A speck in the Small Town’s Great History

 

No one can resist an idea whose time has come.  But what becomes of an idea ahead of its time? A foregone conclusion, as you can see from this post. It is about one such daring experiment which failed to take roots and eventually stifled future attempts. (I’m not aware of any Film Society now in Ottapalam. The latest claim to fame is the talented, young, homegrown director Lal Jose and the outdoor location at Varikkasery Mana) I’m talking about a film society which we cobbled up in the sleepy town of Ottapalam. Way back in the early seventies. 

I don’t remember whose idea it was. My earliest memory relates to a meeting we had in PT Narendra Menon’s magnificent tharawad. We were about five to six people. The agenda was to name the society and get it registered.  It was Narendra Menon who suggested the name Satyajit Ray Film Society. Some of us had other ideas, though. Would it be construed as a fan club? What about the other equally famous titans of the alternate film movement, such as Ritwick Ghatak and Mrinal Sen?  There were some like me who thought Ghatak superior to Ray, not from seeing any of his movies but on account of his association with IPTA.  Most of us had not seen any of the movies of the trio so far. But if I remember right I had seen Pather Panchali and Teen Kanya, screened during my college days, as benefit shows.  

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To our knowledge there were only two other film societies in Kerala - Chithralekha Film Society of Trivandrum and the Calicut Film Society. We copied their byelaws and mode of functioning.  Our President was Mr. Narendra Menon, a poet and patron of arts. . Mr. Mukundan Nair, a professor in the local college was chosen the Vice-President; Mukundan, my colleague became the secretary and I, the treasurer. As both Mr. Mukundan and I were in the same office it became the nerve centre of the Society. Many of our colleagues -Rajeev, Kesavan and Rajendran helped us in the activities of the Society- the membership drive, publicity, communication, correspondence and liaison with local bodies. With the naming over, the remaining formalities like adoption of a bye-law, registration with the Federation of Film Societies of India and with the National Film Archives were carried out in quick time

We did not want to open the membership to all and hence the membership drive was by invitation. After screening a few 16 MM movies we felt it was time to make our presence felt with a memorable event.  Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s ‘Swayamvaram’, which the local theatre had not braved to show till then, was the unanimous choice for our first public show. And so we went ahead with the arrangements for the exhibition of the film as a benefit show. We had to get the approval of the Local Panchayat to get exemption from entertainment tax. We thought that was easy. But to our utter dismay the authorities wouldn’t oblige. They wanted to know why we wanted to exhibit the film. What purpose? Our memorandum and bye laws were not convincing enough. Exhibit a cinema to exhibit more cinemas? – the executive officer couldn’t understand the logic! Used to giving approvals for benefit shows for raising money for buildings, charity etc. this was something new to him. Somehow we managed to get the approval … in a small town where every body was connected to everybody, the connection works. We were in for another rude shock when we went around the houses for selling the ‘passes’ which we thought would be grabbed up by the discerning Ottapalam elite. It was then we realized that our outrage, at the chicken heartedness of the theatre in not exhibiting the film so far, was out of place!  

Sethu (no more now), our buddy, the operator in the local theatre had only one condition ……we should have the film reels at least two days before the show. Not an onerous job, we thought. The money was paid and we made a solemn undertaking that the negatives would be returned intact in due course. Rajeev ,whom we thought had a remote kinship with Adoor through his previous employment , and our best bet in the circumstances, volunteered  for  the onerous job of getting the print in time for the show. Things are a little hazy from now on except that we did not get the prints as required by Sethu. Trains and telephones being rare luxuries to Ottapalam, Rajeev kept us endlessly waiting.   The anxious moments we spent at Metro (a saloon, the only hang out place in Ottapalam) the previous evening was made more unendurable with Sethu putting pressure by the minute.  Added to that was our worry as how to face the irate crowd if we failed to show the film.  Sethu had already foreseen this and adequately warned us. 

Our endless wait, being made bearable only by the many teas and vadas from Swami’s Cafe and our resignation to the inevitable fate was suddenly broken by the appearance of Rajeev from nowhere, fully drenched in somebody’s vomit. Behind him stood the porter, carrying the print box. Those days the practice of performing pooja to the print box was thankfully not prevalent! And what a relief it was! We wanted to hug him but the vomit kept him at bay.  To cut the story short it appears Rajeev was redirected from Trivandrum to pick the print from some where near Calicut and he had taken the first available bus. The rest was uneventful except that the local public did not give us the thumbs up. Trust this brings a smile to Rajeev’s face if he sees this!

Merchant Ivory production's ‘Savages’ turned out to be an eye opener for us. The story takes off  from the point where a croquet ball accidentally falls amidst  a tribe of primitive  ‘mud people’ .They follow the ball back to its start and land up in a majestic mansion  and slowly adapt to the so called  ‘civilized’ ways of ‘upper class behavior’. The mud people (Indian actor Asha Puthli among them) are nude or partly so.  The film met with serious censor board cuts, but the print that was given to the societies was with out these. Our hand bill mentioned the Censor Board cuts that were retained in the movie for adult viewing. And wow! What a response! The show was fully sold out. But to the utter disappointment of the budding voyeurs, the hot scenes were either long shots or for fleeting moments. The elite squirmed and we rejoiced at the jingle of our cash box. Sweet revenge for the disastrous reception that Ray, Ghatak and Tapan Sinha got.

A little more on some of the classics and milestone movies we saw, in my next post.

The Maverick

(കൂട്ടം തെറ്റി മേയുന്നവന്‍ )

My last post on Abbas set me on to another unforgettable character of my college days. In a way he is relevant to one of the themes I intend to pursue in this blog. The idea that some people endlessly long to live differently…an idea Ibsen (and few others) had propounded through his dramas.

The person that I intend to portray is Venu, my college mate. Venu was   a couple of years junior to me. It is unlikely that he   could have read Ibsen or fashioned his life on Ibsen’s ideas. There were many like him before as there are now, greater luminaries, stuff for many more posts. But, who inspired Venu was anybody’s guess.

Venu looked odd in every sense of the word.  He wore only “mundu”   and had a stoop almost like a sickle. He was not particularly keen about his looks.  You could always see him puffing at a ‘beedy’ near the teashops or the bus stand. He was not regular in his classes.  From what I could make out, he was well read in Malayalam and was a good speaker. He was irreverent and a contrarian to the hilt. His looks, the ‘beedy’ and his oratory made him a natural ally of all left leaning student organizations. Many of us who professed progressive ideas wanted to rope in Venu and capitalize on his bohemian looks. He was almost a cult figure among the girls. That was another reason for our wooing Venu. But try as much as we did, Venu wouldn’t oblige us. Our entreaties miserably failed.   He was a hard nut to crack

Soon we realized he was too independent to toe the line of any organization.  It would have been difficult too, to confine him within the four walls.   Much to our disappointment he contested the college elections as an independent and cut into our votes. He canvassed votes with an epithet 'Manushian (human) Venu'. He lost the elections handsomely like all of us. Only, he would consider it a disgrace if he polled more than his vote, let alone win.

In many ways he was close to our views, be it anti establishment (very fashionable for a youngster), secular, pro downtrodden etc.  We were curious why he wanted to be on his own. To our persistent prodding Venu reluctantly opened his mind… he aspired to be a Radical Humanist. That sent us scurrying to find out what it was all about. We hadn’t progressed beyond Marx, Lenin and the proletarian revolution.  Venu lead us to M N Roy.  And, thereafter, we left Venu to his own ways. Incorrigible, we felt.

It was after many years that I met Venu again.  He suddenly appeared one morning in the lodge where I was staying with a few friends. He sported the same looks. Obviously he hadn’t made it in life. All the other ‘so called anti-establishment gang ‘, including yours truly, had by then cocooned up in comfortable government jobs. Only Venu stayed the way he was. A raw 'Manushian'.  Venu wanted a set of clothes from me. He asked with the same casualness as he would, if he were asking for a Beedi.  Those were the days after the Emergency and I was certain he would have been in the watch list of the police. He did not talk much and I was too embarrassed to ask him how he was engaged.

Again many years later I narrowly avoided meeting Venu face to face. I was in the interview board set up by the District Industries Centre to shortlist beneficiaries for a government assisted programme for unemployed youth. While going through the bio data- before calling in the applicant- I found to my utter chagrin that the next candidate was my friend Venu. I excused myself from the board but not before putting in a word of recommendation.  Venu wanted to start/expand an evening daily in his home town. He had all the answers for the questions the board asked. He had also registered a name for the eveninger. His application was short listed for onward submission to the bank

I don’t know whether he took the loan or started the eveninger.  I haven’t seen or heard of him thereafter which is 25 years now.  But my mind tells me he wouldn’t have been a success or made a life with his venture. For, Venu was such an individual who was set to fail.  Fail, yes, by our standards!

Venu stood alone. I don’t know if he really pursued his missionary zeal or he just wanted to be different.  In my thoughts he comes close to Ibsen’s philosophy… ‘the strongest is the one who stands alone’… as propounded in ‘The enemy of the people’

Good luck Venu! Tread your path wherever you are. Plough your lonely furrow!

The Namesake (with due apologies to Jhumpa Lahiri)

I just finished reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel ‘The Namesake’.  Story of a Bengali immigrant couple in US caught between two conflicting cultures.  More about the book later.  But the title of the book rang a bell in me and took me back by a few decades, to my college years. Here we go.

My earliest foray into writing was an article for the college magazine. Those days, we had a monthly magazine called the College Mirror. Brought out by the English Literature Students, under a club pompously named the English Colloquium. There were many other initiatives for sports and arts as well. All this by the dynamism of the charming college principal Dr NG Pillai. (Pillai died at a very young age in a plane crash). He brought life to an otherwise sleepy college. Pillai was the toast of the town with his good looks, academic brilliance and sartorial elegance. He served the college less than a couple of years but left a legacy difficult to emulate.

As is well known, it is a huge burden to fill the annual college magazine .Imagine, then, how easy or difficult it is to bring out one every month! In their efforts to keep the College Mirror going the English Colloquium used to chase students and staff for articles, poems or any work that could be published. And some advertisements too from the local businessmen to cover the cost. Their efforts proved inadequate, invariably.  As a result, not before long,   the magazine met with its natural end. The club did conduct a few seminars, debates and staged a few English dramas before it too met with its end.

As one who was wooed for an article, I gave my best shot to come up with a topic that could find its way to the magazine. Those days I was greatly influenced by the essays of AG Gardiner (Alpha of the Plough) and decided, short of plagiarizing, my piece should be on the same lines. (Does any body remember Gardiner, now a day? A good read for all aspiring bloggers). So the style was settled, only the topic had to be found. Drudge as I may, nothing worthwhile came to my mind even as weeks passed by. The deadline was fast approaching. With these worries in my mind and not a care for the Physics Lab, I got down from the route bus one morning.

And who else but Abbas, a physically challenged (polio affected) boy, a permanent feature in the bus stop, to greet me. As is his wont he clung on to me calling, Unnietta.   Perhaps, that day he hadn’t had his quarry. My first instinct was to shrug him off as I was cash strapped with the month drawing to a close. But I had a weakness for him and reluctantly shared my slender means with him. It was then that the idea struck me, why not Abbas, for a small write up.  After all, he carried the same name as one my idols of those times.  KA Abbas, film director, columnist and a fellow traveler.  Abbas, a name set to signify the sturdiness of a Lion, in Arabic. And our protagonist, a cripple all on his fours most of the time.  The two Abbases that I was hooked on then, linked by a common name, but placed in vastly different circumstances.  One an idol, the other a bother.

Abbas had enough material for a small write up. He wouldn’t have been more than 10 years of age and some times he used to walk on all fours.  He kept a record of the schedules of all the route buses, a vital info those days, as buses were very infrequent and unreliable. He would run errands for you, pass messages and was a clearing house for   all information and gossip. He was innocent and too young to understand the import of his actions. He was equally popular with the girls.

And write I did, a portrait of Abbas, at times juxtaposing, comparing and contrasting the namesakes.  Only, the caption of the article was not exactly flattering to our Abbas. And that was a disaster I regretted by hindsight. As Barkha Dutt would put it later, ‘an error of judgment’! I hoped Abbas wouldn’t know it. But, to my rotten luck, some body had instigated Abbas about it.  I had a hard time convincing him that the article was not derogatory.  Abbas relented to my persuasion and our relations were back on even keel.

Years later, post retirement, settling down in my home town, I ran into Abbas. He had changed his arena. His new role was that of a time keeper and holler of bus timings in the Town bus stand. He had become sturdier with a smatter of white here and there on his face. Dressed (always) in immaculate white ‘mundu’ and shirt with a scarf on his neck.  A golden yellow watch adorned his full sleeved shirt.  He has only a slight limp, far from the crawling boy that he was.  I too had changed a lot with not a shred of black on my mop.  I wondered if he would recognize me; but as soon as he saw me he called me out. He not only recognized me but remembered my name and the anecdotes of the past. He had, apparently, kept track of my life’s journey.

I now meet him often.  Abbas is the father of four grown up children and a grandfather too. He commands some respect from the otherwise difficult bus employees and has at last lived up to his name.  How time flies and what changes it brings on!