SATYAJIT  RAY'S HEROES AND HEROINES

Satyajit Ray’s Heroes and Heroines by Amitav Nag  ; Published by Rupa ; Pages 232; Price Rs,  295/-

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 Shri.Amitava Nag, the author of the book under review, on Satyajit Ray, was editor of the film magazine ‘Silhouette ’ for seventeen years. An independent film scholar and critic, Nag is a prolific writer and has brought out  a book ‘Beyond Apu---20 Favourite Film Roles of Soumitra Chatterjee”.

Satyajit Ray first placed India on the map of world cinema with his 1955-classic Pather Panchali. In a career spanning nearly four decades and including twenty-seven feature films, Ray is undoubtedly the most-known Indian film-maker till date. Pather Panchali is described as a turning point in Indian cinema, as it was among the films that pioneered the Parallel Cinema  movement, which espoused authenticity and social realism. The tale of Apu's life is continued in the two subsequent instalments of Ray's trilogy :Aparajito and Apur Sansar. 

 Soumitra Chatterjee, Ray’s most favourite actor, says in the Foreword to this book , “Manik Da had a tremendous eye for details and that is reflected in the profiles he created on screen, even the apparently insignificant ones. I am not sure if there has been any book in English that covers the different profiles that he chalked out in his cinema.” 

Here is a book on Ray’s creations. This book examines some of the most memorable characters put up by him on the silver screen.

 It  studies closely  the actors and actresses  who were lucky to be picked up by Ray to portray his characters. Most of them have acquired status as legends.

The author has  divided them into types-- such as patriarchal father figure,  mother  and city hero. Ray was complete master of the medium and dictated every part of his films—be it story, script, music, photography and controlled their creators. Ray came under the spell of Neo-realist cinema of Europe and experimented with  non-professional actors and believed in shooting on location. His greatest talent was to extract “Pure Gold” from any actor he chose—however inexperienced. He  chose the actors who would play in his films and mostly they got chosen by sheer chance.

He designed the sets and costumes, operated the camera since Charulata .He composed the music for all his films since 1961 and designed the publicity posters for his new releases.

In addition to film-making, Ray was a composer, a writer and a graphic designer. He even designed a new typeface. In 1961, he revived and continued to publish the Bengali children's magazine "Sandesh", which was founded by his grandfather Upendrakishore Ray . 

 Every detail of his film were sketched out by Ray  much  before shooting.  One actor recalled : “I still treasure the script-reading session, every detail of his (Ray’s) film was in his red-bound book and the rest was in his brain.” 

Ray had  his magical manner  of  making  the children who appeared in almost all his movies act. His most famous child heroine  Dasgupta who played Durga in Pather Panchali recalls that Ray “never gave instructions to the children in the presence of others. It was always whispered exclusively to each child so that what he wanted us to do was like a secret between just the two of us. We liked him so much that we wanted to please him.” 

Ray chose his  actors — both professional and non-professional actors— who shared the attributes of the character and had grappled with similar situations in life as the character was facing onscreen. For example, Uttam Kumar who played the role of a matinee idol in Ray’s Nayak was indeed the superstar of Bengali cinema at that time. 

The book is rich in anecdotes of an unusual character.  Waheeda Rehman  played the role of Gulaabi in  the film about the taxi-driver “Abhijan.” Ray told Waheeda : “ You earn a lot of money in Hindi films. I make films on small budgets.” Rehman replied that it would be an honour to work in a Ray film and that Ray should not embarrass her by discussing the money part. 

 Ray proved  how a variety of elements — light, music, soundtrack can be made to work together to create an unique effect . Ray was the principal  force whose distinct stamp of creativity was writ large on every inch  of his film. Spectators of Ray’s movies  can readily relate themselves to the characters  appearing  on the screen. The characters of his  film  provide the fulcrum for the film’s exploration of moral imperfection. Ray was very Indian in his approach to characterisation as he did not see his villain as an all evil person. Villains in Ray’s films were characters with negative hues, people ensnared in their own belief systems just like the character of Ravana in all versions of the Ramayana. 

Ray made films in his own signature style. He was an auteur of Bengali cinema in every possible sense because as a filmmaker he was true to who he was — a Bengali bhadralok whose sensibility was forged in the fire of the Bengal Renaissance.

To recapitulate some of the main characters from Ray’s films.

Chhabi  Biswas was the aristocratic patriarch. In his roles in Kanchejunga and Jalsaghar he displayed his extraordinary theatrical abilities. Another actor Anil Chatterjee appeared as the hero of Mahanagar. He had acted in the films of Ritwik Ghatak too.  Dhritiman Chatterjee had difficult roles to play—a negative role in Ganashatru- which is the Ray version of Henrik Ibsen’s  “Enemy of the People”. Ray’s blue-eyed boy was, of course, Soumitra Chatterjee who had fourteen roles in fourteen of Ray’s twenty seven films. Shyam Benegal wrote of Soumitra, “His performance can be compared to a fine Persian carpet, subtle and exquisite. It is only when you turn to look at the back of the carpet do you see the intricate work that has gone into the making”.  Soumitra Chatterjee exemplified the camaraderie between the actor and the director. Uttam Kumar kicked up a crescendo of great acting with Ray’s  Nayak and Chiriyakhana. Uttam’s work showed rare virtues of grace, spontaniety and confidence. Utpal Dutt distinguished himself in Ray’s last film Agantuk.

Among women characters Karuna Banerji had a great role in Pather   Panchali and Aparajito. She was Sarbajaya and gave a solid performance. Madhabi Mukherjee acted in three of Ray’s films and she had natural grace and intelligence in Mahanagar and Charulata. Her Charu is sublime and multi-layered. Sharmila Tagore made an appearance as Aparna, Apu’s wife. She played five characters for Ray.

The book deals briefly with the comic films  and childrens’ films of Ray---especially the iconic ‘Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne’. Who can forget Rabi Ghosh and the Dance of the Ghosts  in this classic?

Reading Nag’s book will  rekindle the old passion in many to watch Ray films in a new light. The book offers a wealth of  information on Ray’s heroes and heroines and is definitely a collector’s item for all those who once loved and watched Ray films.

                                                     

 P.P.Ramachandran.

26/05/2019.

MICHELLE OBAMA--BECOMING

Becoming by Michelle Obama ; Published by Viking--Penguin ; Pages 428  ; Price Rs.999/-

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Michelle LaVaughn Obama  is an American lawyer, university administrator and writer, who was First Lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017. She is married to the 44th U.S. president, Barack Obama, and was the first African-American first lady.

Michelle is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School. She worked at the law firm Sidley Austin, where she met Barack Obama. Michelle married Barack in 1992 and they have two daughters.

As First Lady, Obama served as a role model for women, and worked as an advocate for poverty awareness, education, nutrition, physical activity and healthy eating. She supported American designers and was considered a fashion icon.

The book under review is her memoir.She   has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As First Lady  she created the most welcoming and inclusive White House in history, even as she established herself as a powerful advocate for women the world over, dramatically changing the ways that families pursue healthier and more active lives, and standing with her husband as he led America through  its most harrowing moments. She  raised two down-to-earth daughters under severe  media glare.

Her  life is filled with meaning and accomplishment. Her memoir is  a work of deep reflection and mesmerising storytelling, she  chronicles the experiences that have shaped her—from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world’s most famous address. With utter  honesty and boisterous  wit, she delineates  her successes and failures , both public and private, telling the tale in her own words and on her own terms. Warm, wise, and revelatory, the book is the deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations.

Michelle ,though born in an era where the racial/colour discrimination was riding  high  never played the victim card but she turned them all into her strengths to become the Michelle we know. One chapter reveals how her hostel mates quit sharing room with Michelle because she was black.

She was very fortunate to have found a perfect partner in  Barack   while she was working in a reputed firm. This book  probes  Barack’s life as well. Obama also came from a working middle class family like hers. She clearly  explains their Presidential campaigns and the much glorified life and also it's negatives  inside White House. We  also read how Michelle fought against child obesity, problems faced by veterans, women and Afro- Americans when she became the First Lady. On a different tack the First Lady herself  took the initiative in building a beautiful garden in White House and promoted farming of organic vegetables. She made White House more accessible to children, school and college students.

Her description of meeting and getting to know, then falling in love with, Barack, is really interesting. It was NOT love at first sight! They became friends, and then sweethearts, and then, over time, deeply in love.

We get to see what Barack is like--truly, that's the charming portion of the book. Michelle  struggles as a young adult and a working mother, then as a political spouse.

 The book is in two parts. The  first section, recounts her  youth, deal  with her sense of daughterly duty as she remembers the “striving” and the “dashed dreams” that lived with her on Chicago’s South Side, where her childhood was marked by the resource drain of white flight and the deteriorating health of her father. “Politics had traditionally been used against black folks, as a means to keep us isolated and excluded, leaving us under-educated, unemployed, underpaid,” according to her. Her  frankness regarding the media’s processing of her image is famous. She writes, “It was as if there were some cartoon version of me out there wreaking havoc, a woman I kept hearing about but didn’t know—a too-tall, too-forceful, ready to emasculate Godzilla of a political wife named Michelle Obama.” .

 During her time in the White House, Obama grew into a symbol for rejecting the cool distance inherent to symbolism; she was the first First Lady to court an air of “relatability,” and she retained it even as she became one of the most popular Americans in history.

She made a colourful  statement  “I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves.”

  “Becoming” serenely balances gravity and grace, uplift and anecdote. Regarding her alliance with  Barack  she declares, they are opposing forces, like Yin and Yang. Her  gregariousness is faced by Barack’s need for pensive solitude. She constructs an identity as if tucking and folding a piece of origami; he is an improbable American original, a hybrid of Kenya, Hawaii and Kansas with an Arabic middle name, a one-man melting pot whose mixed ingredients make him eternally ambivalent. 

Their relationship  develops as a disputatious comedy of manners. At their Chicago law firm, Michelle initially appraises him an “exotic geek”, then more politely reclassifies him as a unicorn. He also smokes, which disgusts her. All is forgiven, thanks to his “noble heart” and his encyclopaedic head.

 Once they are married, his political commitments turn him into a “human blur, a pixelated version of the guy I knew”. In the White House, where she makes clothing choices a month in advance and submits to endless primping by stylists, he maintains his “loose-jointed Hawaiian casualness” and is ready for work as soon as he pulls “the same dark suit out of his closet”. He doesn’t, she adds, even need to comb his hair.

 She complains about “the new heaviness” that the presidency brought with it, symbolised by a limo that is “a seven-ton tank disguised as a luxury vehicle, tricked out with hidden tear-gas cannons, rupture-proof tyres, and a sealed ventilation system” able to withstand a biological or chemical assault. The antidote to this onerous symbolism is her irrepressible lightness of being: her dance moves, her happy informality that made her ignore protocol and stoop from her great height to give the Queen a consoling hug when they first met.

The book  is enormously effective at distilling Michelle’s  poise, intelligence, and warmth into a single ,hefty book . It  evokes the idea of the Obama marriage as an aspirational partnership while letting us in on just a few secrets.

“I was deeply, delightfully in love with a guy whose forceful intellect and ambition could possibly end up swallowing mine,” she writes. “I saw it coming already, like a barrelling wave with a mighty undertow.”

 Michelle’s  unapologetic belief in her own worth, in the validity of her own ambitions and her own priorities in the face of her husband’s political aspirations, is part of what makes her such a compelling figure. She is not, she maintains as she chronicles her experience living through multiple gruelling political campaigns, going to be swallowed up by her husband’s celebrity. She has no intentions of becoming an accessory to his career, and we love her for it.

Obama is straightforward about the ambivalence she felt when her husband decided to run for political office. She believed that he’d be good at the job, she writes, but “I feared that the path he’d chosen for himself — and still seemed so clearly committed to pursuing — would end up steamrolling our every need.”

  There is so much to like about this book, the little vignettes about life in the White House. The policy issues are less interesting; the human issues more so. All in all, a worthwhile and enjoyable read. 

                                                                      

P.P.Ramachandran.

19/05/2019.

C D DIVAKARUNI

The Forest of Enchantments by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni ;Published by Harper Collins  Publishers ; Pages 359 ; Price Rs.599/-

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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni  is an Indian-American author, poet, and the Betty and Gene McDavid Professor of Writing at the University of Houston Creative Writing Program.

Her short story collection, Arranged Marriage won an American Book Award  and two of her novels The Mistress of Spices and Sister of My Heart as well as a short story The Word Love were adapted into films.  Currently, Sister of My Heart, Oleander Girl, Palace of Illusions,  and One Amazing Thing are  being  made into movies or TV serials.

Mostly based  in India and the U.S., her books are noted  for their evocation of the  experience of immigrants from South Asia.

 They do have  forceful women characters . Panchaali recounts  the tale of the Pandavas in the book “The Palace of Illusions”. Another book “Before We Visit the Goddess” revolves round   the relationship between mothers and daughters over  generations.

According to Divakaruni our Epics  deal with the quintessence of  human experience — love, hatred, fear, nobility. They throng with remarkable  characters such as Ram, Sita, Krishna and Draupadi. They are not bound by time but retain their relevance even unto this day.

To the author   “women’s experiences are at once important, valuable and complicated. Additionally, throughout history, they have been marginalised”. So she places them at the  centre of her books. She remains transformed by such tales.

In a prefatory note, Divakaruni  makes three important points.

Sita may be the incarnation of the goddess Lakshmi but, having taken a mortal body, she is human, too , with human feelings. Two. Sita’s choices and reactions stem from courage—a courage of endurance, of moving forward in spite of obstacles, of never giving in. Three. The story of Sita and Ram is one of the greatest and most tragic love stories—not just in our Indian culture but in the world.

The volume  is  not only Sita’s story but of  the other women—major and minor-- of the Ramayana, and Divakaruni is effective in the re-telling of the tale.

The Ramayana, besides being a morality tale, is a love story at its heart — a tragic one, created by misunderstandings and boundaries of faith and fidelity. While this book is primarily about Sita, the voices of the other women of the epic —  Kaikeyi and Manthara — are given their due. Somehow, all these women require redemption by  Rama, or they attain  goal through him. Divakaruni  tackles this intelligently and endows  them  unique  identity and voices.The book  also has a close study of  Soorpanakha and Mandodari.

Divakaruni’s  narrative is admirably well balanced and passes no judgement. Sita  is considered to be an  immortal  character . Abandoned at birth and found and raised by King Janak, Sita the Princess of Mithila is blessed with powers to heal. Thus, she is revered as the Goddess. The story told in her own voice charts the course of her life- her love at first sight with Ram, their subsequent marriage, her life in her new home in Ayodhya, her feelings and desire for motherhood, her anguish in captivity, and finally the sorrow that arises out of Ram’s suspicion on her character.

Gods when they descend on earth acquire a human form- a form that is characterised by human feelings and emotions of jealousy, suspicion and betrayal. Sita mirrors the women in society who often remain in the shadows of a man. She speaks of her own feelings, her love for her man, the sense of duty and most importantly her self-respect. Sita  fights, agonises and succeeds in registering  her voice .

The book raises some pertinent questions. Sita undergoes an ordeal of fire to prove her chastity before she is accepted by Ram. But as a woman seduced by love, and unwilling to question the man, she forgives it all. Yet, when the man whom she trusted, the man she loved and forgave, banishes her away when suspicion grows stronger within him again, she must take a stand to say – “No more”.

 Blending in with the story are other characters we often hear less about- Urmila the doting sister, Kaikeyi misguided yet pulled by maternal love, Mandodari and the secrets she holds within and Soorpanakha the woman who becomes the main cause of the destruction of Ravan.

Our heroine, Sita, is wedded to the conscientious, justice-loving, ‘perfect man’, Ram. She is abducted by Ravan, rescued by Ram and then promptly abandoned. She proves her innocence, becomes the queen of Ayodhya and prepares to welcome her children when she is exiled from the kingdom. She gets depressed, but recovers enough to raise her twins as worthy beings. As she tries to immerse herself in her new life, she hears Valmiki’s Ramayan – a paean for the great King Ram.

But Sita is unhappy with this one-sided narrative. She has her side of the story to tell the world – “Sitayan”.

 “Everything was about to change again,” says Sita as she begins to write verses only she can do justice to. At this commencement, the reader’s heart exults, for Divakaruni and her women characters are a formidable pair.

In Divakaruni’s retelling of the folk epic, minor women characters come to life, claiming their own lores, redesigning and rephrasing them. The author delves deep into their selves and brings out  their beauty .

The author works calmly to banish some   prejudices . We are all human, with our distortions  just like Ram and Sita and their clan. No one ought to be adored or castigated  blindly. Individual  readers can empathise and digest the volume guided by their personal  experiences that have given them form. 

 Divakaruni’s  language is limpid, pleasant and conceals her  strength. She allows free scope for development of her numerous  characters. Sita is  a fierce conservationist, dutiful but bold daughter, protective sister, loving yet wilful wife, perfect helpmate, sensual lover, courageous fighter, skilled healer, learned counselor, strong mother, kind yet firm daughter-in-law, nurturer and adventurer. She revels in her own being, is mindful of pleasure and grief, of empathy and understanding, and is brimming with dignity for herself and for everyone else. She is the original feminist.

When Ram says, “In my kingdom, every man will have a voice, no matter how humble he is,” Sita wants to ask, “What about the women?” Another time, Sita debates in her mind, “Not all women are weak and helpless like you think.” In these subtle expressions, Divakaruni  gives expression to  the acerbic  masculinity that not only bothers Sita but also harms Ram.

Agitated at the unfair treatment of a woman, Sita asks, “Why should you be made to suffer for his sin? For being a victim? It was unfair.” Divakaruni’s rendition rightly raises pertinent questions on racism, sexism, inequality, casteism, and also on post-traumatic stress disorder, animal rights and so on.

She  weaves a web of mystery  administering jolts here and there . The abduction of Sita, for example, is very well-devised and chilling; so is Ravan’s death. The sustained and controlled fervour of her storytelling keeps all glued to the book .

The Forest of Enchantments is an eminently readable tale written in a majestic style.

P.P.Ramachandran

12/05/2019.

DICK TERESI

Lost Discoveries  by Dick Teresi; Published by  Simon & Schuster; Pages 464 ; Price  U.S.$27.00.

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                         Dick Teresi is the author of several books about science and technology. He has written for Omni, Discover, the New York Times Magazine and Atlantic. His arguments are persuasive, giving credit where credit is thousands of years overdue. Science is believed to have originated with the Greeks around 600 BC, developed in the European Renaissance, and found perfection in the modern West. In the early 1990s Dick Teresi accepted an assignment to expose and document faulty multicultural science being taught in American schools.

“I began to write with the purpose of showing that the pursuit of evidence of nonwhite science is a fruitless endeavour. Six years later, I was still finding examples of ancient and medieval non-Western science that equalled and often surpassed ancient Greek learning. I had the pleasure of discovering mountains of unappreciated human industry, four thousand years of scientific discoveries by peoples I had been taught to disregard."

                                      Teresi recounts his voyages into the worlds of  mathematics, astronomy, cosmology, physics, geology, chemistry, and technology, discussing contributions from Egypt, the ancient Near East, Islam, India, China, ancient America, and Oceania. His manuscript was reviewed for factual accuracy by nine prominent scholars whose comments- even at variance- find a place in the notes given at the end of the volume. This innovative history proves once and for all that the roots of all science were established centuries, some instances millennia before the births of Copernicus, Galileo and Newton. The bibliography provides a starting place for further research on specific topics.

                                    The important discoveries that make up nearly all the book are several in mathematics; the ancient Egyptians worked on the idea of the lowest common denominator and formulated a fraction table that required 28,000 calculations to develop. The Babylonians devised the first written math and used a place-value number system. Ancient East Indians invented the numerals 0 through 9 and made important contributions to geometry and trigonometry. The ancient Indians  correctly identified the relative distances of the known planets from the sun; the Chinese reported and recorded eclipses between 1400 and 1200 BCE; and the Arabs built the first observatories . Five thousand years ago, the Sumerians said the earth was round and a Hindu astronomer taught that the rising and setting of the sun were based on the earth's daily rotation on its axis. In the eleventh century, Avicenna of Persia asserted that outward qualities of metals were of little use in classification (he stressed internal structure--well before Mendeleyev's periodic table of elements) and in 1041, Pi Sheng invented movable type. In South America the Quechuan Indians of Peruwere the first to vulcanize rubber and Andean farmers were the first to freeze-dry potatoes. And, in Kashmir, iron suspension bridges were being developed. Indian mathematicians not only used the zero and devised algebra, logarithms, trigonometry, and the ancestors of our current numerals, but also developed a form of calculus centuries before Leibnitz and Newton. These discoveries were adopted and expanded by medieval Moslems, who among other accomplishments invented decimal fractions (e.g., .5 for 1/2). Again, all three of the discoveries that Francis Bacon credited with marking the beginning of the modern world -- gunpowder, the magnetic compass, and printing -- came from China. When Gutenberg set the Mainz Bible in print in 1456, Chinese libraries already held editions of numerous books printed in movable type, a technology developed in the 1040s. The Chinese still preserve thousands of printed texts from every period going back 2,000 years.

                             Dick Teresi divulges forbidding quantity of information, and asserts that the observations and intuitive conclusions of ancient thinkers who lacked modern scientific technology are remarkable. Lost Discoveries offers a fascinating and enthusiastic introduction to the rich scientific history of non-Western cultures. This is a story of time-binding and cultural diversity at its best.

P.P.Ramachandran

05/05/2019.