“The gull sees farthest who flies highest” – Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Similarly for me the greatness of a race lies in the quality of thoughts among its multitude. The thought process that was set in motion after watching the movie hardly holds any promise for brilliant actions by the Bengali race. The narrowness of the subject and plot defines the range of thinking that we are capable of. It is also a precedent for the kind of films that would be following. In short “Dosar” has failed to create any impression upon my mind, it was yet another visual depiction of private lives of the so-called elite class. Infidelity, polygamy, alcoholism, sexuality and pseudo-political activism seems to have become the mainstay of most of the plots for Bengali parallel cinema.
Thinking and Language are two beautiful gifts to the human beings which supposedly differentiates us from animals. They have been used by us to understand nature and its elements. The idea of using knowledge for attaining the absolute self is something which we know as the ocean of pure bliss or “Samadhihasta Avasta”. These have been the fascinating discoveries of India by traveling on the road of thousand years of civilization, the understanding of the true nature of human form and thus its purpose. Treachery, sexual arousals, immorality and obsessiveness with the concept of mating shows the animal instincts within us which is largely driven by Tamas, these tendencies leads a man and woman to seek fleeting pleasures, that goes on and on in a vicious circle, until the final destruction comes by being reduced to dust to be blown across by wind. Bengali movies are more and more making it a point to go on purposelessly discussing about these topics and wasting the beautiful resource that we as a race are endowed with : imagination.
People have always tried to indulge into worldly pleasures, presently they are doing and in future would continue doing that, but that does not discounts the reality, that our true nature does not lies in meandering through these endless jungles of virtual reality which does not have any permanence. Getting obsessed by these thoughts and projecting them as something worth of thinking by putting on them a garb of literary jargons and ideas seem to be the most in-vogue cultural activity of present time, which I dislike. The culmination of our civilization was reached when the Upanishads were written, Srimadbhagawad Gita is an Upanishad and it has a line-
“ Jitatmanah Prasantasya Parmatma Samahita
Sitausnasukhaduhkheshu tatha manaapamanayoh”
It means:
“To one who has control over the aggregate of body and organs and who is serene in the presence of cold and heat, happiness and sorrow, as also honour and dishonour, the Supreme Self becomes the content of Samadhi”
The film in no way passes anywhere near the boundary of this thought while explaining pleasure and pain. It has projected the basic physiological needs of humans in a wrong way. To become a human being is a gift whose worth must be realized, it is not only about eating, sleeping, earning and propagating, there has to be a search for the exalted one within ourself, the Buddha, otherwise we would also remain one among the millions forgotten by time. We must realize that –
“Om is the bow, the arrow is soul, The Brahman is the arrow’s target, That one should incessantly hit”
The director was so preoccupied with a different theme, that he missed a beautiful chance to explore a relationship that had no name. The relationship that was between Prosenjit and “Mita”. Rene Descartes has written : “The actors, called to the scene, in order to hide their flaming cheeks, don a mask. Like them, when climbing on stage in the theater of the world, where thus far, I have only been a spectator, I advance masked”. Prosenjit and “Mita” had donned a mask just as Rene did, while going through his search for unknown. A relationship with no name can be compared with something of the great human adventure that had brought Ulysses from Troy, that had been part of Don Quixote’s experience, that had led Dante and Orpheus into hell, and that had led Columbus to the Americas: the adventure of traveling toward the unknown. Prosenjit and “Mita” were traveling toward each other arriving at a point which none of them knew about, but, obscurity of the point was a flame which was attracting them like an insect, either to get destroyed or glow in its glory. The key was to discover that point, “Dosar” did not tried at all to enter that area, thus revealing the prosaicness of thoughts.
I have had the chance of staying close to two women and observing the difference in each one of them. Both of them were equally attractive to me because of their uniqueness which were very personal to each one of them. With one of them I had a very close relationship and it was very hard when she went away from my life. Our relationship and attraction towards each other was more than mere sexual arousals, she has got her life partner now and I have moved on in my life, but that did not deterred her from saying that the relationship between me and her was one without any name and would always have a special place in her mind. My point is, there is absolutely no reason or necessity to project such kind of relationships in a wrong way, interpreting them in an incorrect manner and forcefully putting a beautiful idea into a preconceived cast.
“One wants to lose the individual in the universal, one renounces, flies-off, and tries to cut himself off from all associations of the body of the past, one works hard to forget even that he is a man; yet, in the heart of his heart, there is a soft sound, one string vibrating, one whisper, which tells him, East or West, home is best”
-Swami Vivekananda’s reply to the official reception, on his return from USA, at the residence of the Late Raja Radha Kanta Deb Bahadur at Sovabazar, Kolkata.
I somehow find a relationship in these words of the Swami, and can draw a simile with the love that one had with a woman at any point of time. I have felt this personally, times have changed, I have moved on, tried to forget, met so many different people, many more would come to join me and again leave, but the memory of all those special persons have remained and in my solitude I find the moments spent with them as priceless treasures which brings to me solace when everything around me lies shattered. Were not Prosenjit and “Mita” trying to create the same kind of moments?
So, my friends, why such shortsightedness, while making a cinema on human relationship? It speaks of the decay and the rust that is there in the mind. There are hardly any Bengali movie which has the plot of the middle class family, their aspirations and lifestyle in the increasingly globalised Indian Economy, neither there is any movie which speaks about removing poverty from grassroots or which speaks about the merits of democracy and national politics in bringing about change. These themes, I think, are not in-vogue for our intellectual class, who will smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol and talk in excited tones about bringing change or exploring sexual relationships by giving a literary touch to it, but when it comes to getting down to action and sacrifice, will simply shirk away by saying : “too early to get down to action”. They cannot dream of a world outside Kolkata, for them the world starts with the corporate life, meanders through the glitzy lights of Park Street, lazes by the banks of Hooghly and ends up by spending nights awake discussing topics which are junk. For them dreaming about national glory through collective action of changing the educational pattern, the primary health situation, or about dreaming of science and technology which would help us to understand the mystery that is nature is something unimaginable. Is life all about staying in Kolkata, marrying, purchasing a luxurious apartment, a car, keeping a 24 hour help at home to take care of ageing parents and children, while slogging at office without any vision and partying hard during weekends?
It is this society which I despise of and it is for these people films like “Dosar” would appeal, where a man is shown having copulation with a woman in a supposedly artistic way, which to me is nothing more than two animals playing the mating game.
“Dosar” missed on two questions that I was thinking about-
(a)Why did Prosenjit and “Mita” develop such closeness for each other? I do not think it was only for “Ushnotar Jonyo”
(b) What kind of a person would the child of “Mita” grow up to become?
Coming to the technical aspects of the movie, I felt that it was only Prosenjit’s acting that looked natural to me. Konkona was rude and straightforward to such an extent that it was looking quite unnatural, while Pallavi (who went on showing her cleavage and sobbing), Paramabrata, Tota were unnecessary add-ons. All of them apart from Prosenjit simply had a mask on.
Therefore, the movie had nothing, which merits it to be called as great. It also does not speaks highly of a director, who has earlier explored a beautiful relationship between cousins, when he made “Utsav”
Nitin Mazumdar
