Oct 11, 1999

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Mask of a Man

While watching a play on the life of poet Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Bengal's screen idol Uttam Kumar was moved by the performance of Jahnvi, the poet's mother. He later asked to meet the actress playing the role. When the organisers brought in a lanky youth, Chapal Bhaduri, Kumar was shocked -- so convincing was Bhaduri's portrayal of a woman's role. "Then he smiled and hugged me," the lanky youth, now a portly 60-year-old, recalls.

Though this anecdote from 1959 does not find a place in the documentary Performing the Goddess: Chapal Bhaduri's Story, the film works well as a tribute to an actor who's spent a lifetime playing women characters on Bengal's jatra stage, though it could have done better with interviews from contemporary artistes, former employers and other drag queens. Made by Naveen Kishore of the Seagull Arts Foundation, this 44-minute documentary was recently screened in Calcutta and will be shown at the Mumbai International Film Festival in November. It's a film "about a man who is wonderfully talented, but slightly out of sync with the times", says the film maker. For his admirers though, Bhaduri will always remain one of folk theatre's most well-known "moustachioed queens".

Top billed as Chapal Rani, he has essayed the roles of Razia Sultan, Kaikeyi and Chand Bibi, and all the female leads in Bengali novelist Saratchandra Chattopadhyaya's works. And this, he tells the camera -- deftly applying lipstick with his index finger and hooking on a bra -- helped him come to terms with his homosexuality. Bhaduri was edged out in the early '70s, when women started performing in jatra. But since 1995 he has found a way to make ends meet, spending about three months a year dressing up as Goddess Sitala, earning Rs 60-70 a night. It's not centre-stage, but it's better than nothing.

-Labonita Ghosh