No longer Human

He did not know when he opened his eyes.He could feel the wet grass beneath his body and was shivering in damp foggy cold.An excruciating pain had engulfed his body.It was then he understood that he could see,he couldn't before because it was night-time and the clouds in the sky had covered the moon entirely.The clouds have cleared and he could see the dull moon,the stars,twinkling.He saw the cuts and bruises all over his body.He decided not to try and stand up then,he would first comprehend what had happened to him,why was his body throbbing in pain,why his head was aching like hell......with all these questions,he looked up to the sky."The night sky is so peaceful!"-he murmured.What are those?Have the stars descended from the sky?No!He remembered that those were fireflies.The light of fireflies is cold,that is when you hold them in your palm it doesn't feel hot.He couldn't remember how he knew this!What is that gentle noise?He recollected that it was due to crickets......but who told him all these things?He couldn't remember!
Somehow withstanding all the pain he stood up....he knew fireflies always gather around a tree.So he hobbled in that direction.His vision was blurred,but he somehow found the tree.Abreast of the tree he could see a road and a car standing alongside the road,no not standing,but upside down.Why was it like that?he couldn't remember.He moved towards the car,A pungent smell with a tinge of sickening sweetness burst into his nose.He felt like spewing out everything that was in his digestive tract.He was petrified by what he saw next.Was that blood?yes,it was!it was blood splattered over the entire road.He looked around,he found a boy and a woman lying down.Were they dead?they must be,they were not moving an inch.After a few moments of horror,curiosity had filled his heart.Who are they?Did he know them?and why does his heart feel funny?Every time he looked upon them,he felt a pain in his chest just like a small needle piercing the skin.What was the reason behind it?he could not bear not knowing it.He had an urge to run away from all this and so he did.He stumbled and fell after running a short distance.He could no longer keep his eyes open,it was too painful."Why is all this happening to me?"-he screamed and fainted in the road with the stars and the moon watching over him like guardian angels.



"Come on Auro!hurry up!We need to go,and don't you want an ice-cream!"
"Yeah mommy,that would be awesome!"-He grinned observing the mother and her child from his window.Its been three years,and he still remembers that night,in fact it is the only thing he remembers.Everything before it is concealed somewhere deep down his brain.He now obviously has more information about himself.He knows that his name is Ronit Ganguly,he is a hotshot banker,and he owns a lovely condo in ballygunge circular road.He knows his workplace,his household details and other stuff.After he fainted that night,the commoners had taken him to the hospital.It was there that he was informed that he and his family had an accident.According to the doctors he was suffering from amnesia and that it was possible that he may never regain his memory.They also informed him about the death of his wife and his boy.The police assured him that they will find the bastard truck driver who was responsible.But the most muddling thing to about all this was not that he could not gain his memory back,he tried a lot about that and eventually had given up on his memory.It was rather the fact that he felt nothing learning all about his tragedy,about loosing his family.Even while cremating his wife and son he felt no such grief.His therapist at the time had regarded this behaviour to be sociopathic.The last three years,he read lot about dealing with such emotions,researched almost everything about human emotions,but he found nothing,no explanations as to his mental condition.At times he felt that he was no longer human


.
But as time passed he came to a conclusion all by himself. Turning his eyes to  the picture of him and his family on the wall,he thought-
"Human emotions are subject to situations around them.Nature creates us from a DNA blueprint and puts us in a world of scenarios and circumstances we can't control.The only logical explanation of his state of mind is that as he remembered nothing,so he could not attach to his wife and son.The entire concept about a heart being a superior archive of emotions was wrong.It was nothing but a mere literary device to camouflage the bitter truth of life.All emotions in humans comes from the brain,and it is the choices one makes that define his or her actions."
He sighed, then turned to the window,the mother and the boy were enjoying their ice-cream.He suddenly felt the same needle-piercing pain as he felt the night of his accident.He understood even after all these years,the void in his heart was not fulfilled.And whatever he forces his mind to believe, it will know deep down that it is a lie.But he needs to maintain his lie,for his sake,for the sake of his new life.He looked up to the sky and grinned "You are one lousy fucker,aren't you?".

Reason,Debate and Story

                                   Jukti,Takko aar Gappo

                                                (Reason,Debate &  story)

"All films are political,the question is which side do you choose?"-the words of a bengali film making legend,who contributed to initiate the meticulous display of social reality in the film industry.Along Satyajit Ray & Mrinal Sen,he charted the trajectory of parallel cinema as a counterpart to the main stream hindi and bengali cinema.The man who worked for the masses but was never noted by them until after his death,RITWIK GHATAK.

After the Partition of Bengal in 1947,a certain section of the leftist party believed that the Independence was fake and revolution was just around the corner.Use of artistic media to reach the society was considered to be the integral part of their scheme to revolutionize India and Bengal.In light of such events did Ghatak emerged with the idea to reach millions of people in one go,CINEMA.Aesthetically his works can be placed alongside with many renowned bengali novelists,poets and other artists.What was surprising about him was that his views and writings on cinema denounced a love for the medium.He mentioned it quite often that if he was handed some media that can reach more people than cinema,he would happily drop cinema.So what we,cinema enthusiasts are to make of this Director/writer/actor who declared no attachment for the medium we love so much?

"My first film was called a picaresque episodic film along the lines of  the eighteenth century Spanish novel Gil Blas De Santillane,second was called a film of documentary approach,the next was a melodrama,& the fourth,nothing at all,just no film."

His films were not followed by the masses,but they had a vast influence on students & intelligentsia.

His early works manifested documentary realism combined with formalised performance drawn from folk theatre,and a brechtian use of film apparatus.His first film NAGARIK(1952) is now considered to be the first bengali art film preceding Satyajit Ray's PATHER PANCHALI.The irony is that NAGARIK was not released until after his death.AJANTRIK(1958) was one of the first films to display an inanimate object(an automobile) as a character long before the HERBIE films.The film MADHUMATI(1958),a hindi film he wrote the screenplay for,was one of the earliest to deal with the theory of reincarnation.His most successful film commercially was probably MEGHE DHAKA TARA(1960),which dealt with the social impact on a middle class girl.Other notable films were KOMOL GANDHAR(1961),SUBARNAREKHA(1962) based on the conditions of refuge-hood which proved to be controversial at the time.His last films were epic TITASH EKTI NADIR NAAM(1973) which was one of the first in Hyperlink format,featuring multiple characters in a collection of interconnected stories preceding  Robert Altman's NASHVILLE(1975) and the revered autobiographical JUKTI TAKKO AAR GAPPO(1974).

This blog is merely to enlighten people about a legend who was never given the attention and admiration he deserved in his lifetime.Even after such a long time only a few people remember him.

Yes,it is true that his works were awarded but most of it was at a later stage when film making became extremely difficult for him due to extreme alcoholism,and mental instability.He was one of the most controversial filmmakers of his time as his films portrayed social reality contrary to the pseudo reality of main stream bengali and hindi movies.He concentrated on the day to day struggle of the people & focused on the true condition of bengal at the time.He could never accept the Partition of Bengal,and most of his films dealt with this theme.This legend passed away on February 6,1976.

Awards, honours and recognition

• Padma Shri for Arts in 1970 by The Government of India.
• Musafir had won the Certificate of Merit for Third Best Feature Film at 5th National Film Awards in 1957.
• Madhumati Nominated for Filmfare Best Story Award.
• National Film Award's Rajat Kamal Award for Best Story in 1974 for Jukti Takko Aar Gappo.
• Best Director's award from Bangladesh Cine Journalist's Association for Titash Ekti Nadir Naam.
• Ajantrik got special entry in the Venice Film Festival in 1959.
• In a critics' poll of all-time greatest films conducted by Asian film magazine Cinemaya in 1998, Subarnarekha was ranked at No. 11 on the list.
• In the 2002 Sight & Sound critics' and directors' poll for all-time greatest films, Meghe Dhaka Tara was ranked at No. 231 and Komal Gandhar at No. 346 on the list.
• In 2007, A River Named Titas topped the list of 10 best Bangladeshi films, as chosen in the audience and critics' polls conducted by the British Film Institute.
• Heerer Prajapati had won the Best Children's Film Award (Prime Minister's Gold Medal) at 16th National Film Awards in 1970.