Of sense and non-sensibility

In this age of acute patchiness, few actors, primarily hailing from television, have excelled in playing true-blue jokers, writes director Birsa Dasgupta.
Yet, he strongly feels that given finer words of comedy and wisdom to be portrayed in subtler forms, these actors will make the best of it.
I am at most times confounded on how to spell ‘humor/humour’, the American way or the English.But what is more perplexing is its connotation. Does ‘humour’ (I’ll stick with my Colonizers) have an unambiguous meaning, or is it an ‘emotion’ which may have copious sense depending on the state of affairs and frame of mind?!
Belonging to the Bengali cultural fraternity, let me put in my observation on the ‘sense of humour’ that prevails in my field. Here ‘humour’ is mostly observed or perceived as ‘joke’. The greatest ever orator West of ‘Suez’ would have suggested, “A joke is a very serious thing”. But sadly Churchill is long gone, and ‘joke’ no longer is serious. And in our very own ‘once upon a time humour filled domain’, ‘Sukumar Ray’ is almost dead and buried, Poroshuram is extinct, no one has the skills of making a Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne again, and pathetically even Feluda of today has lost his wit. We live in a humour-desert, the only form of oasis being Nabarun Bhattacharya. Trust me; he is the Last of the Mohicans, bearing the torch of hashyorosh.
But why, where has all the juice got drained? There was a time not so long back when almost all Bengalis could crack a joke, or could take a joke cracked on him or her. For example, any Bengali, double decades back, would have grinned if I would have uttered: “I went to a restaurant that serves ‘breakfast at any time’. So I ordered French toast during the Renaissance.” You see, most of you didn’t even read through the quote twice to gauge it. Huh!
Come on Birsa, stop playing ‘merry-go-round’, put it straight, ‘humour’ is just about dead in modern-day Bengali cinema and television. Had to mention cinema and television purely because I do belong there, and I would not like to remark on where I don’t fit in, or else I could be put to the gallows. But, I guess, even belonging and joking about my own turf might put me in profound trouble, because, we, Bengalis now have forgotten to smirk when joked at. Egos fly high, and everyone or everything around is so serious and ‘corporate’, it’s not funny. In reality this ‘staid show’ is nothing but a façade to hide insecurities, in-capabilities, self-centredness, and above all parsimoniousness.
The Mahatma whom the nation salutes as father declared “If I had no sense of ‘humour’, I would long ago have committed suicide”. Pardon my obscure sense of ‘humour’; we are truly at the brink of committing suicide. To us, ‘humour’ has turned into an object expressed via ‘below the belt’. Don’t believe my words, check out Bengali television, the prime time shows, the soaring TRPs. Boy o boy, you’ll find ‘humour’, a cluster of it, smelly dirty rotten, as cheesy and cocky as it gets. And the same flavour is getting carried forward to our movies, simply because television today is a stronger driving force than cinema.
But as is the case, even amidst filthy muck, Lotus blossoms; in this age of acute patchiness, few actors primarily hailing from television have excelled in playing true-blue jokers, and I strongly feel that given finer words of comedy and wisdom to be portrayed in subtler forms, they will make the best of it. Actors like Rudranil Ghosh, Kanchan Mullick, Kharaj Mukherjee, Neel Mukherjee, Saswata Chatterjee, Tanima Sen and Sudipa Basu, to name a few. It is in no doubt that we can’t compare them with legends like Rabi Ghose, Tulsi Chakrabarty, Santosh Dutta, Jahar Roy, Bhanu Bandyopadhyay, Sabitri Chatterjee; yet this latest flock is admirable in their own right.
Amidst this fresh horde, I can’t help mention it is Rudranil who has taken ‘performance’ to a new high. Portraying a comic state doesn’t always mean playing a comedian, and as Mark Twain would have suggested, “the secret source of ‘humour’ itself is not joy, but sorrow. There is no ‘humour’ in heaven.” In a scene from my movie, 033, Rudra had to emote out angst and disgust at his best friends, and while the shot was on, he suddenly broke into a loud cry with eyes getting red and watery. Initially I thought it was over the top, so I canned a ‘take two’. Later, while editing, it is the ‘take one’ which worked better in depicting the mood. It added a comic tragedy element to the pre-interval scene.
Rudranil apart, Kharaj Mukherjee and Kanchan Mullick need serious mentioning. In my memory, Khawraj’s ability to charm with his comic timing dates back to 1991 when my dad Raja Dasgupta was making the fiction series for Doordarshan, Shnoda Mati Nona Jawl. Kharaj acted as the protagonist in one the stories, and he was so funny with his body language, dialogue delivery, and even the comical songs which he sang himself. Khawraj has been a live-wire package from then till now. Recently I watched him in Raj Chakrabarty’s Dui Prithibi; he was the undoubted show-stealer. But what disappoints me is from then till now, he has been playing analogous characters all the while. Same with Kanchan Mullick, who after few breathtakingly comical performances in television, became a regular in Bengali mainstream cinema, but got predictable with his roles. I believe they both, along with Rudranil deserve to bag lead roles in movies, only if we the ‘film-makers’ here make movies where we can think beyond stereotyped characters. For example, I would love to cast Kharaj as Ghonada if I ever get to make a movie on it, or may be a television series.
But you see it’s not just about how good an actor is with his or her comic act, it principally depends on the genre, the subject, the content and the words he or she utters. There is where I feel it is all going off beam. It is baffling why we don’t have writers who can give us those stand-up lines and amusing moments like in Sonar Kella when Santosh Dutta exclaimed after finding his prized dagger... ‘eta amar!’ Our literature is so rich in humour; we have plenty, abundant rosod to choose from... The range is simply unlimited. But look at mainstream Bengali cinema now, here ‘humour’ is found either in a ‘peeing scene’ or ‘an obese woman acting sexy’; and in so called art-house, ‘humour’ is in the theme itself, because it is so unwisely serious. It is a curious fact that people are never as trivial as when they take themselves seriously.
I know I will be loathed further after this, but since I have always believed that here I am on this planet to live one life, I shall breathe it in the best sense of humour. How I wish I could be a phyataru (Nabarun’s fiction character), flutter over the night city, sneak into homes of the grumpy-faced pretentiously righteous Bengalis, create ruckus in their boutique living rooms, wake them up by pinching them on their bums, and make them dance ‘full monty’ to my ‘humour’ tune in this December chill!
In the precious words of my favourite ‘humourist’ ever, Chaplin, without whose mention my jotted NONSENSE will have no significance whatsoever...
“In the end, everything is a gag!”
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