================================================================== Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 Vol. 20:11 November 2020 ================================================================ Charulata as an Adaptation of ‘Nastanirh’: Satyajit Ray’s Craftsmanship in the Recreation of Tagore’s Work on Celluloid Bithi Mojumder, Rubaiyan Asif, and Fatema Akter Lecturers, Department of English Noakhali Science and Technology University, Bangladesh [email protected] ===================================================================== Abstract Tagore’s short story ‘Nastanirh’ (‘The Broken Nest’) shares with us the intricately etched characters created by the master himself and brought onto the small screen by the visionary director Satyajit Ray in his film Charulata. Set in a politically unstable period, Tagore’s ‘Nastanirh’ is constantly shifting in the social world of the early twentieth century in undivided Bengal. The audience in our times too will find this world engaging as well as challenging, feeling attached to their emotions, issues, drama and anxieties. Ray retains Tagore’s narrative style even in the visual medium and enhances the words of his pages by casting talent that truly captures the essence of the social and cultural contexts of his work. This study is an analysis on how Ray makes the film powerful, credible and appealing on celluloid in transition with songs, music, cultural references and its newfound political and social expressions, a little more than the actual described world within Tagore’s narrative. This paper aims at exploring how Tagore’s words in ‘Nastanirh’ and Ray’s vision in Charulata have amalgamated into a show that transports us back in time to a world as complicated as this one but with far more appeal and beauty. Keywords: Satyajit Ray, Charulata, Tagore, Nastanirh, Literature, Film, Adaptation, Recreation, Celluloid. Literature functions as an inspiration for a film. A film adapted from literature would contain something of the chemistry of the mind of the filmmaker. There can be several reasons for such adaptations ranging from the director’s love for the story, reinterpreting the word text into a film text and the director’s belief that a period in history can be beautifully recreated in the visual medium. Since Tagore’s works are universal — in time, space, emotions, and human relationships, they offer filmmakers a challenge to make the film as powerful, credible, and appealing on celluloid as it is in printed text. Satyajit Ray’s (1921-92) Charulata (1964) an adaptation of Rabindranath Tagore’s (1861-1941) short story ‘Nastanirh’ (‘The Broken Nest’, 1901) is known for its historical significance and its exquisite cinematic crafting. The film stands on its own merits ==================================================================== Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 20:11 November 2020 Bithi Mojumder, Rubaiyan Asif, and Fatema Akter Charulata as an Adaptation of ‘Nastanirh’: Satyajit Ray’s Craftsmanship in the Recreation of Tagore’s Work on Celluloid 23 with Ray able to transform his abiding interest in the culture and ethos of nineteenth-century Bengal as well as his veneration for Rabindranath Tagore's fiction that captures it so well into an exemplary work. The film explores Tagore’s vision of rural-urban division, colonialism, women’s emancipation, and nationalism. In order to transpose Tagore’s works across time and media, Ray took a poetic liberty in his method of adaptation. He has brought change into the beginning and ending of the short story as well as has reshaped the plot of the story, focused on the intimacy of Charu and Amal as lovers , added his concept of “nabina” and “prachina” and introduced entirely new set of events and exchanges in his cinematic version of ‘Nastanirh’. Just as Tagore exercised his discussion in written mode, Ray audio-visually expanded the author’s vision in filmic mode and pushed the author’s argument further than the original. In the opening segment of the film (roughly 7 and a half minutes) Ray takes full advantage of the cinematic apparatus at his disposal, in search of a language entirely free from literary and theatrical influences. Dialogue is almost done away with sound cues and music are carefully selected and introduced with pin-point precision and the action and camera movement are orchestrated to mediate between Charu’s reflective pauses and moments of acceleration. The original story of ‘Nastanirh’ though focuses the loneliness of Charu, starts with the description of Bhupati. The wealthy Bhupati is wrapped up in his work as the proprietor and editor of an English- language newspaper and fails to notice when his child-wife Charu grows into a young woman. This incident is described as: “The newspaper editor failed to react to this momentous piece of news. His overriding concern was that the Government of India’s border policy of gradual expansion might break all bounds and precipitate chaos. In this affluent household Charulata had nothing to do. Like a flower with no hope of fruition she came into bloom, quite superfluous, and somehow whiled away the useless, endless hours. She lacked for nothing. In such a situation a young wife, if given the chance, fusses too much over her husband, violates domestic border policy and steps from being timely to untimely, from proper to improper. Charulata had no such opportunity. The barrier of paper guarding her husband seemed well- nigh impenetrable” (Tagore 376). This passage comes near the beginning. Ray’s challenge was how to express Tagore’s metaphors and his bantering tone as soon as the film started. His solution is an extended opening sequence – some seven and a half minutes long – containing hardly a dozen spoken words and none of them between husband and wife. In Ray’s own words, “except for one line of dialogue … the scene says what it has to say in terms that speak to the eye and the ear” (Ray 63). Charu merely wanders from room to room, picking up a book here, playing a note on the piano there and catching glimpses of the intriguing outside world through half-closed shutters with the help of eye-glasses, ==================================================================== Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 20:11 November 2020 Bithi Mojumder, Rubaiyan Asif, and Fatema Akter Charulata as an Adaptation of ‘Nastanirh’: Satyajit Ray’s Craftsmanship in the Recreation of Tagore’s Work on Celluloid 24 a lorgnette. Finally, from his adjacent office, Bhupati appears, fetches a book and slowly returns, nose buried, failing to notice his wife right beside him. As he disappears down some steps, Charu playfully watches him through the lorgnette and then suddenly, frustrated by the game, lets it drop from her eyes. As her arm falls, Ray’s camera abruptly pulls back from a close-up of Charu watching her husband to a long shot of her standing alone, framed by wealth – the lonely wife of the film’s title. Ray’s use of the lorgnette which brings Bhupati and his book physically closer while simultaneously emphasizing his mental distance from Charu, is a masterly cinematic realization of Tagore’s line, “the barrier of paper guarding her husband seemed well-nigh impenetrable” (Tagore 376). Though Charulata is based on Tagore’s ‘Nastanirh’ (‘The Broken Nest’), Ray who has written the screenplay in addition to directing the film, refashioned details from Tagore’s story. For example, Tagore’s Amal is a demanding man. He pesters Charu to the point of seeming insensitive to her feelings and situation. She has to tolerate many of his endless tantrums which include providing him with incentives for eating in hotels, buying expensive books of English literature and inviting his friends over for a lavish feast. Charu has accepted all of this as her sole responsibility. Bhupati has no demands on her, on the other hand Amal’s demands on the slightest pretext of tutoring are never-ending. Charu sometimes feigns anger and rebellion over this but deep within, it is necessary for her to bear with these little outbursts of affection. Charu’s response to him, as Tagore words it seems almost needy: “That someone should ask her for something—in the whole world this is the only person who asks of her and she cannot bear to leave his desires unfulfilled” (Tagore 384). Ray, on the other hand, adds an endearing tenderness to Amal and the gifts he receives from Charu are given to him freely. Even Ray does not show these details description in his film. He just avoids the affection of Charu for Amal and mainly focuses on the love and passion between them. He shows the gifts which Amal find from Charu as the tokens of her attraction towards him. By this Ray has distorted the message which has provided by Tagore in his original story. The filmmakers are free to rewrite the plot of the story if he feels it is necessary for the development of the story of the film. Ray has successfully utilized this freedom in his film Charulata. For instance, in the original story of ‘Nastanirh’ we find Amal as a college student of 23- year- old who has been given shelter by Bhupati. But in the film, we see that Amal who has already completed his study enters at the home in a stormy day for an extended stay. Even Ray has changed the sequence of the short story. In the very beginning of the film we find Charu needling a B letter on a handkerchief which she has given her husband. On the contrary, the original story presents that Charu has made the handkerchief for Amal. Though the ‘B’ letter does not carry any significant meaning in the original story of Tagore, it uses as the representation of the idea of the ==================================================================== Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 20:11 November 2020 Bithi Mojumder, Rubaiyan Asif, and Fatema Akter Charulata as an Adaptation of ‘Nastanirh’: Satyajit Ray’s Craftsmanship in the Recreation of Tagore’s Work on Celluloid 25 writer named Bankim Chandra Choudhury in Ray’s film.