Siddharta and Somnath: Revisiting Satyajit Ray’s Calcutta
The Calcutta of the 1970s was many worlds clamped into a single time. One could see illuminated clubs lighting up jubilantly beside hunger and disease-ridden street slums. The Naxalbari movement had scrambled out and proliferated into urban circles. They were being joined, more often than not, by a group of educated, middle-class young men both victims and fighters of a system of unemployment. In 1961, Census data reveals, at least 170,000 people as unemployed in Calcutta. A further 330,000 lives were working on a part-time basis and receiving wages accordingly. The situation did not change drastically in the 1970s. A large chunk of the unemployed belonged to the age-group of 16 to 24 years. In a comparative analysis of Mrinal Sen and Satyajit Ray, Torsa Ghoshal describes contemporary Calcutta as a “fragmented and formless society exploding with the violent energy of the masses.”. Young corpses lined the streets on mornings, students’ houses were raided, and every other young man was seen with eyes of contempt, suspicion, and fear. This is poignantly evident in Pratidwandi when Siddharta (Dhritiman Chatterjee) is asked whether he is a communist by his job interviewers. I shall come back to this point later. Around 1971, the city and its outskirts also started receiving a steady influx of immigrants. The character of the city and its times were fraught with tensions of an unprecedented kind. In many ways, the city was still holding on to a crumbling colonial legacy with a reserved admiration for office etiquettes instilled by the former British superiors, the aspirations for professions like lawyers and doctors and the archetypical lifestyle that these professionals led. At the heart of this, were the middle-class negotiations of bourgeoisie aspirations and turbulent realities. The masses were slowly losing faith in the initially enthusiastic project of Nehruvian nation-building and progress. Sunil Khilani remarked, that during this period, “intellectuals outside the government slumps into despair or catatonia.”. Ray’s works were taking a similar line. Starting from the end of the 1960s, Ray’s films were talking about the discontents and crises of the emerging urban India. It is in this context, that this writing talks about two protagonists, Sidhharta from Pratidwandi (1970) and Somnath (Pradip Mukherjee) from Jana Aranya (1976), who are reflective of the dillemas, frustrations and the daily negotiation of ethical consistency and moral ambivalence faced by the youth of the day.
Siddharta and Somnath belong to educated middle class and upper middle-class families and have received college education and are now out looking for jobs to fulfil their aspirations of a good life. In both the films, the discontents of an unproductive college education system are directly and indirectly referred to. Jana Aranya opens with the scene of a college examination which Somnath is appearing for to complete his B.A. degree. The sequence extends two-fold. In the examination hall, the Student Union is shown helping the students to cheat in broad daylight. Their power within the university campus turned the invigilators into helpless observers as open books, pieces of paper and answers are passed on from student to student. Ray tries to depict an education system which has failed to capture the imagination and enthusiasm of the students as well as a despicable politics of convenience which bred mediocrity. The second sequence extends into the dingy residence of the examiner who checks Somnath’s answer sheet. His eyesight fails him owing to the frailty of old age. Thus, he fails to properly read and comprehend Somnath’s small and running handwriting. Somnath ends up missing the first division by seven marks. Siddharta’s academic career is not shown in the film Pratidwandi but we have a reference to it in a sequence depicting a job interview, where it is noted that Sidhharta studied medicine for two years, but eventually ‘lost his way’ ending up with a B.Sc. degree. Ray was not only critiquing an educational system lacking in excellence but a way of learning which had lost complete connect with reality. Somnath pursues and obtains a B.A degree from University of Calcutta only to eventually act as a middleman for the delivery of a variety of products from ‘alpin to elephant’ or in simple words as a broker. A conversation with his father who is disappointed at his result, indicates that history is his “strongest subject” hinting at an obvious inclination. However, his academic persuasions and professional reality are completely dissociated. Ray carefully crafts the interview scenes in both the films for understandable reasons. Interviews were regular parts of the lives of young men at that time in a market of job scarcity. Somnath is taken aback when an interviewer asks him the weight of the moon in the job interview. Similarly, Siddharta is asked who the Prime Minister of Britain was during the independence of India. The evaluation of qualifications of people are mechanized in this moving city of baggage. This mundane practice finds suitors till today. Many competitive and administrative examinations still follow such patterns of questions. It is a system which is not only unimaginative but tangibly wary of free thinkers. It is not difficult to contextualise this in the Calcutta of the 70s. It was a time when everything was becoming terribly transient and shapeless and hence this mechanization was the most convenient way and accessible method of standardization of giving some sort of concrete semblance to the process. Ray contrasts the bureaucratic robotic rigour to the state of utter confusion and volatile energy that the masses found themselves in. Ray’ films do not really have scenes or sequences depicting the firefighting in narrow alleys or young men being shot in the back. There is a visible absence of graphic depiction of Naxalbari fallouts in these two films. This absence is not a passive one but an active one. There are continuous references to the condition of simmering rebellion on the streets. Siddharta’s brother is a bomb-making Naxalite. It is an active absence because the viewer notices this absence and realizes the director wants to show a desperation for distance. The desperate attempts of both the young men to distance themselves from this catatonic labyrinth is reflective of the contemporary anxiety of the middle-class of seeing younger generations ‘fall into’ rebellion. Ray talks about a vicious circle here. He talks about an unimaginative society trying to distance itself from rebellion and eventually due to the sheer lack of alternative visions end up fuelling rebellion.
Anyone, who is even slightly familiar with Ray will know that Ray was hardly ambivalent towards rebellion. He felt very strongly about it. He offered very rudimentary critiques of what Slavoj Zizek would call ‘ideology’. There is a subdued acknowledgement and admiration for the radical activists in both the films. A sequence from Jana Aranya shows Somanth’s father being awed at the resolve of the Naxalites where they were even ready to die for an idea. Not displaying the characteristic dismissive middle-class attitude about Naxalbari, the old man expresses a desire to read their literature where they talk about their aims and agenda. He remarks, “It must be such a great and powerful idea, that people are willing to die for it.” I think there is a statement that this sequence makes about the impact of the movement on the Bengali consciousness. It reminds a city, neck deep in the bourgeoisie politics of a complacent Congress that people could die for ideas. In an interview, Andrew Robinson, Ray’s biographer, asked him about his admiration of Naxalite activists. Ray replied, “Oh yes, I do. Because I don’t share that kind of courage, the kind that can face bullets and even lay down one’s life. This aspect of Naxalism has always fascinated me. One can’t avoid admiring such courage.”
Ray retained this ability to appreciate the sheer thrust of courage in the politics of stagnant times. In Pratidwandi when Siddharta is asked by an interviewer as to what he regards to be the most outstanding achievement in the preceding decade., he ponders for a moment and says, “The war in Vietnam.” The interviewer is taken aback. He asks, “More significant than the landing on the moon?”. Siddharta says, that though the moon landing was a remarkable milestone, it was not entirely unpredictable or unprepared for, given the rapid pace of technological advancement of the preceding years. However, the Vietnam War was a display of sheer human courage against the most powerful nation in the world, which no one saw coming. Ray had a characteristic affection for science and technology. However, it did not prevent him from making a critique of the perception of technological spectacle on public memory and how that pushes out more consistent hence less visible memories of change in the lives of ordinary people.
After knocking on many a door, Somnath settles for an order-supply business which comprised of acting as the middleman between suppliers and customers. In tracing Somnath’s many interactions around his profession, Ray shows not only certain cultural attitudes but also the linguistic manifestations of these cultural attitudes. While on a job searching spree, Somnath meets Bishu Da (Utpal Dutta), a fellow football enthusiast. On hearing Somnath’s predicament, Bishu Da talks about his own journey in the world of business and enquires as to why Somnath is not interested in business. He tries to alley Somnath’s fear of requirement of capital by saying even selling peanuts is a business. When Somnath, rather taken aback, asks Bishu Da if he is asking the former to sell peanuts, the latter says, “Absolutely not. You are a Brahmin. You can stand on the road with a begging bowl, but how will you strike deals for trade?”. When Somnath announces to his father that he is taking to business, there is a look of worry and hopelessness on his father’s face. There is another sequence of Somnath, his elder brother and their father having dinner, where the two sons talk about the regular practice of bribing to procure orders. The father is naturally aghast. These and several other motifs point to the characteristic Bengali apathy towards business as a profession. This evolves into a manifest disgust and a notion of inevitable dishonesty around businessmen. The attributed equivalence of negotiation to moral comprise, cold utilitarianism and the sheer action of handling hard cash is something which is despised. In another sequence, Santosh Dutta, playing the role of a real estate broker, hands Somnath Rs 150 as commission for showing him a potential real estate plot. Dutta is irked at how Somnath pockets the money without counting it. Counting money when someone hands it to you is an indication that you do not completely trust the other person. The aversion to this is a characteristic motif of the Bengali bhadralok who aspires for visible elegance in his behaviour.
Utilitarianism in the world of capitalism requires flexible moral compasses. This notion is the premise of the stereotype ascribed to the businessman. The mentioned moral compromises were not exclusive to business as they were also part of jobs or chakri. The Bengali of that time were a people aspiring to be the fictional, uncompromising bhadralok in a world which cared little about ethics.
Sumit Sarkar in his paper, “Kaliyuga, Chakri and Bhakti: Ramkrishna and His Times” introduces the difference between the bhadralok and babu. Sumit Chakrabarti provides an elaborate extension of it. He argues that the category of babu is much more fluid in meaning. Mr. Mitter (Rabi Ghosh) in Jana Aranya is a babu. He has accepted the ethical and moral compromises required in business and maintains no pretence of otherwise. He engages regularly in the habit of supplying his clients with prostitutes to secure large orders. He is part of the ‘noveau riche’, as his waterproof hand-watch shows. Somnath finds himself at an intersection of these upwardly mobile utilitarian entrepreneurial class and his socialisation of moral conformity which he has received from his background as a proprietary class. His father mentions that until two generations ago no one in the family even worked a job. This would mean that in all likeliness Somnath’s forefathers belonged to the ‘rentier’ class who earned from their landholdings. They were outmuscled in trade markets by the British and hence saw the ‘inner’ world which was their family, their morals, and their claim to ethical supremacy a space where they had to maintain their identity.
Ray also introduces a linguistic play here. Somnath is comfortable with the word ‘order-supply’. It is a profession which sounds relatively refined. However, he despises the Bengali counterpart of the word- ‘dalal’. His head hangs in shame while he uses that word to describe his profession. A ‘dalal’ (broker) is stereotypically seen as a greedy, opportunist crook with no moral compass who dupes both parties in a deal. It is used in the connotation of an expletive.
The final observation that I want to make about the two films and the characters is the role of women in their lives and within the narratives of the film. The films were made at a time when women in significant numbers were entering into the workforce- some of them out of sheer requirement to prevent financial despondency, some with a desire of carving out an independent space for themselves. This emergent practice went in contradiction to the deliberate practice of the bhadralok upper middle-class of keeping the women of their household at a considerable distance from the material and commercial realities of the professional world. Partha Chatterjee talks about this phenomenon in ‘Colonialism, Nationalism and Colonialized Women’, where he talks about the constructed notion of the 18th century middle-class women in nationalism. Women venturing outside into occupations meant that they attempt to reclaim agencies for themselves. The man is conscious about this erstwhile deliberate desexualisation, which also meant repression of the exploration of sexuality. From the male gaze, providing women agency means giving them a freeway to explore their sexuality, whereby their proclaimed purity ran the risk of being sucked into the schizophrenia of a discontented, morally culpable urban civilization. This attempt shows its ugly face in Siddharta’s continuous attempt to censor his sister’s interaction with her boss. There are two layers of nuance to these sequences. Firstly, it reflects the ‘repressed’ incestuous idea of the possession of the sister- the sheer pleasure derived from authoring over a docile body, bound to Siddharta not by fluctuating romance but by conforming kinship. Secondly, it shows an objection to the introduction of private, intrusive romance into a hierarchical relationship of authority between the employer and employee. The said anxiety is latent in Pratidwandi but manifest in Jana Aranya, where Somnath’s friend’s sister turns up as a prostitute who he has to take to his client to secure a lump order. The sequence shows Mr. Mitter running from door to door trying to secure an escort for his client portraying a significantly wide prevalence of prostitution. Ray uses the cinematic device of coincidence to throw light on the unknown ‘possibilities on to which the self-assuming male anxiety was centred.
In these two films, and through these two characters, Ray captures a city in confusion and schizophrenia. Neither of the characters have conventional happy, complete endings. Somnath procures the order by hesitantly compromising on his self-integrity and Siddharta has to move to a different city for a job after he creates a ruckus at an interview where the interviewees were being made to wait for long in the sultry heat of the city in the summer. The city and its people were in a form of radical motion. It did not know to whom it belonged- the rebels, the clerks, the middlemen, the politicians or the refugees. Ray locates an everyday in this Calcutta through these two characters, which becomes an act of continuous losing and finding.
