Full name was Ritwik Kumar Ghatak. Was born in Dhaka, on
4th November 1925. Father's name was Suresh Chandra Ghatak, Mother was Indubala
Devi. There was an existing practice of culture and literature in the family.
His father Suresh Chandra Ghatak, despite being a district magistrate, used to
write poems and dramas. Renowned writer Manish Ghatak(Pen name 'Jubanashwa')
was Ritwik's elder brother. Ritwik Ghatak acquired I.A. from Rajshahi College
in 1946 and B.A. from Baharampur Krishna Nath College in 1948. Though he
completed his M.A. course in English from Calcutta University, for some reasons
he could not sit for the examination. Ghatak family was forced to repatriate to
Calcutta due to the famine of 1943, second world war and moreover the partition
of India in 1947. Ritwik could never forget the inner pain of being a refugee
leaving his motherland and it was the biggest catalyst of developing his
philosophy of life that was repeatedly evident in his later works.
.JPG) |
| Ritwik Ghatak in the play Dalil(The Deed) |
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| Ritwik Ghatak at 21 |
Observing this Ritwik had a feeling that film was
stronger medium than the plays and is able to reach to many more people. So he
inclined to films. Ritwik himself explained why he repeatedly changed the art
medium in this way, 'The people watch the films. Until there will be
opportunity to show the films to the people, I will make films to show them and
for my daily bread. Tomorrow or after ten years if any better medium arises and
I am still alive, I will kick the film and join there. I am not in love with
cinema mister. I do not love film'.
Now the question may arise, he doesn't love film but what
is the purpose of this urge of reaching the most people through this cultural
medium? The opinion of Ritwik in this issue, 'To protest is the first and
foremost responsibility of an artist. Art is not flippancy. Those who are not
protesting are doing injustice. Art is a responsibility. I have no right to
avoid that responsibility. An artist is bound on all sides with the society. He
is a slave of the society. Admitting this slavery he will make films'.
So cinema does not remain a mere media of entertainment
in the eyes of Ritwik, it becomes a weapon of
protest. This is natural for him to publicize his philosophy through his
arts medium who receives his discipleship through viewing the cinemas like Eisenstein's
'Battleship Potemkin', Pudovkin's 'Mother' and Buñuel's 'Nazarín'.
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| Chinnomul(The Uprooted), 1950 |
Ritwik Ghatak shouldered the responsibility of a director
in 1951 for the first time. The making of the cinema named 'Bedeni' started in
1950, but due to fire in the studio and later for economic reasons the shooting
of the cinema was abandoned. It was being made from a short story named
'Nagini' of Tarashankar Bandopadhyay under the direction of Nirmal Dey.
Receiving the responsibility of the director Ritwik rewrote the story and
screenplay and named it 'Arup Kotha'. There was continuous shooting at the bank
of river Suvarnarekha for twenty days but due to technical problem of the
camera the film was not exposed and the cinema remained undone.
The first full length film of Ritwik was 'Nagorik'(The
Citizen) made in 1952. This was possibly the first instance of the Bengali art
film. Unfortunately it was released after long 24 years, after the death of
Ritwik.
The life struggle of a refugee family repatriated from
East Bengal after partition was the story of the film 'Nagorik'. The central
character of the cinema was Ramu. Ramu lived in a lower middle class family
with his father, mother and elder sister. There was repeated failed trial of
solemnizing the marriage of his sister. The educated Ramu dreams of bringing
solvency of life through a job, wants to make family with his lover Uma at any
place like the picture in the wall calendar. But alas! The job is like a golden
deer, Ramu keep chasing it uninterruptedly. At last, failed and broken Ramu
started a goal-less journey to the slums with his family, taking along the
dream of hope and life.
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| A scene from the film Nagorik(The Citizen), 1952 |
The climax of the cinema, might remind many viewers the
last line of the novel of Zahir Raihan 'Hazar Bochor Dhore'(Throughout thousand
years) ― 'Rat barche, hazar bochorer puruno sei rat'(The night is growing, the
millennium old that night). The objective of the sentence is to create circular
environment of the incidence. Ritwik's cinema is not linear, most of the time
he creates a circle. That circle may be of incidents, or of philosophy. The
cinema ends at that very point where it started from. The dream that Ramu and
his family treasured when they came to this house, another family shifted to
that house with the same dream during the time when they were about to leave.
Ritwik makes us understand by creating this circle that this story is not of
Ramu's family only rather the picture of the life struggle of numerous families
like this.
Arindam Gustavo Biswas
30th December 2012 — 21st January 2013
Khulna, Dhaka.
Translated from Bengali by Dr. Apu Lawrence Biswas with
help from Auditi Bridget Biswas and Arindam Gustavo Biswas.
23rd August 2013 — 1st September 2013
Khulna.
