On Bimal Roy’s Sujata (and the invisible line in “Bachpan ke Din”)

It sometimes happens that you think you know a beloved old movie song really well – based on memories of listening to it on the radio or seeing it once or twice on Chitrahaar – and then you watch the full film and are struck anew by the quality of the picturisation and by how well the scene works within a larger context. The lilting “Bachpan ke Din” in Bimal Roy’s 1959 film Sujata had this effect on me. It is a happy number sung by two sisters, Rama (Shashikala) and Sujata (Nutan), who have a close relationship throughout the film; as such, it’s easily thought of as just a carefree ode to their shared childhood. But to watch the song is to be struck by how unusual its use of visual space is for a Hindi-film musical sequence of this type.



Rama, who initiates the song by playing it on a piano, and Sujata – who hums along – are in the same house, and there are parallels in their movements and actions (Rama spreads her dupatta playfully across her face, and a second later Sujata matches the gesture with the garments she is removing from a clothesline). But though their voices merge, and though they are clearly attuned to each other’s thoughts, they never share the frame – understandably, for Rama is indoors throughout while Sujata is on the terrace above the room. And this tells us some things about these characters and the film itself: it is shorthand for the fact that there is an invisible line separating the sisters’ lives and that Sujata isn’t, strictly speaking, part of the family.

A low-caste “untouchable” by birth, she has been raised by Rama’s parents, an engineer named Upen babu and his wife Charu, and their undoubted affection for her has been tempered over the years by their consciousness of social mores and restraints, so that Sujata has grown up yearning to hear them call her “hamaari beti” rather than the more formal and defensive “hamaari beti jaisi”. Thus, in the song that introduces the grown-up versions of the sisters, we see Rama, the real daughter, firmly ensconced inside the house, lively and at ease with her setting, while Sujata – whose demeanour is more reticent – is in an open space, underlining her outsider status.

The scene also provides one of our first views of something that runs through the film: the association of Sujata with the natural world, or the outdoors. Much of her time is spent in the garden and the greenhouse, tending to plants, and the film has many self-consciously beautiful compositions such as the one of dew dripping from a leaf as Sujata weeps. We are constantly reminded that she is a child of nature, her true origins unknown, rather than a legitimate member of the household (in the “Bachpan ke Din” sequence she literally has no roof over her head, but for the sky). The stylist in Bimal Roy shows fine fettle in a scene where a distraught Sujata is out in the rain, intense close-ups of her face and her hand clenching her shoulder intercut with shots of the Gandhi statue behind her, a flickering street-lamp and flowing rain-water. (This sequence plays like a pre-echo of the famously showy scene in Roy’s Bandini where the stricken face of the protagonist – also played by Nutan – is rapidly cut with shots of a bottle marked “Poison” and sparks from the tools of nearby welders.) Even a remarkable early animation sequence has the little Sujata dreaming of visiting a “sapnon ka sundar desh” where the trees have golden leaves – a place as mythical and improbable as a caste-free world.

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Rama and Sujata might fondly be recalling their bachpan in that song, but at this point the viewer is unlikely to need a memory-jogging: the film's early sequences, which show the girls’ childhood and Sujata’s gradual assimilation into Upen babu’s family, are lengthy, unhurried and very absorbing. Tarun Bose and Sulochana get a lot of screen time as the conflicted engineer and his wife, Lalita Pawar is superb as a disapproving aunt (at one point she flings the baby Sujata away and a nearby maid catches the child just in time. I was hugely impressed that this scene could be pulled off in the pre-computer effects era: Lalita mausi one, Gollum zero), and a full 40 minutes pass before Nutan - the "star" - makes her screen appearance. 

In these early scenes we see the pariah girl gaining acceptance in increments; well-meaning people trying to work out what is right through conscience and common sense, rather than through what their elders and holy texts tell them; and a fast-modernising India, across which the engineer and his family travel over the years, living in Dehradun, Bilaspur, Barrackpore and other places as Upen is transferred and promoted. But we also see how the ancient spectre of caste continues to dog their life even in this forward-looking milieu, and how social attitudes and prejudices form a mould, trapping even those who initially resist them. Watch how Upen is genuinely broad-minded about the little Sujata as he becomes fond of her – even sharing his spoon of halwa with this “untouchable” – but grows more circumspect over the years as he assumes positions of greater responsibility and has to keep in mind what other people will think about his family, and about the marital prospects of his blood-daughter. Later, watch how even Adhir (Sunil Dutt) – who epitomises the progressive, educated young man – hides his face from his grandmother when he has to express a view that he knows will run counter to her beliefs.

The prolonged establishing sequences work very well, first because Roy is a fine director of children and a fine observer of childhood (watch the opening 20 minutes of Devdas for confirmation of this), but also because they set up a touching contrast between the guileless self-assurance of the child Sujata – who doesn’t yet know about the harsh ways of the world – and the introverted woman she grows up to become, an adult who has learnt something about maintaining a slight distance from her adoptive parents (even as she calls them “Bapu” and “Ammi”). Nutan’s delicately observed performance conveys Sujata’s push-pull relationship with her family very well – it makes credible the simultaneous existence, in one person, of two apparently contrary personalities: one that is happy-go-lucky (or wants to be happy-go-lucky), with an inborn zest for life; the other emotionally guarded. And this is what makes the climactic scene, Sujata’s breaking down when she realises she has been wholeheartedly accepted, so powerful and cathartic.

Despite the excellence of her performance, though, I think I like the first third of the film best. The rest of it is just a little too hurried in comparison, a little too eager to reach a definite resolution and to unite Sujata with the upper-caste Adhir. One might also point to a minor unevenness of tone and character development: given that Rama never treats Sujata as anything other than a real sister (and shows an empathy that belies her outwardly giddy nature), it is possible to ask what exactly the inner dynamics of this family have been like over the years. Having formed a genuine parental attachment and sense of responsibility, how can Upen and Charu still keep Sujata at arm’s length on specific occasions (such as Rama’s birthday celebration) and deny her education? The Charu who is deeply stricken at the thought of packing the little girl off to an orphanage in the early scenes, can she be the same woman who later savagely lashes out at her “beti-jaisi”, accusing her of stealing her beti’s prospective groom? But perhaps this is another reminder of how lives can be petrified by strictures, how even powerful human emotions can be weakened by the magnetic pull of tradition. And perhaps that's why this mostly wonderful film seems just a little pat and contrived in the way it rushes towards a happy ending.

P.S. Attack of the Killer Subtitles
The subtitle-writer on the DVD I have must have been in a tearing hurry; when Sujata plaintively asks her mother “Main sirf bojh hoon?” (“Am I only a burden?”), the words “I bug you?” appear on the screen, contrasting surreally with the anguished look on Nutan’s face. Must look at the rest of the subtitles more closely and take notes.