The best way to appreciate Ganga Silonir Pakhi (Wings of the Tern, B & W, 1975, hereafter GSP) is to stop worshipping it in the temples of ‘realist cinema’, ‘parallel cinema’, ‘art cinema’, ‘Indian new wave’, ‘regional cinema’ and the like. Too many writers and critics, including this self-styled pundit, are of opine that discussion about the film be made in the light of the national and international cinemas of similar content and nature. These sorts of loose dialogue have cheapened GSP. GSP is a tour de force not because it is realistic, or parallel, or art, or new wave or regional, but because the way the film controls a dark and serious theme, so complete to stand on its own feet, the way a magician does his tricks. GSP is a modern piece of moving image of Assam.
We are not going to tag it as a film of any above kind but see it as ‘film as film’ by placing it within the four corners of the screen alone. We are neither interested to know why it took Padum Barua ten years to complete the film or why this work has remained his only work of feature. We know he was a government servant with commendable sense of film history and western music but how much he applied his administrative and creative aptitudes in his film is not matter of judgement. We are privileged that GSP is the only work of Barua, otherwise, the necessity of speaking about his body of works remains an obligation. Furthermore, we are not going to compare the film with the famous novel of the same title on which it has its base. These kinds of evaluation of ‘literature vs. cinema’ and/or vice-versa have already created confusions with many a film why the film is not an exact translation of the written words, in spite of the fact that film and literature are two different media existing in two different poles having no connection between them. Cinema is moving image and literature, written word. Padum Barua has rightly acknowledged the author in the title sequence of the film. The information is sufficient for our record having little further use. The audience is comfortable enough with the visuals of the film alone. Some might feel to refer the original text, before or after witnessing the film, but that will be purely an academic as well as a classroom exercise. Furthermore, we will pull ourselves out from reviewing the performance of the actors, even that of the two legendary actresses of the bygone era who appeared in the film. A film like GSP was not designed to glorify the acting skills of the so-called ‘starts’ of the tinsel screen. For Padum Barua, they were to drive his thoughts home, akin to all the other living and non-living properties that he had chosen to put in his viewfinder. Finally, why GSP failed to win a prize anywhere, and why a mediocre Assamese film made in the same year snatched away the national award from the hands of the former has no curiosity in this write-up. That who was the cameraman, and who assisted Barua in different stages of the filmmaking process like script, costume, light, make-up, food, transportation, etc, finds no mention here. Barua was supposed to deliver the 'Bible of Assamese cinema’ to the earth. He did it but who were the other occupants in the table of last supper is the stuff of other narrative.
The film depicts the story of Basanti, a young village woman, pitted against two men in a small town environment of the sixties. After the death of her husband Mathura, she starts dreaming of a new life with her former lover Dhananjay. He fails to respond forcing Basanti into the lonely life within a widow’s bondage. With this minimum material Barua has created a vision that has remained as impressive today as thirty years ago. In one hand, it is a realization of social comment and a milestone of cinematic fineness on the other. The narrative is filled up with love, power, class, money, friendship, hate, honesty, custom, etc but it never indulged in dealing them with any pretence. Barua had the will to control the elements for larger artistic ends with honesty that is rare in show business like cinema. For arriving at this desired level, Barua easily organised two essential strings of filmmaking. Cinema moves back and forth between two extremities - as a recorder of an image and a preconceived interpreter of the same image. Barua embraced the same age-old notion in any given moment of the film. One tends to compare the approach with the Russian school of film aesthetics. Sergie Eisenstein created poetic imagination in his films by using raw documentary data. GCP in its own way extends this film tradition and to him control of craft was a child’s play.
From the take-off shot, we enter in to Basanti’s world of sand and water. A pan movement of a deserted bank of river with a branch of dry twig lying on it makes the beginning of this film of uncertainty. Basanti is changing her clothes after a bath. Next, she fills a brass pot with water, and lifts it to her lap and makes a move. Hearing a bird sound, she stares at sky to a flying tern. The shot gets freeze and the name casting of the film begins appearing. Thus within a few minutes the director introduces several major motifs of the film – water, river, dryness, naked branch of tree, white clothes, flying tern etc. In addition, he ruthlessly forecasts her prospects in the immediate next shot. The trail in the mooring place through which Basanti returns home is diagonal from middle right to extreme lower corner of the frame. The flying tern signifies her airborne mind and the road on the real earth is full of oblique predicaments. She passes besides a moderate forest of dry bamboo that again suggests the mess that she in encountering. The moment she encounters the flying term her life takes a new turn of tension and surprise. As if the tern has cast its spell on a particular woman.
Taru, the elder sister-in-law, is sweeping the courtyard, while Basanti enters the house of bamboo fences. The naked ends of the interwoven bamboo sticks covering lower half of the camera frame pointing towards the sky as Basanti passes through the courtyard is also a pointer to her. If we remove the next few shots of Taru abusing her children for mocking an old man, half-blind old mother working with the beetle nut hammer stand, Taru sewing on a piece of clothe etc, we land in Basanti’s chamber doing her hair in front of an oval-shaped mirror. Dhanajay, her would-be lover and the final betrayer, enters the courtyard with a cycle, and enquires, ‘is anyone there’? The girl comes out and meets the boy. The Cupid was lurking somewhere and throws his arrow. The geometry of any oval object speaks that it is neither round nor square. No matter how satisfyingly Basanti makes her presentable, the situation is still unbalanced. Dhananjay arriving in a bicycle imparts an additional hint that he might not be the last bed of roses for Basanti, with his moving tyres he would flee at any unpleasant situation. A small addition in between - Taru is disturbed to the cruel sound of a crow in the nearby banana tree. Barua suggests an age-old omen here that the particular sound of that particular bird brings bad luck. The wooden frame of the mirror is also an object of interest. The longer two sides have the character of two extended wings of bird flying up to the sky.
Throughout the film, Barua have placed Basanti in relation with similar objects of insecurity. When the lovers exchanged their words of love, Basanti makes a bashful grin by playing her necklace with her right hand fingers. The left of the frame reveals a bamboo window made of crossed sticks further putting a negative cross mark about the outcome of their just started affair. In the subsequent shots, we see them never in comfortable locations but always obstructed by bush or shrub and/or surrounded by still water. Water, in fact, is a major character in the film be it still or flowing. Tern is a water bird; the middle of a dry river is the location of the cowherd singer while he is strolling on the back of a buffalo, Basanti meets Dhananjay at the time of their failed affair due to awkward political development on two opposite sides of a lonely river bank; Dhananjay further asks her to elope with him in a boat that is placed in the river bank; Manbori the house cleaner that carried the reunion letter to Dhanajay at the end of the film passes a long journey - first on foot along a river and then in a boat similar to one that was chartered by Dhananjay at the time of the plan of escape etc. While Dhananjay was informing Basanti about his past life that he is a drifter having no permanent co-ordinates, a shot shows a portion of river soaked in the light of falling afternoon sun over the left shoulder of Basanti. The left shoulder is a part of human body where another human gets a support. Now at that juncture of Dhananjay’s life Basanti’s shoulder puts a doubt of his intensions. Again, Basanti reads Dhanajay’s letter in the mooring place surrounded by dry sand and low water. Barua has never used the flowing river in its full potential. He kept it in a distance with minimum basic flow of the winter season.
Use of exchange of written words in form of letter in GSP is also motivating. Dhananjay wrote his first and the last letter to Basanti to meet him at ‘the crack of dawn’ to begin a new life together. Basanti writes back after her husband’s death now requesting him to lift her from the prison of widowhood. The film gets its twist with the phenomenon of these two simple pieces of paper. The wedding song of her marriage also centres on a theme of exchange of letter – rãmkrishnã send a letter by hand /rãmkrishnã to father’s house. Barua has used a similar traditional element to delve Basanti’s mind. She reads aloud the words of a religious book, again in form of written word, to her mother about the resplendent Baikuntha (heaven) - there is lake of clear water full of blooming fragrant lotus where birds resonate amidst the sun, the moon, and various precious stones. Although she is reading for the ailing mother but the situation if co-related with the growth of the story until now speaks a reverse view-point. She is actually reading the words for herself. In the immediate previous sequence, her elder brother has rejected the suggestion of Basanti’s marriage because of financial crisis. He had cut the pitch of his wife short on the note of budgetary evaluation and the wife is left dumb-founded from even mentioning the name of Dhananjay as a possible suitor, which she ensured to Basanti in the afternoon.
Use of boat and cycle in the film leads us to a path of widening insights - boat as medium of love-sick mind and cycle as the vehicle of promise as well as devastation. Dhananjay makes the first appearance in Basanti’s house driving in a bicycle. Bhogram the elder brother invites Dhananjay to their home and they travel in bicycle. Mathura after knowing the pre-marital affair of his wife suffers mental setback and dies in collision of a lorry while travelling in his cycle. The last shot of the sequence of Bhogram and Dhananjay passing through a lonely road is highly stylised. It’s a top angle left to right pan shot taken from a raised position revealing the duo driving ahead. In the foreground, we see long extended dry branches of a same tree. What in the stake here is the cinematic translation of the proverb, ‘welcoming the crocodile by digging water channel to home’! Dhananjay visits Basanti after her husband’s death in a cycle but this time not to heal her mind but body with some medicine. The potentiality of an incoming cycle creeps around her mind until the last few moment of the film. Monbari has not returned yet from Dhananjay. She has gone for the second time to his house for a ‘yes’. Basanti is waiting impatiently in her room. Hearing a cycle bell, she looks trough the window but it is someone else passing through the front road. Basanti keeps waiting and we never hear another promise-bell.
In the foreground of the shot while Basanti stares at the unknown cyclist, we see three thick iron rods blocking her face. She is inside a prison. We see similar compositions while her first confrontation with Mathura on the onset of the discussions about her pre-martial relationship. Barua has put several iron bars over her face as she goes on talking on her defence. Further, the Alna, the rack of cloth, another property in the room, erects a barrier between the two, in a diagonal position extended to Mathura’s end. Mathura is absent in the frame but his voice is. The notion that ‘camera as a recorder of an image and a preconceived interpreter of the same image’ is best understood in these compositions. Barua has performed an analogous act in another sequence with the use of an ordinary piece of rope. Mathuraoverhears a conversation of a group of people in a roadside tea stall that is saturated with Basanti and Dhananja’s affair. He was about to light a cigarette with the flare end of a jute rope. As he completes the act, the words of ridicule from the by chitchats enter his ears. He develops cold feet at the sudden uncovering of the secret. Barua made sense of Mathura’s inner shock by placing the rope in a circular fashion hanging at the end of a perpendicular bamboo post. Mathura’s face remains half-covered with the rope as if he is standing in a hangman’s gallows. The cigarette smoke, although the cigarette is absent in the frame, his right hand appears to be holding it, flies upward. The rising smoke carries connotation of his burning state of mind.
The final sequence of GSP is an exceptionally well-crafted piece of cinema. When Basanti’s recall of Dhananjay turned catastrophic, she once again asks Monbari, Are you speaking the truth? Monbori replies, Yes, Your Mistress, I heard it myself.Close up of Basanti - a dispassionate face immersed in all the cool and calm of late afternoon. I will take my leave then! Monobori asks with an equally deep-seated gesture. Basanti nods a little. Top shot from a raised position. Monbori goes out of the camera; Basanti is standing between two bamboo poles of the compound gate. After a few moments, she turns slowly and walks back to the house situated at the end of the compound road. Barua created an illusion of Basabti’s entrapment between the bamboo pieces that are lying parallel to the base of the frame by covering the second piece with the lower portion of her dark shawl. The impression breaks as she withdraws from the position and turns back.
Several elements of the frame catches attention of the discern viewer. On the left, a barren tree is standing with extended naked branches. The shape of the largest branch is a rectangular ‘u’ that imparting the feel of an enclosure blocking her backward movement. The broken leaves of the banana tree standing on the right also speak about her wrecked mind. The compound road is running perpendicular to the camera ends at the veranda of the house. Now on she will be the lone traveller on it. Added to this is an empty bullock cart in the right of the frame that implies she is moving nowhere. The cart was the vehicle of her marriage and widowhood. A similar vehicle delivered her to Mathura’s house after their marriage. The same vehicle dumped her back to her father’s house while she became a widow. The director, however, has no sympathy for the protagonist. He has already licensed her to elope with her lover before her marriage but she fails to avail the opportunity for the sake of family pride. Now there is no room left to cry, she is a result of her own decisions. The last frame of the film seals the fate of Basanti by showing freeze shot of a flying tern. This shot is also a reference point of the film at its initial moment.
In a different level, GSP is a film having the similar approach to pure cinema of Yasujiro Ozu, Rirwik Ghatak, Andrei Tarkovosky, Abbas Kiarostami, Mani Kaul or Nirode Mahapatra but not with Akira Kurosawa or Satyajiy Ray. However that is the material of another thesis.
Note:
1. Written on occasion of Padum Barua’s 84th birth anniversary on 11 February 2008 by Altaf Mazid.
2. The Assam Tribune published an edited version of the above write-up with an title of "Revisiting a classic" on 14 March 2008.
