A place in history
with or without trophies

The low profile that the latest Dadasaheb Phalke award winner, Tapan Sinha, kept even in his most successful years may have cost him a few trophies but, says Swapan Mullick, his work has the intelligence and power to confirm his place in history

A still from Anokha Moti. Tapan Sinha discovered unconventional protagonists in his films

That National Awards ceremony at Vigyan Bhavan in 1985 in many ways told the story of Tapan Sinha — the man and filmmaker. He was one of the award winners that year — something that he got accustomed to. The difference was that, unlike Satyajit Ray who had won frequent recognitions and was talked about, he was away from the media and from debating circles that mattered. He had an additional responsibility that year given to him by Ray himself: to carry back the Dadasaheb Phalke award conferred on the maker of Pather Panchali who was recuperating after a bypass surgery in the US. "It’s like carrying the Olympic torch’’, Sinha had declared to the audience with a sense of triumph over the honour conferred on Film India’s best ambassador in the eyes of the world. Ray, too, had to wait for well over a decade for his turn to get the highest recognition for his contribution to Indian cinema.

There was never a hint of regret in anything Tapan Sinha did, certainly not when he was an emissary for Ray. "We share many thoughts either on projects we are about to launch or about films in general’’, he had told me on that occasion over a private dinner in his hotel room in which director Tarun Majumdar joined us. All three of us happened to be award winners that year — the senior directors for their latest films and myself for the newly instituted award for film criticism. Cheerfulness and benevolence were an integral part of his personality, often concealing the sense of sheer fun that he had injected into works like Galpo Holeo Sathyi, Harmonium and Banchharamer Bagan. But for his countless admirers who had followed a directorial career that wove its way through classics like Kshudita Pashan, Hatey Bazarey and Kabuliwala, contemporary urban problems in Apanjan, Atanka and Jatugriha, children’s tales like Safed Hathi, Sajuj Dwiper, Aaj Ka Robinhood and Anokha Moti and personal and social reflections like Nirjan Saikatey and even his own stories like Adalat O Ekti Meye and Ek Doctor Ki Maut, the question survived as to why he had to wait for another 23 years to get the Dadasaheb Phalke Award himself when the consensus all around was that he was an obvious candidate many years ago.

Tapan Sinha’s films were enormously popular despite their soft subterranean layers

The tragedy is that it has finally come when he is critically ill at the age of 84, unable to walk and barely able to speak. Surprisingly, he was his old self when the Governor dropped in a few weeks ago to hand over a Lifetime Achievement Award that the Union Government was conferring on a handful of veterans on the occasion of the 60th year of Independence.

Whether he is in a position to be delighted by the torrent of official honours at this stage is another matter. But he is alert as ever and only he could say something like, "I’m still learning because the process of education never ends" when the Governor handed over a scroll in the presence of the Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting.

The early education in cinema was purely technical but the academic and narrative elements soon claimed his attention as he lapped up the timeless tales that John Ford, Ernst Lubitsch and William Wyler told with supreme assurance on the screen. Tapan Sinha was an avid reader of American fiction and he had once told me during the shooting of one of his films that I always made it a point to attend: "I don’t how many times I have flipped through my favourite pages of Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea." That was his introduction to the narrative power of the cinema that he shared with Ray.

Both believed in telling stories in their own ways and what distinguished both was that they never repeated themselves. If Sinha has made close to 40 films, each one is different from the others. One of his favourite actors was Nirmal Kumar whom we had seen as early as Kshanikwer Atithee to the more recent Banchharamer Bagan confirms: "I can’t tell you how many people asked him to do another Tagore story after the thundering success of Kabuliwala. But he steadfastly refused to have anything to do with Tagore at least for a few years". In between there were mediocre efforts like Aandhar Periye and Baidurya Rahasya (a misconceived thriller) just as there were outstanding achievements like Sagina (where he extracted one of Dilip Kumar’s best performances on screen) and Hatey Bazarey where he brought over Vyjayanthimala and Ashok Kumar to star in a Bengali film.

"I love working against the grain", he told me. I understood why. He loved to evolve a language of his own. Like that wonderful experience in Harmonium where he cleverly wove together three stories of people in different interesting situations with the instrument serving as the running thread. There have been triptychs in Indian cinema but very few with the subtlety that Tapan Sinha could produce in a single film with divergent strands. What mattered was the confidence with which he spread himself in different directions, breaking rules if necessary. Who would have thought that he could make a contemporary fantasy out of a domestic servant as the protagonist in Galpo Holeo Sathyi, which Hrishikesh Mukherjee adapted so spontaneously in Bawarchi with Rajesh Khanna as the central character?

Who would have imagined an octogenarian leading a laugh riot in Banchharamer Bagan — that too with a new face, Manoj Mitra, who he had brought over from the theatre with conspicuous success? Which director would have dared to cast the matinee idol Uttam Kumar as the mentally tortured husband in Jatugriha who finally parts ways with his wife?

If Tapan Sinha had an unerring capacity to discover unconventional protagonists like a jail warden (Lahau Kapat), a white elephant (Safed Hathi), an Afghan money lender (Kabuliwala), a raped woman (Adalat O Ekti Meye), an eccentric and physically disabled doctor (Wheelchair), it was because he blended social messages with what he described as "honest entertainment".

Because he struck the right chords, his films were enormously popular despite their soft subterranean layers of intelligence. If he was the darling of the best producers, it was because he could feel the pulse of audiences even with unfamiliar texts. The more cynical minds on the festival circuit were inclined to bracket him with the mainstream. Seen at this point of time, it confirms the freshness of ideas that was a hallmark of his work reinforced by the professional skills that became a talking point with those who understood the medium.

The low profile that the filmmaker kept even in his most successful years may have cost him a few trophies. But if a Retrospective were to be held now of his most thought-provoking creations, it would confirm his place in the history books regardless of any recognition that may come to which he can now simply offer an indulgent smile of acceptance.

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