Rachana Dubey (BOMBY TIMES; October 8, 2019)

Call it Vijaya Dashami, Bijoya, or Dussehra — the festival is celebrated with fervour in most parts of India. The day underlines the victory of good over evil — a theme that has been translated on celluloid often by Bollywood filmmakers.

For decades, filmmakers have used Durga Pujo, Navratri and Dussehra celebrations as motifs or as backdrops for key events in their narratives. Visuals from the festive season have often lent themselves for the creation of dance numbers, memorable scenes and sequences, replete with symbolism.

Sujoy Ghosh’s Kahaani (2012) features one of the most well-recalled, and what is considered to be one of the best amalgamations of Durga Puja into a story. The film unfolds in Kolkata, which is gearing up for the pujo, and culminates on dashami (last day of Durga puja), drawing parallels between the festival’s message — the victory of good over evil — and the story, as Bidya Bagchi (Vidya Balan) defeats her husband’s murderer.

Bring this up and Sujoy says, “The thought behind the sequence was to highlight the strength and will of a mother. I’m a huge fan of Maa Durga, because in this form of hers, she’s always with her children. For Bengalis around the world, she’s a mother — we equate her to a human being. In Kahaani, I wanted to depict that Maa arrives once a year, she listens to you and solves your problems. We threaded in a lot of stuff. The build up-to the story is pretty much like the build-up to Bijoya. The climax blended beautifully with the culmination of the pujos.”

Pradeep Sarkar’s Parineeta (2005), adapted from the eponymous Bengali novel by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, uses Durga Puja as a backdrop on two crucial occasions — once to show the love and care Lolita (Vidya Balan) has for Shekhar (Saif Ali Khan) and then to show Shekhar’s jealousy towards Lolita’s friendship with Girish (Sanjay Dutt). The film also uses the traditional dhunuchi dance as a tool for the narrative.

The filmmaker shares, “Durga Puja has often been used as a backdrop in films or as a part of the story. It only makes sense to include the festivities when there is some meaning to it. During pujo, you meet people and interact with them, and relationships also blossom. That is how we also used it in the film.”

Shoojit Sircar’s Vicky Donor (2012) briefly takes the audience pandal-hopping during Durga Puja in Delhi, to show the growing proximity between Vicky (Ayushmann Khurrana) and Ashima (Yami Gautam). The Ranveer Singh and Arjun Kapoor-starrer, Gunday (2014), also saw the two actors sway to beats of dhols against the backdrop of Durga puja in the song Jashn-e-Ishqa.


FILMMAKERS SPIN THE NARRATIVE AROUND THE FESTIVAL
Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s screen adaptation of Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Devdas (2002) shows Paro (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan) and Chandramukhi (Madhuri Dixit-Nene) meeting and even dancing together. Paro is seen at Chandramukhi’s kotha, asking for mitti of her aangan to make an idol of Maa Durga for her baadi. This marks the beginning of a crucial turn in the story when Paro is forbidden from stepping out of her house.

The story of Akshay Kumar’s Bhool Bhulaiyaa (2007) peaks in the thick of Navratri in a village in North India. The film’s climax, which sets off on ashtami, underlining the theme of good winning over evil, shows Vidya Balan as the revengeful dancer Monjulika, who is seeking protishodh (revenge) for her lover’s death. Raveena Tandon played a victim of marital violence in Kalpana Lajmi’s Daman (2001). Her character Durga vanquishes her patriarchal tormentor on dashami, freeing herself from bondage.

Vikramaditya Motwane’s Lootera (2013) opens in a traditional zamindar’s baadi celebrating Durga Puja. Sonakshi Sinha, as Paakhi, is seen enjoying a jatra with her friend in the house. Here, the celebration is more of a backdrop to show how festivals were seen as symbols of power and prestige in society those days. Elaborating on it, writer Bhavani Iyer, who wrote the screenplay, shares, “I don’t think one really sets out to put a festival into the story. A lot depends on the milieu or the household you set the story in. Maa embodies vengeance and righteous anger, and if that fits into a story, then, Durga Puja could become an ideal motif. We used pujo to define the Bengal of the 1960s when zamindari was breathing its last. The jatra that Sonakshi is watching in the film, depicts her family’s power and stronghold in a fast-changing society. It was metaphoric.”

In Kurukshetra (2000), Sanjay Dutt, who plays an honest cop, is seen wiping out evil politicians, while Dussehra firecrackers drown out the sound of gun-shots, symbolising the defeat of modern-day Raavans. Ram Leela, which is an integral part of Navratri celebrations, was also used effectively in Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s Delhi 6 (2009). While depicting the glorious celebrations at Delhi’s Ramleela Maidan, the narrative also delves into frictions within men from the neighbourhood.

Ashutosh Gowariker’s Swades (2004) also featured a Ramleela performance by debutant Gayatri Joshi. Here, it was a philosophical discourse — a conversation between Raavan and Sita that tries to highlight the difference between the evil and good. In a face-off sequence in Rajkumar Santoshi’s Lajja (2001), Madhuri Dixit-Nene, while playing Sita, refuses to go through an agnipariksha to prove her chastity.

More recently, Akshay Kumar, revealing his upcoming Laxmmi Bomb avatar, put out a picture with the backdrop of Maa Durga, embodying power and anger. Talking about the reducing number of instances of films using the festival as a motif, writer Bhavani Iyer says, “Kahaani was one of those films that integrated the festival so beautifully into the story. Even Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s ritualistic semblance of the celebrations in Devdas was a sight. Storytelling, in the last few years, has changed. The pujas are extravagant celebrations as opposed to the lives that we lead today, which are so clinical. We’ve also begun to write our stories in a more realistic manner. That doesn’t always allow us to merge festivals and rituals with the stories.”

IN THE BYGONE ERA...
Amitabh Bachchan and Rakhee’s 1981 Bengali-Hindi bilingual Anushandhan, made in Hindi as Barsaat Ki Ek Raat, used Durga as the metaphor of triumph. As a police officer, Amitabh is seen investigating an evil father-son duo. He is even seen playing drums during Durga pujo and beating Amjad Khan at a competition.

On the other hand, is Shakti Samanta’s Amar Prem (1972), featuring Rajesh Khanna, Vinod Mehra and Sharmila Tagore. The film had a brief, but an extremely powerful depiction of Durga pujo, which appears at the end of the film. While Nandu (Vinod) takes Pushpa (Sharmila), his foster mother, home, we see protimas of Maa Durga being taken to pandals, hinting at mahalaya. The symbolic reference to Maa’s homecoming was hard for anyone to miss.

Apart from Hindi films, Bengali movies have evidently underlined the spirit of Durga Pujas through their stories. Pather Panchali (1955), Devi (1960), Titas Ekti Nadir Naam (1973), Joi Baba Felunath (1979), Utsab (2000; right), Debipaksha (2004), Antarmahal (2005; below), Durga Sohay (2017), Bishorjan (2017) and Uma (2018) are some films where important parts of the narrative have been woven around the festival. Writer-director of the Bengali film, Mahalaya, Soumik Sen says, “The pujos have been used as motifs in Bengali cinema very often. Utsab, Joi Baba Felunath, Bishorjon (2017), Nayak (1966) and Bela Seshe (2015) are some examples of how differently and beautifully the festival has been merged into the story. In Hindi films, Kahaani and Devdas come to the mind when one thinks of weaving in the celebrations of Durga Pujo into the story. The difference lies in the way the festival has found its place across popular cultures from the West to the East.”

Filmmaker Ramkamal Mukherjee’s Season’s Greetings (2018), a homage to filmmaker Rituparno Ghosh, uses a motif of children visiting parents for the Durga Puja in his film — something Ghosh’s Utsab also employed. Ramkamal says, “The festival has different meanings and style of celebrations across the country. For Bengalis, it’s about Maa’s homecoming, symbolically depicted as a mother, daughter, wife or a sister in films. I’ve shown this in my film, too, to doff my hat to someone who crafted bold stories and broke all taboos — something that Maa also embodies.”