Revisiting a classic
Shoma A. Chatterji
Shyam Benegal’s Suraj Ka Satvan Ghoda (1992) is, perhaps, his best film ever. It was recently telecast on a television as a tribute to classic films made under the NFDC banner, legendary within the history of Indian cinema. The film is based on a novel by Hindi litterateur Dharamvir Bharati. Its complex structure, it was felt, would not lend itself to the film medium. However, Benegal succeeded in making a film that still brings a lump to one’s throat.
The novel, published in 1952, is considered to be one of the foremost instances of metafiction in the 20th century Hindi literature. The film version is not only a classic example of transcription of literature on celluloid, but also one of the few explorations into the lost art of storytelling.
Manek Mulla (Rajit Kapoor), the storyteller, is the protagonist. He narrates three different stories to his friends who gather in his humble railway quarters to listen to his definition of love, as unfolded through these three stories. Manek appears as a character in each of these, blurring, at times, the dividing line between the story and its subject. Characters of one story move freely in and out of other stories, growing with time, and subtly hinting at the changes in their lives, as seen from the perspective of Manek Mulla. When the last story is about to end and Manek’s friends begin to disperse, Manek suddenly discovers Sati, the woman he thought he was in love with, pulling her adoptive ‘uncle’ in a cart with a small child, which could be Manek’s, or of the rapist. As the girl with the child and the lame man disappear into a growing mist, Manek follows them as they fade away from the screen in a mist of clouds and dust. His friends never see him ever again.
These three stories are framed within the backdrop of an art gallery where Shyam, one of Manek’s friends, now a self-proclaimed writer, begins to narrate the story of Manek Mulla. The paintings that form the backdrop of this framing device are a tribute to yet another form of creative expression — art. The imaginative use of surrealism in the winding narrative invests the film with a rich texture without detracting from the complexities of the stories. Manek is an escapist, an emotionally detached man who feels no responsibility towards the character he creates for his stories. Till he gets sucked into one of them.
In the guise of love defined differently in the stories, Benegal unfolds layers of oppression and violence against women. In the first story, Jamuna (Rajeshwari Sachdev) is forced to marry a man old enough to be her father just because her boyfriend Tanna is too much of a coward to defy his father. But she is strong and copes. Lily (Pallavi Joshi), in the second story, is married to the coward boyfriend Tanna of the first story, who dies tragically in a railway accident leaving his post to be filled by Manek. Sati (Neena Gupta) is the strongest but the most oppressed of them all. She is an orphan brought up by a soldier injured in war. Manek feels attracted to her and seduces her. Later, she is raped by the womanising widower Maheshwar Dalal (Amrish Puri). He completely neglects his two daughters and son Tanna, who dies in a train accident.
Rajeshwari Sachdev, Pallavi Joshi and Neena Gupta enact the three young women Jamuna, Lily and Sati beautifully by investing the characters with flesh-and-blood reality. Amrish Puri as the womaniser and rapist is as good as Rajit Kapoor as Manek Mulla.
Suggested adultery enriches the tapestry of Suraj Ka Satvan Ghoda. Of the three women who enter Manek Mulla’s life, one is adulterous purely by suggestion, even before she becomes a widow. Pallavi Joshi, who is forced to marry the old widower, suddenly finds herself pregnant. The strapping young family retainer, who dotes on the young bride, later takes control of the young widow and the child. There are repeated hints, ever so subtle, that you almost do not notice them that the child is born not of the old husband. Or maybe, as Lily tells someone, “mother took me to the temple to see a Sadhu and I became pregnant.” She is neither ashamed, nor guilty, nor proud of her relationship with the man who used to drive their horse-carriage.
Manek Mulla, Tanna and Maheshwar Dalal present three metaphors for all men everywhere while the women symbolise the seventh horse of the sun that has the power to change the course and the destination of the chariot and his own life.
