (1982, henceforth referred to as AOEM) starts when Durga puja vacation is declared in a girls’ school in Calcutta and three colleagues Urmi (Tanuja), Neela and Shila prepare for a trip to Gopalpur. But instead of puja celebration, the film chooses to focus on uncertainty and bleakness in a disordered and dysfunctional city.

In the opening scene, Urmi’s colleague, Laila, demonstrates her irritation that “during puja, the whole place is upside down”. Other staff also join in and discuss the power cuts, lack of civil life, security and comfort, sound pollution and other problems of Calcutta. Laila says, “it’s a lousy city”. This scene is followed by a scene at Urmi’s home where Urmi’s aunt and uncle discuss the epidemic fever in the city, strikes, lock outs and processions.

“Yeah. It’s a lousy city”: The crisis and discomfort of middle class lives caused by violation of civil codes in Adalat O Ekti Meye

Moving from the context of political turmoil shown in contemporary Bengali films, AOEM focuses on the disorder and chaos in the city from the perspective of middle-class lives and elaborates on the lived experience of them. The manner in which Sinha maps the banality of lockouts or strikes and their impact on the everyday lives of Calcutta, they acquire a character of mundaneness like fever which is never born of any noble purpose and only causes trouble in civil life. Soon this film extends this idea of a disordered city and its ‘fallen’ nature when Urmi and her friends are first insulted by a group of college students and later Urmi is gang raped by them on the sea beach.

Urmi is gangraped on the sea beach

AOEM, which is seen as the first film of Sinha’s Conscience trilogy (Nag 2021) is an important film in not just marking a departure in Sinha’s oeuvre of filmmaking but also shaping the Bengali middle-class lives in terms of the spaces, figurations and thematic which would have an influence on the filmmakers from the later period. AOEM maps the crisis of Bengali middle-class lives and uses different aural and visual motifs to establish the cinematic idioms of chaos and fear in the city. The city which has an aspirational presence in mainstream Bengali cinema of the earlier decades, is turned into a doomed place in this film.

City stereotypes of ‘fallen’-ness on train travel: Transistor, alcohols and hooliganism

While designing the fallenness of the city, Sinha relies on and reinforces some moral prejudices which were already present in the bhadralok culture. Certain forms of enjoyment, music habits, youth culture, and drinking became the sign of the moral fall of society. Sinha uses the image of drinking alcohol and the transistor radio to establish loudness, cruelty and the lack of humane quality. The image of the transistor along with the loud music is not only associated with the college students’ misbehaviour in the train, but is also used later in the film when they rape Urmi. They play the transistor radio loudly as a strategy to divert the attention of the tourists on the beach. During the rape scene, its image is highlighted with intercuts and the zooming-in zooming out technique. At the end of the rape scene, the leader of the group is shown holding the transistor and leaving the beach. During the investigation, the reference to music and the transistor leads the investigator to the culprits. I see the centrality of the radio in the narrative and in the mise-en-scene as signifying certain notions of ‘bad cultural’ influences associated with gadgets like the radio.

Loud music, delinquency and fallen youth: The image of the transistor radio in several frames

It is interesting to note that in the post-independence Bengali films the image of the transistor radio along with the images of motor cars, bikes and telephones became significant in embodying the modern aspirations of couple space and romance (for instance in films like Deya Neya). In the later period, these images lost their significance as a mode of foregrounding and constructing the idea of modern lives or the privacy of the couple’s space. And during late 1970s and 1980s when certain kinds of loud music, the practice of dancing with rock or disco music were criticized as ‘apasanskriti’/ bad culture in bhadralok cultural milieu, Sinha reinforced this perception by the repetitive underlining of the transistor’s presence during the scenes of violence and the violations of moral order. Hence, the radio became a cultural sign of delinquency, abuse, rowdiness, disturbance, and disobedience. In the first scene of the film, the violation of the loudspeakers playing Hindi songs at the Durga Puja pandal was referred to as one of the many sources of civil disorder in the city. The transistor radio adds to this association of loudness with social and moral abuse.

The police officer Gobinda Babu (Manoj Mitra)

The portrayal of crime and the culprits in AOEM indicates a moral fall of contemporary society.  The police officer Gobinda Babu (Manoj Mitra) during his investigations and his arrest of the culprits repetitively laments this moral fall. Political pressure restricts Gobinda Babu from a fair investigation, and he is suspended under a false allegation. During the long session in court, Sinha depicts the loss of empathy in people present there. Instead of showing sympathy for the rape victim, the court room trial presents a detailed account of pathological facts with gruesome references to body fluids, hair etc. With minimal cuts and mostly close ups and mid close up shots Sinha masterfully constructs the claustrophobic atmosphere in the courtroom.

The overall atmosphere of the courtroom and the kind of queries directed at her upset and disturb Urmi. This case has an impact on her personal life. From her relatives to the principal of her school, everyone is busy judging her and no one stands beside her. In this way Sinha extends the courtroom trial into the living room of Urmi’s home, the streets of Calcutta, the office where Urmi’s father works and the teachers’ common room. The courtroom and the other spaces do not function as a space of security and justice but as inhuman places where everything is disturbing.

From the beginning of the film, Sinha uses interesting shot designing to construct the claustrophobic atmosphere of Urmi’s surroundings. The first shot of the film shows a notice board seen from outside the wired box. In a different scene, Urmi and her friends are shot from behind the grilled gate. These instances reinforce the claustrophobia of daily life in contemporary Calcutta. And finally, the design of the mise-en-scene is complemented by that of the trial scene where the faces of the criminals appear through net wires. AOEM expresses concern for a safe and protected sphere of middle-class life which is vulnerable and is under constant attack by different forces.

The trial scene where the faces of the criminals appear through net wires

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Tapan Sinha extends the narrative of the city, crime and middle-class vulnerability in Atanka (1986). In this film, Soumitra Chattopadhyay plays the role of a retired schoolteacher who witnesses a murder committed by one of his former students, Mihir (Sumanta Mukherjee).

Poster of Atanka (Pic – Shoma A Chatterji)

The teacher is taken aback not only by the act of witnessing the murder but by the constant threats directed at him by the perpetrators of the crime. Atanka starts with a gloomy scene of a rainy evening in the city where the dysfunctional city is being discussed in a tuition class. The teacher accuses the government of the fall of law and order of the system while blaming schools for not covering the exam syllabus. This discussion is followed by him instructing his students to write  an essay on election posters on the walls of Calcutta streets. The teacher voices his concern about problems like political parties not cleaning the walls until another election arrives and the helplessness of the owners of the houses on which these posters are pasted. This brief scene, portrayed as a mundane daily affair, sets the mood and the tone of the rest of the film.

Similar to AOEM, Atanka starts with a mundane activity which is loaded with statements and concerns. The first scene indicates a ‘political’ problem behind the social and moral fall of a society. And the rest of the film builds the pace to cinematically establish this concern. In the next sequence, the murder takes place, and the teacher accidentally witnesses the crime. With sharp cuts and utilizing facial expressions and the body language of Soumitra Chattopadhyay, Sinha masterfully establishes his sheer dismay, fear and shock. This scene is followed by an encounter between the perpetrators of the crime and the witness of their crime. The perpetrators say that nothing has happened and ask him to move. Mihir reminds him, “Mastermoshai, apni kichhu dyakhen ni” (“Sir, you haven’t seen anything”). This dialogue and the overall scene became iconic in Bengali cinema and Sumanta Mukherjee almost became associated with this threat and his intimidating figuration.  This threat becomes a motif in this film with Mihir appearing again and again before his ex-teacher and warning him with this same sentence.  Due to this threat, in the rest of the film the teacher and his family (his son and daughter) live in constant fear.

“Mastermoshai, apni kichhu dyakhen ni”

Later, this murder is revealed to be a ‘political murder’ which was initiated by one political party to profit from the upcoming election.  An influential leader, Dhurjati Babu attempts to save Mihir when the police start investigating the murder. The sentence with which the teacher has been terrorized does not remain just an utterance but indicates a metaphor of seeing/not seeing and being seen.

The film introduces its title track with a remarkable interplay of gazes and begins with different sections of the pedestrians of the city busy with their work suddenly interrupted by something they’ve seen and becoming immobilized. This sequence includes a scene of a mother holding the hands of her school children, followed by two elderly men involved in their discussion, a school van with children and two young men in a conversation. All of them are interrupted in their action and look directly at the audience with an expression of surprise and incomprehension.  These shots probably refer to the everyday violence of the city and the experience of “seeing it”, as well as indicating the act of violence outside the frame of the cinematic realm and pointing to the audience and the larger society that sees this violence but pretends as not seeing.

Opening scene of Atanka

After witnessing the murder, whenever the teacher attempts to inform someone, he finds someone following and spying on him. This constant surveillance restricts him from taking any action against the culprits.  Towards the climax of the film when the teacher complains at the police station, a club member throws acid on his daughter’s face and Mihir attacks his teacher. Though one of his former students, who is a senior officer in the police department, intervenes and promises a fair investigation and the police finally arrests Mihir and his gang, the film ends on a gloomy tone.

In the last scene, a friend of the teacher’s daughter comes to see her after her treatment and proposes to her. She rejects the proposal and requests him to come to the other side of the bed. And finally, the friend and the audience discover a face which is blistered and burnt. He is shocked and the teacher enters the room. The three of them look at the camera in the last shot of this film. This shot in a way complements the series of shots at the beginning of the film that were direct gazes at the camera and completes the chain of gazes that metaphorized what the audience does not see, even as it attempts to make the audience “see” the social evils of the contemporary.

The three of them look at the camera in the last shot of this film

Atanka maps the nexus between political parties, the police and anti-social elements and portrays the terrorized middle class in their para where certain forms of collective community organizations known as clubs dominate local areas. Clubs emerged in the city during this period as sites where unemployed youth (mostly male) built a community sphere and allegedly threatened and forced middle and upper middle-class families to pay for different variety programmes, pujas and other events on similar occasions. Many-a-times the political parties in power/in opposition did not stop this exploitation because the club members were an easy source of political cadres before elections. Newspapers during this period reported various such cases in Calcutta. Hence the club became a site of middle-class fear and represented an uncontrollable sphere interrupting the civil order of the middle-class city and its perception of culture. Issues like playing Hindi songs on loudspeakers or inclusion of non-bhadra ideas of leisure and entertainment became a point of high concern. Atanka elaborates this fear of the middle-class city in its portrayal of Mihir and his fellow club members in their Hindi-ized Bengali pronunciation, use of slangs, trendy attire and sexually promiscuous nature.

Atanka maps the nexus between political parties, the police and anti-social elements

Thus, Atanka does not remain only a thriller centering on a ‘political murder’. With the progression of the narrative, it becomes a film on the moral fall of contemporary times and comments on the decay of values, absence of education and culture amongst the Bengali youth. Atanka portrays this extreme fall of moral order when a retired teacher witnessing his own student committing a murder and the insult and humiliation of the figure of the teacher goes beyond the narrative of individual abuse and speaks for a crisis which operates on a generational basis. It’s interesting to note that in Adalat O Ekti Meye Urmi, a schoolteacher was abused by a group of college students. In Atanka, Sinha heightens the crisis by turning a teacher vulnerable and victimized by his own student.  The question of class also became significant with references to the “lower order of the city” that according to one character in this film, is “more united” and “powerful” than the middle class. And it’s the middle class that is now victimized by the other section of society. Atanka creates a terror-ridden city where the reputation, community lives and free movements of the members of the middle-class are at stake and portrays a bleak future with almost no or little possibility of change.

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Soumitra Chattopadhyay, Shatabdi Roy & Madhabi in Antardhaan

After Atanka, Tapan Sinha directed Antardhan (1992), which is again on the victimization of the middle-class and its vulnerability in Calcutta. Ena (Satabdi Roy), a college student and the daughter of Professor Sushobhan Mukherjee (Soumitra Chattopadhyay) goes missing and the plot is centered on police diary entries, investigation and her rescue from the culprit Barun Lahiri (Arjun Chakraborty).

Unlike AOEM or Atanka, Antardhan portrays the lumpen in his suave, polished and charming body language and overall appearance. Ena falls for him, lies to her parents and they get married. But after their marriage, Barun continuously forces Ena to have physical relationships with his clients to get his business deals done. Ena’s parents are troubled and traumatized and go from door to door, from police stations to lawyers to the media for her return. And finally, a young police officer courageously rescues her. Ena returns to her father but is devastated after her experience with Barun and his clients.

Ena is devastated after her experience with Barun and his clients

This film uses televisual realism in an interesting way. It maps the uncertainty and trauma of city dwellers using the aural dimension of TV and a particular programme on Bengali Doordarshan of the time – “niruddesh samparke ekti ghoshona” (literally “announcement about missing persons”). The title track includes the voice of the television reporter announcing the name, age and other details of various missing persons of Calcutta. This listing of names is immediately followed by a dysfunctional telephone connection in a middle-class household where Mr. Mukherjee stays with his wife and daughter. Mr. Mukherjee utters “What has happened to the city? Do we live in a civilized society?” This sets the tone of the film dealing with disturbance and the daily evils of city life. And the narrative follows this tone.

Manoj Mitra in Antardhan

The story which is based on a short story by Dibyendu Palit maps the city in its fringes and corners from Golf Green to Shyambazar; to a rented house in Chetla to an office at Bhawanipore. The city is mapped in frequent journeys (mostly at night) from one place to another and emerges as a gloomy and dark space where the neighborhood does not function as a support system but as a possible threat and source of mystery. Sinha composes darkly lit, noirish frames while shooting the conversations at home and in the cab discussing safety, uncertainty and daily trouble.

Through these films, Tapan Sinha maps the idea of a middle-class community life not in its proud and fulfilled existence but in crisis and trouble. He isolates the idea of a Bengali middle class from the ruling political party, from the aspiring working-middle sections, the nexus of goons and the police, the local clubs, and rich bureaucrats. As historians and sociologists have demonstrated in their positing of an idea of a porous middle class during this period (Ghosh 2004), this exclusionist idea of middle-class hood can be read as a possible backlash against newer formations in the city. The bhadralok media criticized the ‘crude’ and ‘vulgar’ interventions of the emerging cultural trends of mainstream Bengali cinema in the 1980s. In this context, Tapan Sinha’s films can be seen as a cinematic extension of the press reports and media coverage of a troubled city which was being imagined as on the verge of extinction.

The teacher with his daughter and son in Atanka (Pic – Sukumar Roy)

I see these films of Tapan Sinha’s as a conscious attempt at mapping the boundaries of middle-class lives.  He demonstrated the crisis ridden city and the moral fall of contemporary youth in the 1980s-1990s by using a specific aesthetic pattern which balances certain forms of realism and sentimental dramas of good vs evil. The realistic charge of these films is presented alongside the integration within the melodramatic conflict between the idyllic good middle-class and corrupt criminals. This aesthetic choice constructs the boundary of Sinha’s films during this period which differentiated these films both from the gloss of the mainstream and critical realism of the parallel films.

Though Sinha did not continue as a regular filmmaker after the mid 1990s, his template of middle-class cinema continued for a considerable period in different formations of Bengali film industry. Rituparno Ghosh who emerged as the star director of the post 1990s Bengali ‘new parallel’ films can be read successfully as a case study. Along with his films there are filmic texts like Abaidha (Gulbahar Singh, 2000), Cinemay Jemon Hoy (Mrinmoy Chakraborty, 1994) which weave the concerns of the Bengali middle-class lives in a specific aesthetic pattern reminiscent of Sinha’s films. These overlaps do not emerge simply as mutual influences across different generic practices, but as a result of a certain proximity between ideas, perceptions and concerns for a community space. However, the construction of community space in Bengali middle-class cinema by Sinha not just works as a spatial dimension but also as thematic condensations of the signs of contemporary times. And the later formations by Ghosh, Singh, Chakraborty and others obviously are not too far from these signs.

References:

Ghosh, Parimal. 27 January 2024. “Where Have All the ‘Bhadralok’ Gone?”. Economic and Political Weekly.

Nag, Amitava. 2021. The Cinema of Tapan Sinha: An Introduction. Om Books International.

Nag, Anugyan and Spandan Bhattacharya. 2021. Tollygunge to Tollywood: Bengali Film Industry Reimagined. Orient BlackSwan.

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