Depending directly on my frequency of watching movies, my mother’s reaction to it ranges from mild disapproval to grave concern and helpless anxiety over my imminent future. The relationship between the two variables, as it were, is almost as exact as a law of physics. It would have been a law of physics had it not been for a certain Mr. Ray, whose impact upon my life and that of my mother, I am now about to discuss.
That Satyajit Ray was an exception in the world of cinema was beside the point for me when I was first exposed to him. The point then was the way my mother introduced me to him and his work. All her anxiety, all her dire predictions of my dark future would simply vanish and be replaced by a sweet compliance, no, hearty encouragement whenever a film by Ray was around. For the longest time, I failed to understand this volte-face. I was told that my mother had taken me to a movie hall to watch ‘Goopy Bagha Phire Elo’ (Goopy and Bagha Return), by Ray. I was all of two years then, with a known predilection for punching and kicking, especially when held in one place for a long time. I leave you to imagine the effect the two hours inside that dark hall with those blinding images and terrible, booming sounds, had on me. I have been told that my mother during those two hours was not even carrying me. No, it was my poor grandmother who bore the literal brunt, while my mother sat in rapt attention to the onscreen goings-on. Later, my grandmother jokingly told me that she had missed almost half the movie on my account. I did not laugh. I was mildly stunned by my mother’s ardour for Ray’s movies. Like I said, whatever he was in the wide world of cinema, did not matter to me then; I simply knew he was an exception in our little world.
I have, very rarely, needed to be convinced to watch a movie. Most often, I have people trying to convince me of the exact opposite. One of the biggest ironies in my life, till date, would be my mother trying to make me watch ‘Shonar Kella’ (The Golden Fort), another of Ray’s movies, when I was about 14. I had already seen it once when I was really young. I could not recall much of it, except that I didn’t quite like it. Attributing my failure to be impressed by it to my being ‘too young’ the first time, she was sure I would love it the second time. Almost bullied by her, I sat down to watch it. This time, I followed the story better, indeed, followed it fully, but failed, once again, to see what was so remarkable about it, except that it had a little boy who said he could remember his past life, in an earlier incarnation. After the movie ended, I couldn’t help but ask her what she so loved in the movie. Even as I asked her that question, I remember being slightly scared of disappointing her. On the contrary, she was absolutely imperturbable when she said,” Why, its realism, of course!” I was stumped. I wasn’t expecting it. I did not know what it meant. And worse, when I asked my mother to explain it, she couldn’t, either. ‘Too young’, was all she said.
Why am I writing all this here? For the simple reason that these were the thoughts that coursed through my head as I watched Satyajit Ray’s solo Hindi offering ‘Shatranj Ke Khilari’, a few days back. It is based on a short story of the same name by Munshi Premchand. The name sounds very pulpy Bollywood, especially today. It is just as deceptive.
Ray’s only Hindi film marshalled some of the best talent in Hindi cinema, apart from his usual crew. It had Sanjeev Kumar, probably the finest mainstream Hindi actor of that time, Saeed Jaffrey (O Master, where art thou?) Shabana Azmi, Victor Banerjee, Farida Jalal, Farooque Shaikh, Tom Alter and Amjad ‘Gabbar’ Khan. It also had a pre-Gandhi Sir Richard Attenborough, although a very accomplished actor on the British stage and in film, even then.
The opening shot is perfectly symbolic of all that follows. It is a simple shot of an array of ornately designed chess pieces arranged mid-game on a chess board, just waiting to be played. The way Ray captures the pieces is what makes the shot so attractive: he shoots it not from any one side, but perpendicular to both the players, objectively capturing both sides. And he shoots it from exactly the level the pieces are kept, so that we see them straight before our eyes. He holds this shot for a few seconds. We expect it is simply a still image, (the background is pitch-black) when to our surprise, a refined, ring-laden hand daintily picks up one of the chess-pieces to make a move, crossing out a piece of his opponent. It is then that we realise what the shot truly signifies: it is the way the players have blocked out everything else from their consciousness. Immediately, an all-too-recognisable voice-over kicks in. Dripping with unctuous irony, it asks us to note the ponderous manner in which the players hold the pieces. It’s almost as if they are strategising about going to war. Except, it is not war. There will neither be rivers of blood, nor conquests of heads and hearts, nor will the fortunes of kingdoms and their subjects change. It is simply a game and the players simply want to ride the horses of wisdom.
It is this same, apparent parallel between chess and war, between love for the throne and actual governance that is explored very interestingly in the film. It consists of two different stories, not really connected to each other, except through similarity and the fact that both are set in the royalty of Avadh, just before the 1857 uprising.
The first story, as is introduced to us, is about Mirza Sajjad Ali (Sanjeev Kumar) and Mir Roshan Ali (Saeed Jaffrey), two wealthy landlords in Avadh, with an undying passion for the game. Mirza’s wife (Shabana Azmi) is filled with yearning for him. But he is so completely addicted to the game and especially playing against Mir, that he almost forgets her. In a fit of petulance, she sends for him, making an excuse of a splitting headache that forces Mirza to abandon his game halfway and rush to her. Her vexation is only matched by his own, at being forced to leave a game he is close to winning. He acidly observes, that when he spends entire nights at ‘mujras’, she doesn’t make as much as a whimper, but when he’s just playing a game in his own house, she has a damn headache. So worried is he, that before leaving the game, he warns Mir not to change the positions of the pieces in his absence.
His meeting with his wife, brief as it is, is perennially clouded over by the itching desire to return to the game as well as paranoia over Mir’s probable chicanery. After a few forced, perfunctory words of sweetness, he returns to the game with relief, leaving her more frustrated than ever. Meanwhile, Mir’s foxy impulses get the better of him and seeing no one around, he makes a few of his own changes to the game.
Mir, as we later, see has even bigger problems in his personal life than Mirza. He spends entire days playing chess with Mirza at the latter’s house. Unbeknownst to him, his wife (Farida Jalal), facing neglect and boredom has started having affairs with several men around town, the point of rendezvous being Mir’s own house. But Mir is blissfully oblivious of such details, lost as he is in the world of pawns and kings. Mirza later hears these rumours about Mir’s wife through the common people and is shocked, but in a salacious way and, while forbidding him to stop spreading such malicious rumours, secretly takes pleasure at Mir’s misfortune and at his own relatively better luck.
One day Mir enters Mirza’s house only to find him furiously berating the servants for having lost the chess pieces. Forced to think of alternatives, they eventually zero in on an old advocate’s house that has an ancient, ornate chess board with marble pieces. Upon reaching his house with the intention of borrowing it for a day, they find that he is unwell and partly unconscious. Nevertheless, they are asked to wait and are seated in the hall by the servants at the very table bearing the precious chessboard. Unable to resist themselves, they surreptitiously start playing, keeping a sharp eye for any lurking servants. To their absolute chagrin, a servant arrives, bearing a tray with glasses of milk, and moves the chessboard to another table to make place for the tray. It is a wickedly comic scene, and Ray has a ball showing us his characters in a series of similar misfortunes ending in a darkly comic twist.
At the end of that episode it is clear that the advocate’s house is not at all suitable for their game. By that time, Mirza hits upon the idea of using different vegetables in place of chess pieces and equipped with the brainwave returns triumphantly to his own home. But by another humorous quirk of fate (or human nature), they are forced to think of another place to play. Mirza finally asks Mir whether his house would be fine. Mir readily agrees.
This arrangement disrupts his wife’s routine of meeting her paramour while Mir is away. She is trapped with no way of letting her paramour know that her husband is at home, that too with a guest. Eventually, he does arrive and enters, as usual, through the back door straight into Mir’s bedroom. His reaction, when informed of Mir and Mirza’s presence, is one of unruffled calm. They are playing chess, he observes, and with an open chessmat and pieces before them, they are blind to everything else. Mir’s wife agrees without a second thought.
Indeed, so sedated is Mir by chess, that when he catches his wife with the other man (Farooque Shaikh) in his own bedroom, he is mildly nonplussed. He naively asks the man (who happens to be a distant nephew, no less!) what he is doing there, only to be told a cock-and-bull story about hiding from the Nawab’s army that is forcefully recruiting soldiers to fight against the English army being assembled at Kanpur. He buys it fully and in a fit of nervous worry runs to Mirza and declares his house to be unsafe and that they should move to yet another location to play chess. Mirza is befuddled at first, but when Mir tells him of his nephew’s predicament, he sees through the whole ruse and starts laughing uncontrollably at his hapless friend. Mir, none the wiser, hatches a plan to travel outside the city to a ruined mosque where they can play for the entire day without any disturbance. They would take mattresses, chess pieces and mat, tobacco and paan with them. Mirza, darkly adds that they would have to take some sort of weapons too, for those who roam around unarmed in Nawab Wajid Ali Shah’s kingdom do not return home.
Meanwhile, there are ominous signs of the East India Company preparing to take over the state of Avadh. The uneasy relationship between the Company and the princely states is depicted by an animation sequence, whose mere presence is unbelievable for its time, especially in Hindi cinema. It is intentionally jerky and very cartoonish, to underline the absurd humour in the dealings between the states and the Company. The states enamoured by the presence of foreigners and foreign money were eager to please them by trading with them. Ultimately, the Company grew so powerful as to go to war with them, defeat them and gobble them up like so many cherries. The rulers of the states were literally caught napping and had no choice but to hand over their territories in return for their honour. Indeed, all these rulers wanted was the honour, glory and splendour of their forefathers, even if their lands were taken away from them. The English merely had to approach the Indian rulers with a minor quibble for them to be readily placated by the Indian rulers with a piece of their own kingdoms.
The film explores this dynamic in utmost detail, through the story of Nawab Wajid Ali Shah (Amjad Khan), the ruler of Avadh. Lord Dalhousie, the then-Viceroy has his sights on Avadh, one of the few cherries waiting to be gobbled. The Nawab’s reputation as an effete sensualist and incompetent ruler precedes him in the British circles. General Outram (Richard Attenborough) is handed the task of driving out Wajid and annexing Avadh. He is flabbergasted at first at what is obviously a thankless job, but even more so at the nature of the King. The scene in which he slowly acquaints himself with the King’s seemingly eccentric ways (400 concubines, dancing with bells on his feet, composing operas) with the help of a British officer Weston (Tom Alter) defines the clash of the cultures and their politics of that age. It is elevated to comic perfection by Attenborough’s bug-eyed, dumbfounded and ultimately enraged demeanour and Tom Alter’s progressively uncomfortable reaction to it. Just watch Tom Alter reciting one of the Nawab’s shayaris, at Outram’s behest, in chaste Urdu and then translating it in English to Outram’s bewilderment. All Outram can do is attribute the shayari with the sole ‘virtue of brevity’.
But even Outram for all his dislike for the King has his misgivings. He is aware of the fact the British are not completely justified in trying to oust the Nawab. The reason being the annulment of an age-old treaty that promised him protection from annexation that his forefathers had signed with the British. The Nawab has been conveniently forgotten to be informed about this annulment by the British. What the British are doing is essentially taking advantage of his ignorance and deceitfully stripping him of his title and his own kingdom and appropriating the entire revenue of Avadh. The Viceroy has no qualms about using such subterfuge. But Outram is hard pressed to execute his orders in the face of such monstrous deception. Nevertheless, he must go ahead with his bounden duty, even in the face of a plaintive complaint by the Nawab’s Vazir (Victor Banerjee), a tearful beseechment by the Queen mother and a pale shadow of a resistance by the Nawab himself.
It is through the Nawab’s reaction to this news that Ray explores the concepts of governance, loyalty, the contentment of subjects, apathy, tradition, heritage and, most importantly, power and greed. The Nawab, as if waking up from a deep slumber, notices, for the first time, that maybe, what he thought as acceptance by his subjects was merely a passive apathy and occasional flattery. The Nawab was widely believed to be a great patron of the arts, especially the dance form ‘kathak’, and all forms of music and poetry. As he is accused by the Viceroy, of incompetence and generally engendering discontent among his subjects, and is in danger of losing not only his kingdom, but also his title, all he can do is reproach his entourage of yes-men who stood by, filling their own coffers and let such disorder creep in. After he has blown out all his anger, he lapses wistfully into memories of the halcyon days of light, music, sublime poetry and beautiful women. He eventually accepts he has been a poor ruler, but then defiantly questions his subjects as to why they never said a word of protest or complaint against him. And then he answers himself by saying that his subjects love him despite everything, love him for his love of song and dance. How many of Queen Victoria’s subjects celebrate by singing her songs, he asks pointedly.
Amjad Khan’s nine minute long monologue throws up very intriguing questions about the nature of feudal rule. For instance, does feudal rule allow for effective dialogue between the ruler and the ruled? What is the importance of such dialogue vis-a-vis the welfare of the state? Was the anti-British sentiment a product of the Indian patriotism or simply the fear of being subjected to rulers who were different from those who had ruled over them for thousands of years? Or did the masses really care? Ray gives us a definite answer to the last question in the form of the two eponymous ‘Shatranj ke Khilari’, the chess players, who for all their sharp intelligence, view the annexation of their own kingdom with brief, bemused detachment. Were they representative of the sentiments of the people at large? Perhaps, at the end, when Mir wryly quips ‘those who cannot control their own wives, how can they face the English army?’, we understand his sentiments and the reasons the British could and did overthrow the Nawab in a completely bloodless coup. For a kingdom of people who spent their time by deriving vicarious pleasure from cock-fights, while their Nawab disported with 'nautch' girls, this was, perhaps inevitable.
These stories may not possess the instant gratification of say a historical romance or an epic, but they portray India in a ‘period of historical change’, as Martin Scorsese said in his introduction to this film, at a Ray retrospective in Washington, D.C. The film is remarkable because it shows us people in the actual act of experiencing a change, letting go of what they have held onto for centuries in favour of something completely new. In that sense, it is a rarity. Another aspect of it that makes it a rare gem, is the amount of ironic, subversively satirical wit it contains. Or simply, the sheer amount of meaning and thought it manages to accomodate within its 129 minutes.
I’m no authority on that period, but Bansi Chandragupta’s art direction is simply astounding. For instance, take a look at the chess pieces themselves, or the royal throne of the Nawab, or the way the high lamps of the royal households are lit, or the way a bunch of paans are suspended by golden chains.
The Urdu in the film is honey for the ears. Not for once was I flustered upon hearing words I didn’t understand (and there were many). It is simply a joy to listen to these words being enunciated impeccably, with all their minute inflections, by such master actors. The dialogues were written by Satyajit Ray, Shama Zaidi and Javed Siddiqui. I suspect Ray to have written the English dialogues which form a substantial part of the film’s screenplay. While I am a diehard fan of his Bengali writing, I had never really experienced his writing in English. It is just as virtuoso. To write well in English is one thing, but to write in such a way as to evoke the days of the English East India Company, especially in a film, at the service of a script based on actual events is a task worthy of a master. And they are delivered with metronomic precision by Attenborough in his polished accent (with a touch of Northern England).
To say anything about the performances in this film, or indeed any Ray film, is a disservice to them. I am not qualified enough to comment on them. To say that they fully embody the truth of the moment will suffice.
What do I feel after watching this film especially with regard to my mother’s remarks about realism? At least I understand her better now, if not completely. Perhaps I’m still too young. But one thing is for sure, I cannot get ‘Shatranj ke Khilari’ out of my head, the way I could with ‘Shonar Kella’, the first time I saw it. I feel better for that.
And, yeah, I recently discovered that ‘Goopy Bagha Phire Elo’ was not directed by Satyajit Ray. It was directed by his son Sandip Ray. When I asked my mother if she knew this, she nonchalantly said yes.
