Synopsis
Shyamal Chatterjee, an ambitious young
executive, works with Hindustan Peters in
Calcutta as the sales manager of its fan
section. Seven days before a major consignment
is scheduled to be exported to Iraq a technical
fault is detected in the manufacture and
Shyamal finds his career at stake. With
the help of a cunning labour officer at
his office, he manipulates a strike at the
factory to avert major corporate embarrassment
and gains the kudos of his boss. As a result
he is promoted to the board of directors
over his rival; but his happiness is short-lived
when his sister-in-law who always held him
in awe, sees through his machinations and
he loses her trust and finds himself a loser
at the highest point of his life and career.
The film
Though a fairly straight forward narrative
that spans approximately a week in the life
of a young executive played by debutant
Barun Chanda, a close look at the structure
reveals a deeper significance: The seven
days in the life of its protagonist comprise
the most important seven days of his life
and embody all the vital elements that define
his being: his success story in the last
10 years, his vaulting ambition, his bonding
with his sensitive sister-in-law Tutul who
comes to visit them from Patna, his efforts
to win her approval since he has been a
role model for her; a major threat to his
career and the discovery that he is capable
of the utmost unfair means to snuff out
any threat; his slow immersion into corruption
and the ultimate realization that success
does not have the significance he has been
attaching to it. A whole lot of issues are
packed in these seven important days in
a film whose running time is 112 minutes
and which resorts to first person narration
at few junctures to telescope events that
otherwise would have taken longer to establish.
 Seemabadhha
is a classic moral tale of what unbridled
ambition can do to a sensitive young man.
It traces the life of a small town boy from
Patna, the son of a school teacher who is
brought up in traditional middle-class values
and his meteoric rise till he finds himself
in a swanky company flat with a dumb and
beautiful but functional wife Dolan (played
wonderfully by Paromita Choudhuri) and a
7-year old son who studies in St. Pauls
in Darjeeling. There is nothing else in
life that he seems to want except the post
of director but for that he has to compete
with a rival from the lamps division. As
he claims in the beginning of the film in
first person narrative, he has married his
life with the fortunes of his company –
a modern management mantra for efficient
functioning and greater profits. But he
is sensitive enough to understand, as he
tells his attractive sister-in-law (Sharmila
Tagore) in the beginning of the film that
just as he hated Geography in school but
had to study it nevertheless to score marks,
so also in his professional life he has
to do whole lot of things that he many not
like but which are essential for promotion,
otherwise life will become stagnant. But
there seems to be no regret in his voice
as he speaks these lines and it seems that
he almost enjoys this role playing.
Sharmila Tagore once again plays the role
of moral touchstone in the film as she does
in Aranyer
Din Ratri (1969) and Nayak (1966).
She is built as a total contrast to her
elder sister who basks in the glory of her
husband’s achievement and is skeptical
of her younger sister’s boyfriend
back in Patna who may not have any future.
In one particular evocative scene when Dolan
proudly shows her around her spacious high-rise
apartment, Dolan opens the windows and points
out at the city below and expresses her
deep satisfaction that they are so far from
the dust and the grime of the city at this
level and she cannot make out the difference
between bombs and gunshots from this height,
an indication of the turbulent Naxalite
movement of that period. Shyamal opens out
to Tutul only, while his wife is kept in
the dark about the problems at his office
because she is too insensitive to understand
all that.
We are taken on a roller coaster ride through
the city of Calcutta of the 1970s as Shyamal
drives the two sisters to a British club,
a beauty parlour, the race course and a
cabaret. Though impressed by whatever she
sees she is not effected by it at all except
for a brief moment when she clutches the
sleeve of Shyamal at the race course in
excitement and wants to play once again.
It is a poignant and witty moment in the
film and for a brief second it exposes the
vulnerability of a poised and sensitive
woman and reflects the master’s deft
touch. In another wonderful scene a proud
Shyamal points out to a neon light hoarding
featuring his company’s fan and Tutul
exclaims at the slow speed of the rotating
fan and wonders aloud if his company’s
fan moves like that. Shyamal’s ego
is pricked and he remains silent; he understands
that all his efforts to impress her is lost
on her because she is too refined and unaffected.
Ray
had often been accused by his contemporaries
and critics for not depicting in his films
the social and political turmoil that gripped
the city and its suburbs in the 60s and
the 70s. It is not that he was insensitive
to the burning issues of the time, but his
references have always been oblique but
pointed. In this film, by dealing with an
achiever and positing him in direct contrast
to the educated unemployed who numbered
nearly 10 lakhs (as Shyamal’s first
person narrative points out in the beginning
of the film), he depicts a reality that
is sordid, manipulative and depressing.
Shyamal’s well-designed visit to the
hospital to have a look at the watchman
Tewari who has been hurt by a bomb at the
factory is a scathing look at the manipulative
ways of people who can call shots from above
and decide on the fates of gullible people.
The hospital scene stands out in sharp focus
when one recalls a preceding scene in the
film when one of Shyamal’s senior
Tamil colleagues quotes from Joseph Conrad
that ambition is not wrong as long as it
does not play with the miseries of people.
But Shyamal is unperturbed.
The last but one scene where a jubilant
Shyamal climbs up the flight of stairs of
his apartment which is situated on the 8th
floor because the lift is out of order and
he becomes progressively tired, could look
too literal, but it drives home the point
with a force: The toll it takes on an ambitious
soul who has played with the miseries of
gullible people to achieve his end. This
is followed by another literal scene immediately
after where Tutul returns the watch to him
which he had gifted to her earlier but we
don’t really mind. It is the most
understated climax; the camera cranes up
to the whirling fan at the ceiling while
Shyamal and Tutul sit across each other
below in silence: Shyamal’s hard earned
success has no meaning for her, he realizes,
but does the tragedy strike him with the
impact that it should? Or is it just another
class in Geography?
Seemabadhha forms the second
part of Ray's city trilogy. The other two
films being Pratidwandi (1970)
and Jana Aranya (1975).
Contributed by Ranjan Das, 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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