A WAR AT HOME

Aparna Sen is using film as a metaphor for politics

In the busy 18th-floor office of Shree Venkatesh Films, Aparna Sen radiates a kind of sunny aura in her bright yellow chiffon sari. Her film, Ghawre Bairey Aaj, will release on November 15, and promotions for it have begun in earnest. Her three lead actors—Jisshu Sengupta, Anirban Bhattacharya and newcomer Tuhina Das—mill about from room to room, while Sen, for her part, seems fairly relaxed. This isn't her first rodeo.

Though it might as well be.

Ghawre Bairey Aaj, says Sen, came to her in a dream: “It was a man, a first-time filmmaker, making a film about

Ghare Baire in a contemporary setting. I woke up and realised that he was probably me. Even though he was a man and it’s not my first film, it had to be me because every film is a first film,” she says. Based on Rabindranath Tagore’s novel,

Ghare Baire (Home and the World), the film, she says is very different from Satyajit Ray’s 1984 take on the novel. For one, she has set it in contemporary India with characters representing “different citizenry” (Bengali, Bihari, Brahmin, Dalit), while the original novel was set during the Swadeshi Movement in pre-Independence Bengal.

Sen, 74, might be contending with the work of Bengal’s ‘gods’—Tagore and Ray—but she isn’t nervous. “No, I do believe that these ‘gods’ are part of my inheritance, so I have every right to touch upon them. I have immense love and respect for them, so that gives me a greater right to critique, keep the parts I want and reject what I don’t,” she says. Curiosity does force the question—what were the bits she rejected? “Well, I made it a point to not watch Satyajit Ray’s

Ghare Baire again. I just watched it that one time many years ago. I didn’t want to be imitative or derivative. The novel, however, I reread many times, so I’d say my film is more a cinematic interpretation of a literary work.”

Speaking of the political polarisation that sets up much of her film’s drama, Sen starts talking about how even one’s own living room is ideologically divided these days: “I see it in my own friends’ circle. Even within a family, there is complete polarisation. This time for our Bijoya lunch, we actively decided not to talk politics. That is what the film is about, how politics slowly encroaches into the intimate space.”

Sen has dedicated Ghawre Bairey Aaj to Gauri Lankesh, because, she says, “she was a liberal who was silenced. No voice should be silenced. I was quite devastated.” In July this year, Sen and a group of celebrities had penned an open letter to the prime minister on the growing incidents of mob violence. Undaunted by the sedition charges that were levelled against her as result, the filmmaker says she isn’t afraid. “I have nothing to hide. Everybody knows I am a left-liberal. Having said that, I will also reiterate that I’m not affiliated to any political party. I have never accepted any gift or favours or even an inch of land from any party,” she says. She soon goes on to make light of the sedition charges: “Adoor (Gopalakrishnan) just laughed non-stop when he heard. Nothing in that letter was seditious.”

Sen does not come across as a woman who ever wonders if it is her place to say things. She ascribes her political conscientiousness to the time she spent as editor of magazines such as Sananda, Paroma and Prothoma. Sen recounts how she was once sent to interview a CPI(M) leader. “When the topic of religion came up, he said there was a temple on the crossroads that he would break if he could. And I asked him if that was why the Left had lost touch with the people,” she says.

As a journalist and a filmmaker, Sen says she has made it her business to understand the opposing argument. “The right-wing thought is that you cannot ignore the fact that India is a deeply religious country. Communists can believe what they like, but there is no getting away from the fact that the common people here are deeply religious. But one can use religion to unite instead of dividing,” she says. “Take the concept of Advaitavad in Hinduism. It means nobody is the other and everybody is part of the divine. Similarly, Islam too has these beautiful messages from Sufism.”

According to Aparna Sen, everyone is political, whether they think so or not. Her earlier films, she admits, were more feminist. But Arshinagar (2015) and Mr and Mrs Iyer (2002) and now Ghawre Bairay Aaj have all touched upon communalism. “I am interested in how politics outside affect relationships at home. I have always used real-life incidents and brought them into the film,” she says. ■

—Malini Banerjee

A still from Eeb Allay Ooo!