Like a Moth to the Flame

“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”  ― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

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May, 2013

Outskirts of Delhi

He heard noises coming from downstairs, of course they were quarrelling again. He looked out and the rain had stopped and that’s when he had left home for the theatre. He was walking down the street, his gazed fixed at the sharp stones on the path ahead of him when he heard an announcement from a nearby tea stall. It had rained, and the air was full of the excited whisperings of unknown adventures and the fragrance of the red mud he had come to love. He tried paying a little attention to people but couldn’t. As he walked on, tucked under his arm was his scrapbook, in which earlier in the evening he had scribbled a few paragraphs. "For much greater heights I am made, for my name is more than what I am now… my dream is costly, and all that I am left to do is to make it come true. This grand dream… No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.” 

"Jharoka" was an old theatre, not a multiplex, not a masterpiece of light and color but a rundown theatre with hardly 50 seats, functioning under its unwilling patron. It was said that the old man who was a great admirer of movies and had finally decided to close his beloved "jharoka" that had been eating away the last of his savings. When Ritwik went to him to ask for a job, he smiled sadly. He knew this young man from his past and so he welcomed him into his humble life.  

The dozen people snoring in the darkness were hardly there to appreciate the nuances of the story playing, but to escape from the unexpected downpour. Some were relieved lovers whose search for a spot had ended successfully and some were those who felt living the story on screen was better than their own realities. Only Ritwik was following the story of the boy who wanted to live and rule the city of glamour. Ritwik was not bothered with his father's jibes about his failure in studies or that his time was spent mostly in this dark coop and amongst his collection. He had put to good use, his wit and scarcely used charm to collect, in a typical magpie- like fashion, old film rolls from the old theatre owner and the last of his living friends. Doomed to die in grinding poverty, the dream sellers of the bygone era had fallen over themselves to pass on their last legacy to Ritwik. And that night he wrote, “I was within and without. Simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.” 

He read a lot, borrowing from friends and the wizened shopkeeper who obliged him. Mostly it was about the movies. His parents had migrated to this place. At 17, he constantly felt like he lived at the edge of a new found world. A world he could physically live in but for all real means and purposes was barred from entering or changing. His father was grateful to be able to hold a job that kept the family steady and as the years passed, he increasingly looked towards Ritwik for support. As more and more of his friends moved into the heart of the city, Ritwik moved into the heart of cinema. Whatever he earned from his job as a caretaker of the cinema was enough for him. He stopped going home and lived where he loved to be. Where others saw a wasted youth, he saw dreams playing out on the screen. When he could, he still wrote in his scrapbook, “At the enchanted metropolitan twilight I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others—poor young clerks who loitered in front of windows waiting until it was time for a solitary restaurant dinner—young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life.” 

Once he went along with his employer, the old man, to the shooting of a film. He had been paid hundred rupees, and in return been immortalized as a faceless extra in a background crowd scene of a movie with a hotshot actor somewhere in the foreground. He taught himself, only for the sheer joy of being familiar, the language of cinema, of all the work that goes behind the camera, into the colors and music and stories. Ritwik still had to work odd jobs to be able to feed his hunger for the movies, and he was delighted to be able to do so. He still remembers the first movie that he saw. What thrill did the laughter of the actress inspire! What fame an unknown boy from a village could aspire to! What greatness waited for those who showed the world a new way of living! “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” 

Some words by a writer couldn’t reach everyone, their message was carried by another voice to resonate with the thousands watching them on screen. Few weeks back he felt his identity and his existence to be real for the first time when in a film “Hugo”, he heard George Melies with his enigmatic smile say,

 “As I look out at all of you gathered here, I want to say that I don't see a room full of Parisians in top hats and diamonds and silk dresses. I don't see bankers and housewives and store clerks. No. I address you all tonight as you truly are: wizards, mermaids, travelers, adventurers, and magicians. You are the true dreamers.” 

He thought about the Lumiere brothers who apart from the cinemagician Melies, had also inspired another ambitious dreamer called Phalke much nearer home. 1913 was the year, a century ago from now, when the first Indian feature was released. The gods and heroes who existed on picture story books and in grandma’s stories had come alive on screen. Just as people had screamed when they saw Lumiere brother’s movie of a train coming into station, they bowed fervently in movie theatres. Phalke had staked everything that he owned and whatever his identity was worth, and borrowed money to fund his desire. He got equipment from London and cameramen from Calcutta to shoot. Such was the norm of society then, that no proper respectable women were allowed to or agreed to act in his films. He gathered funds by showing ingenious mini films that captured the interest of his patrons and kindled a desire not unlike his, of creating magical moving pictures. People started to call his studio a factory!  Ritwik had taken great pains to get to know where he could watch the movie on Phalke’s life. In the back row of a big and famous cultural centre which hosted film festivals, Ritwik sat huddled and watched with fascination the founder of his religion, in “Harischandrachi factory.” This was the year 2009:

“If you've ever wondered where your dreams come from when you go to sleep at night, just look around. This is where they are made. ” 

In 2013, Ritwik had a chance to go to Kerala. He paid respects to the last links to his estranged family and told them that he had found his place in the scheme of things. His mother sighed and gave her blessing. His father was no more. The relatives mocked his mother, and when he was packing they looked at him like he had been given the death sentence. He was more interested in finding out about J C Daniel, the father of Malayalam cinema, from a movie called ‘Celluloid’. Ritwik  hadn’t seen another man who had lost more in his life than him. All through his life, he risked his family’s well being and twice his fortunes, in the name of his obsession for cinema (there was no other word for it). When life and the powers that be laughed in his face and with a flick tossed his and his crew’s work away, he couldn’t muster any more courage. The first malayali actress who was ever captured on Daniel’s film, fled for her life when the caste-proud elite audience threw sticks and stones at her for daring to portray a high caste character on screen. She was never heard of again. This was the cruel face of cinema. But when one man sacrificed, others invested and reaped the yield too. Music in cinema moved to a whole new level with socio political ideologies and rebellion disseminated through lyrics. The tumultuous response that the trio of Devarajan, Vayalar and Yesudas received was unparalleled. Movies had then become musical masterpieces on the canvas of social drama. Daniel’s name faded away and was only recognized way after he died, abandoned by all his family and friends except his wife. Celluloid touched Ritwik in a different way; somehow, he realized that dreams bore a heavy price that sometimes had to be paid with life.

“Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.” 

In a hundred years much has changed, thought Ritwik, but not the thirst for one’s name being immortalized, not the desire to breathe life into fantastic and fanatic characters. The price that one paid was still heavy, it was a leap to the unknown with honor at stake, but there was still some respect left. Not the alluring worship by the masses but more. He saw more. He saw the need in people to watch and to feel and live real stories. And when he examined the fabric of the world in which he was allowed to exist but barred to live, he could see others weaving the yarn of their lives just like him. He had but to be open, he had but to look for his window of opportunity. He just had to take the risk all those who came before him had taken. It was a demand from the future. Was it worth his life? A million times over. And whenever he saw someone like him on the streets he smiled.

“He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced--or seemed to face--the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.”  

***

the italicized quotes are from the Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzegerald and the bold face quotes are from "Hugo", though in this story Ritwik is their creator.

photo credits: http://browse.deviantart.com/art/cinema-lover-103952979