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BOOKS
The
Other Ritwik
Ghatak's
extraordinary evolution captured in his short stories
By
M.
Mukundan
 |
STORIES
By Ritwik Ghatak
Trs by Rani Ray Srishti
Price: Rs 195
Pages: 240 |
Listen,
these are Ritwik Ghatak's words: "Civilisation never dies, it may
change, but it is eternal. Where the paddy field is born on the dry river
bed of Titash, there begins another civilisation." Ghatak remains
faithful to his words. He never dies. He kept on changing-from poet to
short story writer and from playwright to filmmaker. What is Ritwik Ghatak
if not a civilisation of hope and death? An alcoholic, he died in despair
in 1976.
Stories
is a collection of 17 short tales written in the course of a little over
two decades (1947-1969). The collection includes the much talked about
"Chokh" (Eyes). When these stories were originally published
in Bengali, Ghatak was not a filmmaker. Now however, readers of the recently
translated English version are reading the stories written not by a writer
but a filmmaker. To read the stories of a filmmaker rather than the stories
of a writer is not quite the same thing.
Going through
these stories, one has the impression that had Ghatak continued to write,
he would have been one of the greatest writers of our time. But he was
destined to evolve constantly. If he had not passed away at the relatively
young age of 51, he would perhaps have given up filmmaking and turned
instead to singing.
That is
the quintessential Ritwik Ghatak, perennially discontented and in a hurry
to hurtle himself into the future. "I have the urge to go away ...
" he says in the well-crafted "Solstice". Like most Bengali
intellectuals of his generation, Ghatak too was a communist. The main
body of his stories rests on his ideological conviction. But he never
ventures into glorifying the heroes of his stories, unlike most politically
committed writers. Even as a communist, he nurtured a sombre vision of
life, which perhaps explains why he turned his heroes into anti-heroes.
The stories
"Eyes" and "Comrade" deal with a similar theme-the
exploitation of the working class. And yet, the main personages of both
these stories, Ray and Jhabbu, are not over-sized proletarian heroes,
but traitors of the working class. How can a writer who never wanted to
be identified as a writer create heroes?
Ritwik Ghatak
had once said, "I am not an artiste, nor am I a cinema artiste."
For him, literature, like cinema in the later phase of his life, was just
a means to reach out to the masses. He disagreed with Satyajit Ray, the
perfectionist, on the question of aesthetics. Instead Ghatak subscribed
to Rabindranath Tagore's dictum that in order to be beautiful, art has
first to be truthful.
The result
is seen in his stories. Ghatak uses melodrama in his writing, in the same
way that he used songs in his films. Colourful, musical images of the
moon, flowers and birds appear in succession in his stories. Ghatak didn't
believe in subtlety in literature. What he believed in was that in art
everything is possible and valid.
The first
story in the collection, "The Tree", is reminiscent of Ghatak's
film Komal Gandhar. In both "The Tree" and Komal Gandhar he
does away with the traditional way of storytelling. Before violating the
form of films, Ghatak had experimented with it in his stories. But in
"Touchstone", à la Kalki, he narrates a story with a
twist at the end.
Sumanta
Banerjee's 35-page introduction is brilliant.
On the downside,
however, it clogs the imagination of the reader by stripping Ritwik Ghatak's
narrative of all its intrigues and enigma.
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