[From my Business Standard column, and a sort of extension of this post about animals in films]
“Just think – in India, you would be worshipped,” says William Gull, the royal doctor, to Joseph Merrick, a patient so severely deformed that he is mockingly known as the Elephant Man. The scene, depicting a fictional meeting between two real-life people in London in the late 1880s, is from one of my favourite books, the graphic novel From Hell. Gull is consoling the unhappy social outcast Merrick with a reference to Ganesha the elephant-headed God, but there is also a dark subtext, in the linking of a benevolent, twinkling, pleasingly rotund deity – the remover of obstacles – with a “mission” that leads to a long trail of blood in the streets of the East End. When Gull seeks the Elephant Man’s blessings later in the story, he is embarking on a very macabre act, one that most Ganesha-worshippers would decidedly not approve of!
Which
may be a reminder that elephants can mean very different things to different
people. (So can Gods, of course, and elephant-Gods.) A famous manifestation of
an elephant as a blank slate is in the parable about a group of blind men, each
with a very different idea of what the animal must look like. There is also
Jose Saramago’s novel The Elephant’s Journey, in which an
Indian elephant makes a long, dangerous journey from Portugal to Austria in the
16th century, becoming a symbol of what is possible, and inviting a range of
perspectives from various observers.
A
few days ago I attended a talk by the writer and academic Rachel Dwyer, about
elephants in Indian cinema. Using stills and clips, Dwyer touched not just on
relatively objective elephant depictions in such films as the 1937
Elephant Boy (originally shot as a documentary, later
re-edited into a narrative-driven feature) but also on such filmi archetypes as
the “moral elephant” (the one pursing bad guy Pran through the jungles in the
1955 film Munimji) and the “secular elephant” – as in the
ending of Haathi Mere Saathi, where the dead body of the
elephant Ramu is taken on a sort of multi-religion pilgrimage, past a mandir, a
masjid and a church.
Many
of us tend to patronise films like Haathi Mere Saathi these
days. We laugh, or cringe, at some of the cheesier animal depictions from old
Hindi cinema, such as the revenge-seeking dog Moti in Teri Meherbaniyan
(sample of such mockery in this old piece), the resourceful,
infant-rescuing hawk in Dharam Veer (likewise), the snake
who thinks of a human woman as its maa in Doodh ka
Karz, and the pigeons who have flashbacks in Maine Pyaar
Kiya. And there is sometimes a reasonable cause for cringing: these
are simplistic forms of anthropomorphising, of imputing human emotions and
deeds directly to animals.
But
as Dwyer pointed out, there is also something immediate and moving about scenes
like the one where a number of animals, including tigers, emerge from their
cages to mourn Ramu’s death and there is a remarkable series of close-ups of
animal and human faces. In this light, perhaps the most interesting part of the
post-talk discussion was the idea that the use of animals in Indian art was
rooted in a closeness to the pastoral way of life, where (as one attendee put
it) “touching the skin of an animal” was a natural, desirable sensory
experience, and where observing animals became a way for humans to understand
or articulate their own feelings and relationships.
The
only real way for humans to emotionally relate to an animal is by
anthropomorphising, and we see this in our traditional storytelling forms that
stress the interconnectedness of life, such as the Jataka Tales, about the Buddha’s
animal forms, or the myths about Vishnu’s avatars, which blur the lines between
God, human and animal. There may have been a natural transition from these
forms of oral and written storytelling to the heightened emotions of Sanskrit
and Parsi theatre, and thence to the distinct forms of expression in commercial
cinema.
And in this context, it is notable how a film like Haathi Mere Saathi – which, on the face of it, is just lightweight entertainment for children – stresses the importance of animals in the ideal of a “Pyaar ki Duniya” (the name given to the private zoo established by the Rajesh Khanna character) and even shows a distrust of sterile modernity, as represented by the big, flashy car that breaks down and has to be pushed by elephants in the film’s title song. As Dwyer pointed out, Ramu displays many of the emotions from the Indian tradition of navrasa, including shringaar (aesthetic appeal), karuna (compassion) and haasya (laughter). Elephants can be even bigger and more capacious than they first appear.
[Also see: this post about the birth of Ganesha and the bathroom battle; this one about elephant-headed transcribers in Ekta Kapoor's Mahabharata, and this one about Temple Grandin's book Animals in Translation. And some elephant photos from a Sri Lanka trip]
And in this context, it is notable how a film like Haathi Mere Saathi – which, on the face of it, is just lightweight entertainment for children – stresses the importance of animals in the ideal of a “Pyaar ki Duniya” (the name given to the private zoo established by the Rajesh Khanna character) and even shows a distrust of sterile modernity, as represented by the big, flashy car that breaks down and has to be pushed by elephants in the film’s title song. As Dwyer pointed out, Ramu displays many of the emotions from the Indian tradition of navrasa, including shringaar (aesthetic appeal), karuna (compassion) and haasya (laughter). Elephants can be even bigger and more capacious than they first appear.
[Also see: this post about the birth of Ganesha and the bathroom battle; this one about elephant-headed transcribers in Ekta Kapoor's Mahabharata, and this one about Temple Grandin's book Animals in Translation. And some elephant photos from a Sri Lanka trip]
That's two Doodh ka Karz references in two posts! :D
ReplyDeleteAnd two Saramago references in the last five posts. But cannibalising myself is what I do best these days!
ReplyDeletePigeons having flashbacks in Maine Pyar Kiya, lol, that film is full of such funny things...including different background scores/songs for different characters. For Salman Khan, it was, "I love you", for the actress it was, "Dil Deewana", for Mohnish Behl it was, "Hey, hey hey" and for Alok Nath it was, "Twinkle Twinkle little star" :)
ReplyDelete