Synopsis
Bilash (Niranjan Roy) belongs to the Macchmara
(fish-killer) community – fishermen
who net hilsa and other fishes
in the River Ganga and live by
the riverside. An orphan, Bilash is reared
up by his uncle Panchu (Gyanesh Mukherjee),
an experienced fisherman. Irritated by his
wild ways, Panchu dreams of getting him
married. The fishermen take loans from the
local moneylender at high interests and
undertake their annual fishing expedition
downstream. They reach their traditional
fishing spot but alas the catch is poor
and the fishermen just manage to get by.
Bilash however gets enamoured by the charms
of Himi (Ruma Guha Thakurta) – a fish
trader who is the granddaughter of Damini,
an older fishmonger who had fallen in love
with Bilash’s father in their youth.
Panchu and Damini are initially opposed
to the relationship but Panchu in his death-throes
on the night of a violent storm gives Bilash
the permission to marry Himi and also allows
him to go to high seas if the situation
becomes desperate due to diminishing fish
catch in the river Ganga. Himi
bows down to the belief that a land-dweller
marrying the nomadic Macchmara
will bring immense misfortune to the groom.
Bilash begins his journey to the sea promising
to return to Himi every year…
The Film
 Satyajit
Ray’s path-breaking masterpiece
Pather Panchali
(1955) had an immediate and fundamental
impact on the culture of filmmaking in Bengal.
Ray’s film which was in some ways
was influenced by the efforts of Italian
Neo-realists like Vittorio De Sica and Roberto
Rossellini prompted some filmmakers working
in Kolkata to go beyond the artificiality
of the Tollygunje studios and take up the
life and struggles of marginalised rural
communities as the subject of their films.
Rajen Tarafdar’s Ganga –
an adaptation of a novel by the controversial
author Samaresh Basu - is one of the more
successful films of this transformation
– a film that is still remembered
as a powerful yet sensitive depiction of
the poor fishermen whose lives are irrevocably
entwined with the flux of the great river.
Ganga, prima facie, is
an account of the coming of age of Bilash
– from a callow young man to his wish
fulfilment of becoming the head of his community
and leading a fishing expedition to the
seas which hitherto had been a taboo as
his own father had died in the hands of
the man-eating tigers that reside in the
Sunderbans forests situated in the delta
of the Ganga river. In the beginning
he is a strong young hot-head, the winner
of the annual boat race and hence the cynosure
of a promiscuous village wife (Sita Mukherjee)
and a teenaged girl Gamli Panchi (Sandhya
Roy). But in the final moments of the film,
his transformation to manhood is complete
– Bilash now is not only the leader
of his gang but also has the maturity to
understand Himi’s refusal to marry
him with equanimity and calmness. However
the film avoids concentrating solely on
him - the story of Bilash is used as the
premise to probe and depict the trials and
tribulations, the customs and beliefs of
the Macchmara community and the terrifying
yet hypnotic grandeur of their milieu –
the mighty river Ganga –
which as one of them describes as “our
nurturing mother and also our prophet of
doom”. Thus at many moments,
the film seems to go beyond the narrative
framework and revel in sequences where ‘nothing
happens’ in terms of the progress
of the narrative. It is in these sequences
– the long and arduous expedition
of the fishermen to their traditional fishing
grounds being the principal example –
the attempt of the filmmaker seems to capture
the daily grind of the Macchmaras
and bestow on them an element of solemn
yet monumental dignity. The sequence that
precedes this journey down the river consisting
of shots which capture the preparation of
the trek – the negotiations with the
local moneylender, the repairing of the
boats, the mending of the nets, the praying
rituals of the women – bound by a
folk song on the audio-track is another
example of the filmmaker’s interest
in chronicling the minute details of the
world in which the protagonist is posited.
However it must be admitted that this effort
to portray the protagonists of the film
as a part of the environment and whose responses
are shaped and determined by it makes the
film a difficult viewing in certain passages
as the pace of the film goes haywire and
the screenplay seems to overindulge on the
marginalia at the cost of real human emotions.
The absence of any major sub-plot –
the screenplay concentrates mostly on Bilash
and the journey down the river – also
adds a dose of predictability creating a
sense of boredom. The film’s use of
the original Bengali dialect of the Macchmaras
no doubt validates its realistic ethos but
also sets up barriers in communicating with
the average Bengali.
The brilliance of Ganga is in
the authenticity with which it captures
the milieu of the Macchmara community and
also in its portrayal of the spirit of a
community whose life as Panchu puts it
“begins and ends in the Mother Ganga”.
True to its debt to one of the key
tenets of the Neo-realist movement the film
avoids dramatic and the sensational and
concentrates on catching the ebb and flow
of ‘life as it is’. Gamli Panchi’s
infatuation with Bilash, Panchu’s
irritation with his nephew’s wayward
ways and the blooming of romance between
Himi and Bilash are all given a very deliberate
low-key treatment – representing these
as normal, routine events. Panchu’s
dying moments in the night of the terrible
storm and the key plot-point of the film
where he gives permission to Bilash to marry
the land-dwelling Himi and also to take
their group to the delta of the Sunderbans
are captured without any great dramatic
flourish – the stress seems to be
more on capturing the fury of the cyclone
than the death throes of Panchu. In one
of the final moments of the film when Himi
refuses to marry and leave her home with
Bilash the situation is handled without
major melodrama – their calm acceptance
of fate and traditions is reflected in the
extremely unobtrusive construction of the
scene and the use of sparse, minimalist
dialogues.
The technical aspects of the film are of
extremely high standards. Dinen Gupta’s
black and white cinematography elegantly
captures the ever-changing panorama of the
river Ganga through a series of
complex tracking and panning shots. Close-ups
and mid close-up shots of – the hilsa
fish in its death-throes, the oars of the
fishermen plying on the river, the sweat-soaked
muscular bodies of the fishermen, the jewellery
worn by Himi and other women et al - are
used extensively to catch the minutiae of
the lives of the Macchmaras with the eye
of an sensitive observer. The audio track
too is rich and well designed. The sound
of the gentle river breeze, the roar of
the cyclone, the soft tinkle of women’s
jewellery, the haunting call of a lonely
sea-gull, the booming horn of a steam ferry,
the ripple of the wavelets on the river
bank, the fearful blast of waves crashing
in on the planks of the tiny boats –
a myriad range of sounds are woven together
with Salil Choudhury’s folk based
background music and non-synchronous use
of traditional folk songs such as Gangar
Buke-te Nao Bhashailam Re and Sajani Go
Sajani, Hoibe Mor Gharani.
Acting too is of the highest calibre in
Ganga. Gyanesh Mukherjee is superb
as the old and wise Panchu while Sandhya
Roy in one of her early screen appearances
fits in very nicely as the lively and curious
village belle infatuated with the handsome
Bilash. Niranjan Roy as Bilash is able to
overcome his limited range of expressions,
with the sheer raw physical presence and
swagger that his role as an ebullient young
fisherman demands. His actions of rowing
the boat, throwing the net and hauling up
the catch all bear the hallmark of genuineness
and seem to have been mastered after arduous
preparation/ rehearsals. Ruma Guha Thakurta
is brilliant as the rich, sensuous and independent
Himi. The rest of the cast, under the influence
of Italian neo-realism via Pather Panchali
, comprising professionals and non-actors
(a few of them being real Macchmaras) do
a commendable job and support the main cast
with reasonable competency. All this endows
the director Rajen Tarafdar’s endeavour
to capture the ebb and flow of life of the
Macchmaras whose lives are intertwined with
the river Ganga a rare sense of
honesty and cinematic vision.
Ganga was awarded a special prize
at the International Film Festival, New
Delhi, 1960.
Monish K Das is an alumnus of the
Film and Television Institute of India (FTII),
Pune with specialization in Film Editing,
1992. He now lives and works as a documentary
filmmaker and social communication consultant
in Kolkata.
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