Synopsis
Usha (Smita Patil), born and brought up
in a poor Brahmin family that had seen better
days is trained in classical music by her
grandmother. After her father’s death,
poverty drives her into the world of Hindi
cinema where she rises to be a famous singer-actress,
courted by men and revered by her fans.
All along she is assisted in her career
by her possessive husband Keshav Dalvi (Amol
Palekar), her neighbor from her village
and a failed businessman who depends on
her income for survival. Her marriage is
a failure from the word go and she leads
a tempestuous personal life and enters into
a series of relationships that take their
toll on her…
The film
Shyam
Benegal's Bhumika remains an
iconic film in the art house/ off-beat film
tradition of Indian cinema and is still
as relevant today as it was when it was
first released in 1977 and the period that
it depicts, ranging from the 30s to the
late 50s. The film is inspired from and
is a fictional recreation of the autobiography
of the famous Hindi and Marathi screen actress
of the 1930s, 40s and 50s, Hansa Wadkar.
This remarkably candid autobiography, where
Wadkar openly wrote about her tempestuous
life, was serialised in the popular Marathi
journal, Manoos (1966) and later
published as Sangtye Aika (1970),
causing a major sensation in its time.
Bhumika is a very complex film
in terms of its structure and the plethora
of themes and issues that it tackles, but
this in no way distracts the viewers from
enjoying the film as it unfolds to us the
story of Usha, aka Urvashi in a seamless
blend of past and present. In a wonderful
exposition the director introduces the central
crises of the film’s heroine that
sets the tone of the film and acts as a
springboard for the rest of the story. She
is dropped home by her co-star Rajan (Anant
Nag) after a shoot. Her husband Keshav (played
brilliantly by Amol Palekar) is jealous
of her proximity with Rajan and confronts
her when she enters the house but she argues
back. We come to know that her husband is
a failed businessman and a gambler who depends
on her earnings to run the family that consists
of their teenaged daughter and Usha’s
mother who are also introduced in the scene.
He rakes up her past with a particular filmmaker;
she decides to walk out of the house with
her daughter but Keshav taunts her that
she will bring up her daughter like herself,
who will spend her time in other men’s
houses. She cannot take it anymore, packs
her bag and walks out of her house alone
while her daughter and mother remain silent
spectators to the entire unsavory altercation,
which must be a regular feature.
 As
she gets into a taxi, the film switches
to a long flashback in black and white that
traces her childhood years till her entry
into films through the efforts of a young
Keshav who always took a keen interest in
her since she was a kid; her gradual rise
to stardom; introduction of her co-star
Rajan who is hopelessly in love with her
which she never reciprocates in the entire
film though she continues to be warm towards
him. When the film switches back to the
present we discover that she has come to
Rajan’s flat in Mumbai to seek his
solace. Under Rajan’s insistence she
checks into a hotel so as to avoid giving
fodder to her husband’s doubts because
Rajan is an honest man.
Amongst the men in her life, Rajan is the
only honorable lover who never takes advantage
of her but wants to marry her desperately.
She refuses his proposals repeatedly because,
as she tells him in one scene - "You
have always given me, not taken anything
from me. I don’t want to lose you
by marrying you." He witnesses her
marriage to Keshav, suffers silently, sees
her marriage disintegrating, observes the
savvy director Sunil (played by Naseeruddin
Shah) courting her and sweeping her off
her feet and learns of her flight with the
feudal businessman Vinayak Kale (Amrish
Puri) and her subsequent confinement at
his estate. But Rajan continues to love
her and remains faithful to her till the
end; he never marries anybody else.
Usha / Urvashi comes across as a very
complex character. She doesn’t want
to act in films but wants to marry Keshav
and settle down into domesticity; she is
already pregnant with his child, much to
the chagrin of her mother who doesn’t
quite like Keshav because of the difference
in their ages and caste. But Usha is obstinate;
she loves Keshav. Keshav forces her into
continue doing films for the sake of money.
Despite things going wrong with her husband
and their frequent quarrels, she turns down
Rajan’s marriage proposals repeatedly
but doesn’t hesitate to enter into
an extra-marital relationship with Sunil,
who courts her with glib talk. She is made
to go through an abortion by Keshav because
he thinks that the child belongs to somebody
else. As a rebound, she allows herself to
be made love to by Sunil and enters into
a suicide pact with him right after they
have made love in a seedy hotel room. Both
of them swallow sleeping pills, but of course,
Sunil is too fake to kill himself so he
substitutes the sleeping pills with some
innocuous pills; she wakes up on an empty
bed to discover that Sunil has left behind
a letter and has disappeared from her life.
Urvashi, the star, is aware of her power
and aura but the only man who is not impressed
by her stardom and tantrums is the businessman
Vinayak Kale who takes her up as his mistress
in his huge estate and bestows on her all
the rights as the woman of the house over
his invalid wife. She slips into the role
effortlessly, without any inhibition and
in fact, bonds with the invalid wife, Kale’s
mother and his son who all accept her as
their family member. Nobody bats an eyelid
as if it were the most natural thing. Nobody
is impressed by her filmi background. The
yardsticks here are different. We are offered
a rare insight into feudal India and its
codes through Vinayak’s family. But
this is already late 50s India under Nehru,
but time seems to have come to a standstill
at this estate.
Usha likes it here; she tells Vinayak’s
wife that she does not want to go back to
‘that life’ again. Maybe, this
is the kind of lifestyle that she always
pined for and the security that it offers,
without questioning the feudal codes that
mark a woman out as a sexual entity whose
only role is to tend the kitchen and warm
her man’s bed. But Usha also has a
fierce rebellious streak in her that we
have seen. When Vinayak slaps her and declares
that the women of the family have never
set foot outside the estate because it is
not allowed and so she cannot take the car
to go to the mela with his son and thunders
"Bombay Jaisi Azaadi Yahan Nahin Milegi
Tumhe," she suddenly realizes
that this is not what she bargained for.
With the help of a fisherwoman whom she
befriends, she sends a letter to her husband
secretly, who rescues her with the help
of police.
When she comes back to Bombay, she is still
in demand. She is put up in a hotel by her
husband because he has realized by now that
they can never live together. Plus, his
business has ultimately taken off. At the
hotel room she meets her daughter who is
pregnant now. Usha the mother is shocked:
"How could you do this? Don’t
you know that a woman’s character
is her most prized possession?" The
daughter replies, "Oh mother, you
still talk the filmi language,"
and tells her that she is married.
Usha is a bundle of contradictions. She
hates her husband and repeatedly turns down
his appeals to return home; but when she
is held captive at a feudal estate it is
her husband that she writes to. And when
she comes back to Bombay, accompanied by
her husband she readily agrees to check
into a hotel without going back home. When
Rajan calls her up at the end of the film,
she refuses to talk to him; the only man
she respected and loved. This is what makes
her character so rounded and curious.
Smita Patil’s essaying of the role
is amongst the best performances in not
just Indian cinema but world cinema and
rightly fetched her the National Award in
that year. Within the film, her depiction
of different roles in the films that she
performs in, not only traces the evolution
of acting styles in Hindi cinema over three
decades, but also demonstrates her remarkable
histrionic ability. She remains amongst
the finest actresses of our country despite
her untimely death in 1986 when just 31.
The complexity of her character in the film
and the different roles that she plays,
both in her personal life and in the film
shoots complement each other in a wonderful
play of contrasts and similarities. Just
after she walks out on her husband and checks
into a hotel we are treated to a montage
of roles in black and white: she plays the
faithful wife of Satyavan in a mythological
who pleads with Yamraj not to take away
her husband; then she plays Champabai, a
righteous wife who refuses to be sold off
to a rich client by her drunkard husband
in a social; then a city woman in an urban
melodrama where she fights to defend her
honour inside a courtroom. Each role brings
out the contrast with her real life and
serves as a rich subtext to the main plot.
The screenplay reflects an ingenuity in
the way it switches between the past and
the present (through its use of black and
white and colour to differentiate the two
time frames) and the amount of issues and
information that it packs in without falling
into the trap of being verbose or superfluous.
It is always a challenging proposition to
tackle a bio-pic because it requires to
show a character through different stages
of his life by selecting the most important
elements of his life without being redundant
and arranging them in the most effective
manner so as not to appear jerky. This film
not only traces Usha’s journey through
three decades but also represents the evolution
of the Hindi film industry in terms of technology,
acting and singing styles, transition from
black and white to colour and emergence
of new heroes (Benjamin Gilani in a cameo
role). In one particular party sequence,
shot in a very elaborate manner, producer
Hiralal (played by Kulbhushan Kharbanda)
comments on the impending decline of the
studio era and the emergence of the star
system where they will receive fat fees
and films will be made at the speed of cars!
This statement does not come out as a piece
of information just for the heck of it because
surely in a film party, the state of the
current film industry would be discussed
along with the usual gossips. The party
also throws up a lot of other interesting
studies; the tension between Keshav and
Rajan for example. Keshav hates his wife’s
proximity to Rajan but does not hesitate
to call him near and engage in polite conversation
with him, with Usha being the silent participant.
The subtext is clear: Lay your hands off
my wife. But Rajan throws up a challenge
to him by politely asking permission to
dance with his wife, which Keshav has to
acquiesce for the sake of propriety. As
the music plays on, Rajan close dances with
Usha while a jealous Keshav looks on. Of
course, Usha cares a fig. This is great
cinema happening.
The radio plays an important role in the
complex sound designing in that it indicates
the passage of time through which the film
moves back and forth in a non-linear structure.
The first time we hear the radio, Usha is
already grown up and pregnant, but not married
to Keshav yet; the radio announces the march
of the Red Army in China and the launch
of Axis attack on North Africa and we immediately
get the period: 1943. When she is staying
at the hotel after walking out on her husband,
the radio announces the then Prime Minister
Nehru’s participation in the Bandung
Conference in Indonesia where the Kashimir
issue is discussed; we have moved on to
1955. By the time Stalin’s death is
announced we have moved back to 1953 and
she is about to go for an abortion under
the insistence of her husband. By the time
she is plotting her escape from Vinayak
Kale’s estate, Ayub Khan has already
staged a coup in Pakistan and it is 1958.
The film ends around at that time.
The time shifts are brought about by sound
overlaps that also underline the mental
state of the heroine. A shrill bell sound
acts as a leitmotif indicating her turbulent
mental state during most transitions. In
this context, mention must be made of a
beautiful song overlap - Tumhare Bina
Jee Naa Lage Ghar Mein. The song starts
on her face just as Rajan congratulates
her on her imminent marriage to Keshav during
a break in the shoot and the film promptly
cuts to the actual song picturisation where
she dances away merrily. It immediately
serves as a portent of what is to happen
in the course of the film and her life vis-à-vis
her relationship with Rajan.
Govind Nihalini’s cinematography
is lavish and his use of deep focus and
track shots convey the depths of the period
locations wonderfully through which the
characters move around. The film is shot
extravagantly and exudes a richness and
warmth that reflect the flamboyance of the
setting but it changes its tone according
to the mood of the main character. The film
strictly falls under the realist cinema
tradition that finds its root in Ray’s
films and many of the compositions and moods
do reflect the influence of the master whom
Benegal always held in high regard.
Bhumika is a brilliant piece of
cinema and a sumptuous experience that continues
to enthrall viewers over the ages and offers
new nuggets of film knowledge every time
one watches it. There is always so much
to learn from it; it never ceases to enchant.
It is a full throttled good cinema in all
its excellence and marks Shyam Benegal out
as one of our greatest filmmakers.
Ranjan Das is an alumnus of the
Film and Television Institute of India (FTII),
Pune with specialization in Film Editing
1992. Having edited various documentaries
and directed different programmes for Bengali
Television, he has also written for the
popular TV serials Sidhhant, Crime
Patrol and Rihayee.
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