Obituary: Rituparno Ghosh (August 31, 1963 – May 30, 2013)
By Rajiv Theodore
NEW DELHI: Agent provocateur Rituparno Ghosh was dead against stereotypes. His works and his personality reflected a constant quest to reconsider what was normal. For the immensely talented Ghosh life was a never-ending journey imitating art.
Armed with a different take on life and sexuality, this Bengali director, producer, writer and actor had said, “I think the thrill of filmmaking is when the audience will be partly annoyed, some will be indifferent, others enthusiastic and yet others who can completely identity themselves with a film.”
The essential Ghosh had a bald head, kohl-lined eyes and wore feminine attire as cross-dressing still remains on the fringes of Indian society. But Ghosh was serious of his wardrobe or his sexuality. Amidst the brickbats there was also a grudging or sneaking admiration at this profound display of courage. It was these motifs drawn from the twilight zone of human relationships that Ghosh gained his strength and his creativity. It was seen at later stages of his work that fluid sexuality and transgender identity became an integral part of Ghosh’s work, whether it was walking the ramp or acting or direction. Almost as an extension of his personality, Ghosh played renowned cross dressing danseuse and theatre performer Chapal Bhaduri in Kaushik Ganguly’s film Arekti Premer Golpo (2011).
Ghosh began his early life in a rather conventional manner editing a Bengali film magazine Anandlok in 2000 and later producing the Sunday cultural supplement called Robbar for the Pratidin daily newspaper. He was instrumental in creating the television show Gaaner Opare a musical that ran from 2010 to 2011 which paid rich tribute to Rabindranath Tagore.
But, it seems he soon became weary of all this and rapidly lost interest. “Over the last few years, he was slowly coming to terms with his identity as an individual and his own sexuality,” Arghakamal Mitra, one of the key editors of his films said. “That reflected in his films and also in the films where he chose to act and script. The change in the way he dressed and carried himself in public was also very natural and not done with the intention for the world to see or get shocked. It took a lot of courage surely.”
His death at the age 49 came as a surprise and moments later sent shock waves across the film industry which was also grappling with this queer artist who often changed his personal appearance. Many times he shaved off his hair and dressed in androgynous clothing—and making and appearing in movies that explored homosexuality.
Son of a documentary film maker, Sunil, Ghosh was attracted to filmdom after watching Satyajit Ray’s films during a film festival while still studying economics at Jadavpur University. He made his debut with a children’s film, Hirer Angti, in 1994, which failed to create ripples. Unfazed, in the same year he wrote and directed Unishe April which received rave reviews and won two National Awards.
These were followed by two films Dahan and Bariwali, both of them again bagged National awards. Ghosh would dip into literature faithfully and freely over the next few years. His breakthrough film, Unishe April (1994), owed more to Ingmar Bergman than to any writer. There were other adaptations too. Dahan (1998) was based on Suchitra Bhattacharya’s novel of the same name. Shubho Mahurat (2003) was drawn from Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Crack’d From Side to Side, Chokher Bali (2003), taken from the Rabindranath Tagore novel, Raincoat, in 2004, was inspired by O. Henry’s short story The Gift of the Magi. Noukadubi (2012) was another melodrama inspired by Tagore. He repeated actors in several of his films, among them Prosenjit Chatterjee, Raima Sen and Jisshu Sengupta All his films were shot by Aveek Mukhopadhyay and edited by Arghakamal Mitra.
His early films had explored Bengali middle class aspirations. This was followed by a transitory phase of bilingual dramas featuring Hindi movie celebrities as star vehicles. In the third leg of his film-making ardor, he was playing gay or transsexual characters in movies directed by him and his peers. It was strange rather that the man who brought middle-class Bengali audiences back into cinemas (after they went astray thanks to the growing mediocrity in Tollygunge), began to ease the rug out from under their feet.
Ghosh’s movie Chitrangada, one of his last, which was released 2012, reworked Tagore’s dance drama about the romance between the warrior prince Arjuna and Chitrangada, the Manipuri princess who dresses like a man to protect her land. This was interpreted as Ghosh introducing his audiences slowly and gradually doses of transgressive material.
He started off with relationship dramas, which made him a darling of the middle class and who formed the bulk of his fan base, said Moinak Biswas, Associate Professor for Film Studies at Jadavpur University. “He is a very crucial figure in the 1990s and continued to be until the very end.”
The 1980s saw a real slump in the Bengali industry as urban middle classes shied away from movie theatres. Terribly kitschy, lowbrow stuff was coming out of Tollygunge (the Kolkata film industry). Rituparno was single-handedly responsible in winning this audience back. It’s natural, therefore, that the stories he chose and the themes he took up had to do with urban middle classes, with domestic traumas, relationships between parents and partners, Biswas added. Although not his most creative phase, Ghosh had turned his gaze towards Bollywood. In 2003, he decided to take on the challenge of directing a film adaptation of Rabindranath Tagore’s Chokher Bali casting Aishwarya Rai in the film. Rai would also star in his next film Raincoat with Ajay Devgun as the male lead. Amitabh Bachchan, Preity Zinta and Arjun Rampal were roped in by Ghosh for his first English language film The Last Lear.
Ghosh himself had justified his work aptly. “Male homosexuality had not been dealt with in Bengali cinema prior to this. While female homosexuality caters to voyeuristic inclinations of a section of the society, it becomes a little difficult for the parochial Indian society to deal with male homosexuality. More because it conjures up a vivid image of physicality and people tend not to dwell on its emotional implications,” he said.
Until May 28th, Rituparno Ghosh had 19 features, a short film and four acting credits to his name and had wrapped up the shoot of the thriller Satyanweshi, featuring Kahaani director Sujoy Ghosh as the popular detective Byomkesh Bakshi. Two days later the 49 –year-old died in his sleep.