For the Sake of Destitute

Not all get the kind of existence, normally akin to be called ‘decent’. We know celebrities running into penury or catwalk favourites like Gitanjali Nagpal found living in squalor on Delhi’s streets after drug related problems and having no one to take care of her. The cases are numerous, a simple walk on the capital’s streets could give the glance of misery of paupers and many others, who were once fitted well in the material world, survived there for years, but eventually distanced due to emotional or other odd conditional jolts.

The Earth Saviours Foundation is a non-profit organisation, working for the old, mentally and physically disabled, poor children and anyone who has no one to support. Its headquarters, New Delhi which shelters the destitutes was running well in Vasant Kunj. But after a gruesome fire and loss of lives and assets, it had to move to Rangpuri Pahadi, where it has makeshift arrangements for more than 250 inmates.

These inmates included those, who were quite well off but fell to destitution under adverse circumstances through family disputes or other unfortunate reasons. Ravi Kalra is the Founder and President of this charitable organisation, who had to choose between family and his dedication to social service. He chose the latter. After six futile attempts, which crashed due to lack of funds and support, Ravi’s dream came true in 2008, when he started The Earth Saviour Foundation.

“I would go to the streets, find people who had been left by their families to fend for themselves; and get them to the centre. Many of them were senior citizens who resorted to begging. They had not washed for months, were starving and had maggots all over them. We gave them first aid, bathed them, provided them with food and shelter,” says Ravi, who named the shelter as Gurukul.

Ravi expanded his horizon and started getting orphans, rape victims, HIV positive people and mentally challenged adults to Gurukul. To manifest his dedication to humane cause, he also has plan to build a temple of humanity that will house more than 2,000 people.

His initiative has been supported by his own means and donations bz a few individuals and institutions – the government has shown only the timid response for the cause as well as the charitable work of Foundation. Surveys reveal that more than 10 lakh people are without shelter or basic protection of life and dignity in the capital and nearby NCR towns – that shows there is a general sense of apathy for the whole issues related to ‘destitution’, alas!

When this writer visited the Gurukul in a late afternoon of August, few inmates were found busy in Gurukul’s activities, others were either talking in groups or simply resting. But the commonness of them was their eagerness to share what they faced earlier and how they are leading a new life in this Gurukul.

Pranab Roy is one of them. An alumnus of IIMA of 1970 MBA batch and Fellow of AICWA, he worked in some leading MNC companies as financial controller and director. Distorted through disputes in family and investment losses, one day he called on the number of Gurukul and took the train from Bangalore. Unlike most of other inmates, he is perfectly fine with his skills and understanding – genuinely, he should have been in limelight for better reasons than living an existence on the fringe. An avid admirer of the writings of Nirad C Chaudhuri, Tagore and Jefferson, Roy has no views on family life, albeit he still desires to get back into consultancy domain. Then he was reading a book and shared how much he misses reading newspapers in the morning – he named all prominent papers among his favourites and requested to be provided the copies of INCLUSION and other reading material. Ironically, unlike Jefferson – he is not for ‘pursuits of happiness’!

Inder Kaur is sixty-nine year old, an affectionate lady who reminds the typical face of a grandmother, came there eight days back from Ludhiana – she has two daughters, but not even one of them sensible enough to take care of her in old age. Although she misses them but doesn’t want to be back in family so soon, instead she yearns to visit the place of her niece who is living in Sahadara.

Pushpa in her early forties came here only a day ago and was returning to her family the next day. Her case is little benign, as family shown responsiveness after a brief lapse of harmony. Shiv Kumar, a seventy-five old former mill worker has been living with this Gurukul for last six years and he wishes to stay here till end of life – as he has no incentive to go back to his sons, who allegedly kept him in a locked room for six months.

Raj Kumar, a former auto driver came here five months back – with a road accident, he lost the normalcy in life and landed here after living on street in dire conditions for months. Aaagyan Kaur – an eighty-five year old lady, who earlier was a handicraft artist, recalls the pain of treatment she met from family and the days of partition in 1947. She has three sons and a daughter.

Unlike her daughter, both the sons are in a condition to take care of her but they are indifferent even when knowing where their mother is living now. Kaur shares how she took care of a ‘Sabun ki tikki’ (a slice of soap) for over seven decades before losing it recently. For her, that was an inherited asset from family – and for others in family or outside, this might value nothing!

A report of Sunday Times (2nd March 2014, Lord Swraj Paul answers abandoned cousin’s call) highlighted the grim plight of Ajay Kumar Aggarwal, who allegedly was abandoned by his family after an accident in Solan, received a call with the help of Gurukul from his billionaire cousin, Lord Swaraj Paul. That made decisive impact in his life.

Amidst the gloom, the hope is not entirely on wane – as many of those who come here, later get united with the family or after normalcy in their state of mind and health, they also start something of their own. Probably this is the best service, The Foundation is offering to the people, who are really in need of help and care.
-Atul K Thakur
Email: Summertickets2gmail.com
(Published in INCLUSION)

Utopian Citizens!

Gist of my present piece would besiege the doghouse like scenario from a sedate documentary “The Promised Land”, with whom I stuck, gasped and eventually grimaced at the auditorium of India International Centre, New Delhi. Documentary revolves around the doleful ghetto of Dhaka…this islet like arrangement of garrets and hovels were imagined and still run by the discretion of United Nations.
Needless to say, despite forging a living hell, UN must be attributed some accolades for saving the lakhs of Bihari Muslims lives who through own besmirching thoroughly fall on the wrong side after the liberation of Bangladesh in 1971.

Attainment of downward trajectory to Bihari Muslims could be traced back in the quantum leap of cultural composition shaped after the independence of India in 1947. Unfortunate circumstances following the Indian independence led to innumerable indecisions-odd decisions; among those many horrendous migrations in history, plights of Bihari Muslims migrant in Bangladesh is unique and complete loitering.
Their transition from habitant of scenic beauty to stark odiousness made their lives penurious, and in absence of any momentous decision from Bangladeshi government, there are little chances in near future too, to see any retooling in their humdrum existence.

The clots of rift are primarily cultural between original Bangla inhabitants and Bihari Muslim. Partition and alignment with Pakistan was a rude shock for Bangla speaking population as they were intricately longing with the composite culture of Bengal, and such shocking shifts were not ever dreamt by any sufferer. Foot holding of migrant Muslims was another cause of unease as their Islamic leaning and proximity with Pakistani authority easily placed them in qua opposite camp.
Hostility remained consistent and grew up to an unprecedented level till the nineteen-sixties, when cultural shock clouded over the infuriated Bangladeshi population against the Pakistan’s tyrannical rule upon them. Surprisingly, instead to act rationally, these Bihari Muslims migrants stood with Pakistani authority in that testing time. Moreover, a considerable chunk of them also laid atrocities against the dissident Bangladeshis.

Indeed, the fault was grave and emotionally hard to forget albeit humane spectacle doesn’t deter consideration for the succeeding generation of Bihari Muslims who are blameless and now equally deserve to be a part of modern Bangladesh. Their commitments to the nation are bewitching and they have lurking desire for modern and civilized life outside the shaky ghettos. Their senses of losses are understandable as they still face the statuary challenges on the front of citizenship.
In the last sixty-five years, they have been entwining with the ethos and threads of Bangla culture; their nostalgia of roots in Bihar is still intact but their Bangladeshi nationality, no doubt is foremost concern among young generation now.

Deplored and second grade citizen status of Bihari Muslims in Bangladesh pushing them to meet with numbers of fallouts, such as mass unemployment, illiteracy, wretchedness and above all relentless adversities of state. Only solace is the positive backing from the progressive elements in the country and little bit from the multilateral institutions, but their effects are mostly revolves in virtual spaces contrary to desired level of intervention.
The problem is very much internal now but Indian role can’t be denied entirely as being the stakeholder in that mess and prominent nation of the south Asian region.

Besides that, nationalism is a pertinent issue in entire perils and being factor behind the birth of Bangladesh, Indian government must come across to solve the chronic inhumanization of Bihari Muslim migrants who otherwise would turn as endangered species. What they needed the basic democratic rights within the constitutional framework of Bangladesh.

Redressal of these suffering communities should be the major concern of Indian government as any delay may be not less than catastrophic from the strategic/humane point of view.
The whole issues of Assamese impatience have lot to do with the same unresolve deal of migration. The migrants of both sides deserve humane and democratic treatment from the two major neighboring democracy-India and Bangladesh.
Assam’s long demographic suffering must be given proper attention in the bilateral dialogue between two countries instead playing political cards on the migrants who are bound to live grimmer existence.

Bangladesh government should act in purpose of maintaining human rights of its migrants to Assam and Indian government should essentially think to end the incessant nagging for making its north-east free from sensitive international dispute. Heavy tones of protagonist while singing”Lagta nahi dil yahaan…”reflects the natural agony in search of motherland. These utopian citizens must be given a real chance to dwell with their motherland!

Atul Kumar Thakur
August27th 2010, Friday, New Delhi
atul_mdb@rediffmail.com

Ritwik Ghatak : A Relentless Maverick

In the last quarter of year 2008, Cine club of India Habitat Centre organized a screening of Ritwik Ghatak’s Meghe Dhaka Tara; being a cinema lover I had reason to attend this show and interact with the serious viewers of cinema. On this occasion, I availed an opportunity of interaction with the renowned cinema maker Kumar Sahni who was once very closed to Ritwik Ghatak at FTII (Pune) and in later period of life. He profoundly revealed his relentless creativity and his promising attitude towards the progressive ideology.

Every close observer of his life and work can see a close connection between his Idea and action. Writer and activist of international repute Mahasweta Devi, who is a close family member of Ritwik Ghatak, recalls his work with great admiration and memorized his restlessness in pursuit of purposeful creativity.My own frequent conversation with Mahasweta Devi in last six months enhanced some of my closer views about this great cinema-maker-Ritwik Ghatak.

Ritwik Ghatak was born on November 4, 1925 at Zindabazar in Dhaka (East Bengal), He and his twin sister Prateeti were the youngest among nine children of his parents. They grew amidst the natural proximity, those memories and nostalgia canopied over his consciousness throughout the life. It’s also quite visible in his cinemas. Ritwik Da was born and brought up in East Bengal but at the time of partition, they had to flee away from their own land to Calcutta, where he along with his family bound to live an extremely strained new life. Like many others, they too lost their belongingness from East Bengal, but anecdotes kept Ritwik Da culturally sensitive and oddities of life, even more progressive.

Though a sense of alienation never fled from Ritwik Da’s mind in Calcutta, probably his own bitter experiences in life enabled him to see sufferings of modern time, like war, partition, exile, and dispossession in acute way. Distortion of his life further made him inclined towards an organized and solid ideological base of Marxism.

Ritwik Da was a perfectionist practitioner of art, music and literature, articulation from his natural impulses assisted him in cinema making. In his childhood, he was deeply influenced through the works of Abnindranath Tagore and certain paintings of Gangendranath Tagore. In later phase, he practically comprehends the works of Rabindranath Tagore and with certain conditions, liked his intent for the humanity.

As an avid reader, he found taste for the progressive Bengali and world literature, especially he admired the works of Sukanta Bhattacharya, Bibhutibhusan Banerjee,Manik Banerjee,Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar,Abrahan Lincoln Marx and Lenin. He even used the poem (Cheel) of Sukanta Bhattacharya in his masterwork Bari Theke Paliye.
In the sphere of music, he learned its universal anatomy from the great maestro-Ustad Alauddin Khan. He had great taste of music (mostly in background scores) which he consistently shown in his cinema’s like Meghe Dhaka Tara.

Probably that affection for music made him among the real admirers of Beethoven, Thaickovsky, Paul Robeson, S.D.Burman and others. In1920’s, influenced through the literary impression of Manik Banerjee, a legendary Kallol group was formed. Manish Ghatak (Elder brother of Ritwik Da) was one among its founders. Radicalism of this group shaped the child mind of Ritwik Ghatak for the progressive ideas.

In 1942, IPTA came into existence and involved itself to forward the collective opposition of masses against the British imperial rule. The formidable front-bearers were-Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, Sambhu Mitra, Balraj Sahni,Salil Chaudhary, Ravishankar,Udayshankar, Bijon Bhattacharya.

Ritwik Ghatak entered in active Communist politics during his college days in Berhampur in 1946. In 1948, he graduated from Berhampur College and joined the IPTA as full-timer. He started activism with theaters, and later wrote stories, plays, essays in Bangla and English. Jwala, Sankho, Dalil are some of the illustrating plays of Ghatak, which spread across the Bengal and earned great attention of peoples.

In 1955, he married with Surama, a renowned IPTA activist. Ritwik Da believed in the continuance of life countering with devastation of life, that way he tried to live a creative life but with clear objective realities. He translated Bertolt Brecht’s, The life of Galileo and The Caucasian Chalk Circle, besides he also penned two remarkable novels in Bangla namely as, Ayananata and Akash Gangar Path Beye.

He had also edited two journals- Abhidhara, Abhinay Darpan and produced a collection of essays in English- “Cinema and I”. Ritwik Da was equally great as a literary genius, which he proved in his very short stint as a script writer for Hindi films in Bombay- he worked on the scripts for cinemas like, Madumati (Directed by Bimal Roy), Musafir (Directed by Hrisikesh Mukherjee). But as he was destined for creating history as a cinema director in Bangla, he left Bombay early for Calcutta, to get completely involved for his own projects.

He had considered cinema, as a form of revolutionary Art. So, naturally he was working as part of the new cinema movement of India, started off with Dharti Ke Lal(IPTA,1949). Cinemas of Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Siegfried Kracaner, Paul Rotha and Roger Manville emphatically influenced him. By reference, Baedeni (1951) was his first cinema under his direction, but with having some technical faults, that could not be screened publicly.

So, it would be appropriate to recall Nagrik (1952), as his first cinema, which was based on the middle class families’ agony in Calcutta in post-partition days. The cinema exposes and condemned the insensitivity of the system. It does lucidly cinematize the grim struggle and tragic fall of a middle class family in heartless metropolis of Calcutta. Nagrik reflects Ritwik Ghatak’s own painful struggle in Calcutta; he portrayed the city life in as like ‘web of betrayals’.

Ritwik Da personalizes his odd experiences in this cinema through showing pauperization of its protagonist Ramu, who even fall to the label of a wage laborer despite being a teacher’s son-the depiction creates the grim picture of helplessness of exiled masses in cruel city life. Observers of such realistic works also become equally helpless with watching Ramu and his old mother to enter in a slum, his conditional drifts from girlfriend Uma and seeing turning of Uma’s sister in to prostitution.

Ritwik Da moved to making a documentary after his first breakthrough of Nagrik, in 1955, he made “Oraon”, on the tribes of south Bihar. His next major work was Ajaantrik (1958), centered on an unusual story of Subodh Ghosh, this proved one of the few cinemas to win international acclaim within a short span of time. The cinema was based on the relationship between men and machine, with concentration on the nuances of divergence that modern system creates with the humanity.

The next from him was Kato Ajanare (1959), which chosen not to be released after the last scene was shot. In the same year, he came out with a landmark work in Indian cinema-”Bari Theke Paliye”, Ghatak could be seen doing technical experiments in this cinema. The cinema presents various faces of city life though unnamed postures but portrayal of Calcutta becomes visible on screen and in mind of audiences. Despite having all the typical concepts of Ritwik Da, cinema allowed the viewers to enjoy for some moment, but the centrality of ideas remains serious.

I personally take “Meghe Dhaka Tara (1960)’” as one among the greatest cinemas, the world has seen so far. Here, every character appears immortal with the great casts from Supriya Chaudhary, Anil Chatterjee, Bijan Bhattacharya, Niranjan Roy, Geeta Ghatak and others. This cinema shows a lower middle class family in suburban Calcutta where the bread earner Neeta (Spriya Chaudhary) severely struggles for the survival of her family. But in the course of time, her family started to show indifference from her falling emotional and physical conditions, even with the deadly Tuberculosis which she got in solitaire.

Only her elder brother (Dada, acted by Anil Chaterjee) offers true emotion for her falling condition but his late success in the field of music could not make his dream true for her loving sister. The relationship between these two touches high moral ground, cinema ends in sanatorium amidst the emotional exchange of words between brother and sister. After listening about the recently earned fame of her brother, she could not resist her temptation for life, she broke out for the first time for own sake…”Aami bachbo Dada”.

That forwards the core concerns of feminism and other aspects of our problem ridden society in modern times. In 1961, ‘Komal Gandhar’ was released and elegantly visualized the shattering dreams of the principle characters; he very cautiously utilized the metaphor of “Anasua” from the “Abhijana Shakuntalam” (Kalidas) and “Miranda” from “Tempest” (Shakespeare). “Suvarnarekha (1962)” should be considered among his best works, it also touches the life of Ritwif Ghatak in Calcutta. Madhavi Mukherjee and others characters including of Ritwik Da himself lived the story of uproot beingness at various levels.

Cinema starts with viciousness of a displaced brother, sister and an orphan (outsider), presence of this outsider radically altered the life of its prime character Sita (Madhavi Mukherjee). She represents the sound of opposition (in her suicide) against the decaying values of society. Ghatak Da again becomes successful to utilize the realistic metaphors from Indian tradition.

In 1970, he made an exceptional documentary on “Chhou” dance of Purulia-a year later, “Amar Lenin (Short Film)” was screened in Russia though it never released in India. In 1973, he made a cinema ‘Titas Ekti Nadir Naam’ on the tragedy stricken lives of a fishing community living along the banks of river Titas in Bangladesh. It could fetch modest response from the critics.

‘Jukti Takko Aar Gappo (1974) could be said his last cinema, because his last work (Documentary on Ramkinkar) was mysteriously lost, and therefore could not screened publicly. Ritwik Ghatak made eight feature films, four short films, four documentaries and an Ad film in his life time and like his own role acted in ‘Jukti Takko Aar Gappo’ disappeared suddenly from the scene on February 6,1976.

His premature death was a major blow for the world of progressive cinema and its admirers. It is regrettable that Ritwik Ghatak could achieve the proper evaluation of his work only after his death, still his cinemas deserve fresh look from the critics and cinema lovers, because even today, his kind of works are as relevant as they were fifty years back!

Atul Kumar Thakur
New Delhi
10th April 2009
atul_mdb@rediffmail.com