Filmmaker's Diary: A Conversation With A Character

(Kolkata-based Debarati Gupta has been working on the script for her feature film Hashnouhana—The Strange Case of a Divorce for about six years. Her film’s protagonist, an artisan living in rural Bengal, is always on her mind.)

Why must I care about your shrinking attention span?

“I’m your audience. If you don’t care about my preferences, you’ll lose me.”

Perhaps not. You are not my audience.

“But your script is about me!”

You may be my subject, not necessarily my audience.

“A story about me, but not for me? We are the people. If your film fails to appeal to us, you will become irrelevant.”

No. I think relevance itself is deeply misunderstood… and overrated, too.

I woke up and walked out of my dream. Only after leaving the room did I realise that I had never been asleep. Icould feel her following me. Hashnouhana—the 21-year-old character I encountered a decade ago and perhaps have been imagining for an entire century. Hashnouhana’s Murshidabadi dialect used to amuse me. But these days, I have grown an unhealthy, overwhelming attachment to my own North- Kolkata colloquialism—one that has long been suppressed beneath standardised Bangla.

Hashnouhana laughs at me. “Our Murshidabad was once the capital of the entire Bengal province. Had we not been colonised by the British, your beloved city would never have become the centre. Imagine what it feels like to become irrelevant because of a mere 300-year-old colonial project.”

Your desperation to remain relevant is constantly feeding social media’s appetite, and that hugely below-mediocre space thrives on your desperation.

“Says who? A desperate filmmaker from Kolkata who knows nothing about our rural lives? Just to gain recognition, you manipulate my existence. But when social media allows my presence to reach people directly, your inherited cultural capital trembles. You are basically afraid of becoming irrelevant.”

I abhor her loud outbursts. The shrillness feels deeply akin to populist culture.

Your narratives of suffering—wrapped in all the identities you wear on your sleeve: religion, caste, gender, sexuality, the marginal village dwelling neglected by the metropolis—all sell so well in their marketplace. That’s why you are so anxious about ‘connecting’ with people, about reshaping yourself according to their impatience, their ignorance, their shrinking attention spans…

“You and your kind deny my peripheral existence, yet, never hesitate to use me as your subject, because my kind of marginality—wrapped in your elitist artistic expression—sells remarkably well in the global marketplace.”

Can’t deny that. But at least we are trying to take you to the world.

“Because we are exotic to you. But the moment I want to tell my own stories in my own way, it becomes populist to you and therefore cheap.”

Can’t you be quiet for a moment and let me think? You are just a guest here; don’t behave like the owner.

“I haven’t come here to live, my dear Kolkata. You brought me here to make your script authentic.”

I know. In social realism, authenticity matters. Can’t help it.

“But your realism is so far removed from the real.”

That’s precisely why it’s called art! I’m trying to reach a greater reality beyond your immediate real, through my realism. That’s why it’s not meant for you—the people.”

This time, she did not retort.

I stepped out on to the balcony. The sun was rising over our Calcuttascape. The morning felt strangely reassuring, as if reminding me that I still possess the privilege of staying awake for the sake of creativity. Perhaps there is an aesthetic to this creative insomnia. By embracing the unbearable burden of social realism in my art, I’ve have also let myself drift away from the banal rhythms of ordinary life. Maybe I had been waiting for this affirmation all along—something that could silence the disturbance of introspection.

“Seeking relevance in insomnia...” A faint voice seeped through from somewhere. But it didn’t bother me. At that moment, Hashnouhana felt like a character from a century ago and a thousand pages away. Her unheard voice and unnoticed face felt so real that they seemed strangely out of place within the absurdity of the present moment.

Debarati Gupta is a filmmaker, writer and guest lecturer at the University of Calcutta

(This story appeared in Outlook magazine’s August 31 issue, 'Whose Idea of India?', in which India’s noted public intellectuals, policymakers, cultural practitioners, political leaders, scholars and economists write in detail about the idea of India they believe can best secure the nation’s future as we celebrate 80 years of independence.)