Mithun Chakraborty in Nobel Chor

Suman Ghosh’s Nobel Chor was very well received when it was shown during the London Film Festival on October 16 in NFT2, a cosy, 147-seat venue at the National Film Theatre on the South Bank.

The film, due for release in Calcutta in December, begins with a lock being smashed remarkably loudly and a hand reaching out to remove Rabindranath Tagore’s Nobel medal from its display cabinet in the museum in Santiniketan.

It is encouraging for Ghosh that perhaps more than half the audience was non-Indian, and quite a few expressed appreciation for Nobel Chor during the post-screening question and answer session with the director.

Standing next to Ghosh was Paul Burrows, one of the English producers of the film who has in the past promoted Aamir Khan’s Peepli Live and believes movies such as Nobel Chor are good enough to merit an international market.

“I have worked a great deal in India and we are always on the lookout for films that are truly Indian in their nature, yet might have an appeal for an international audience,” explained Burrows.

Ghosh was doing a Q&A with Cary Rajinder Sawhney, the South Asian programme adviser who picked Nobel Chor for the London Film Festival because he considered it “a very fine piece of work, a very powerful yet gentle state of the nation (tale) in many ways”.

Ghosh sets the scene by using contemporary television news footage from a police press conference before switching to his own vox pops with Bengali worthies Nabaneeta Dev Sen, Sunil Gangopadhyay and Goutam Ghose.

The fictional fun begins when villager Bhanu (portrayed with great sensitivity by Mithun Chakraborty) goes to the well one morning to splash his face with cold water and suddenly notices a gold coloured object nestling in the mud. Neither Bhanu nor his wife has any idea what the metal disc is.

He seeks guidance from the village Mastermoshai (Soumitra Chatterjee), who is reading that morning’s page one story of the theft in Anandabazar Patrika and immediately identifies the medal for what it is.

When the village elders agree with Mastermoshai that Bhanu should take the medal to Calcutta and press it personally into the hands of a relieved and grateful chief minister, his troubles begin. A prancing village “madman” foretells of dark times to come. Bhanu is given a contact address for Hori, a young man from the village who has changed his name to “Jeet” and is trying to make a living in Calcutta as a wide boy. Bhanu veers between wanting to hand over the medal to the chief minister and selling it for profit. Mastermoshai has given him a framed photograph of Tagore which acts as his conscience.

It’s sentimental, to be sure, but guarantees many a tear will be shed by the most discerning audience in Calcutta — the one to be found in Mini Jaya in Lake Town.

Hori spots the chance of taking a generous cut by flogging the medal but the best offer he gets is from a “Mr Jhunjhunwala”, who offers the value of the gold by weight “plus 20 per cent”.

In the end, a couple of well-heeled IT chaps seen playing golf in the Tollygunge Club — they are the sort who have learnt to appreciate fine red wine — plot to have the medal spirited out of India by selling it to a Mexican collector for a huge figure.

Some of what Ghosh had to say in London he has already said before in Calcutta when he was shooting Nobel Chor — how he conceived the story after the theft in 2004, how the tale evolved even as he was writing the script and how by making Bhanu undertake the symbolic journey from village to city, he could show how globalisation had impacted the middle class and also created some very rich people in India.

The armed gang which stole the medal (to someone’s order?) is on Bhanu’s trail as are the police, who raid his village but they are not shown beating up suspects in lockup as Ghosh is pretty confident they did in real life.

Ghosh deploys great skill in maintaining the tempo and tension in the film and much of the dialogue is very well written, too, with flashes of humour. His budget was Rs 2 crore, which apparently “is not a very small budget by Bengali film standards”.

It would be appalling bad manners to give away the end other than to suggest cinema goers in Calcutta are in for a real pre-Christmas treat. At least, 8 out of 10 for Master Suman.

So who really is the Mr Big behind the theft of Tagore’s medal? After doing so much research, Ghosh must surely have his suspicions? He has — and he’s not telling.

This brought to mind the famous dictum enunciated by Sherlock Holmes in The Sign of the Four: “How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?”

Ghosh would go only so far as to state there had been “some internal hand” behind the theft. “I did some research and some of the hints are there in the police conversation (in the film),” responded Ghosh. “I met a lot of police officials while doing research for this movie and I am bound — not (by) a formal oath — (that) I will not reveal certain aspects of the theft. Because there is nothing conclusive, I would not give away what I think. But definitely, as I say in the film — or I can blame it on Nabaneeta Dev Sen (who is critical of Visva-Bharati in her vox pop) — there was some internal hand in the theft (of) which I am pretty sure now after my research.”

He claims police were prevented from pursuing two potentially useful leads. “There were one or two leads which were found but they were not allowed to go any further (because of) some top level political pressure. This is what I found out from my research also but I cannot reveal (any more).”

He had included a shot of the current chief minister, who was in opposition in 2004. “You saw Mamata Banerjee’s (cry), ‘Nobel Prize chai’. After seeing the film she will hopefully take up (a new inquiry) — as an Opposition party it (her demand) sounded very nice. I want to see what she says now.”

Ghosh told the audience that many in West Bengal had wanted him not to make the film. “A lot of Bengalis thought I should not make the film because this is Tagore’s 150th year — they said why don’t I make a film on one of his novels (instead),” recalled Ghosh. “Tagore’s home, Santiniketan — Visva-Bharati University — did not let us shoot there (on location) because they thought this film should not happen.”

Behind the scenes pressure was applied on Ghosh. “They talked to the culture secretary. The culture secretary being a good friend of mine told me the vice-chancellor of Visva-Bharati (had approached him), and asked me. ‘Ki chhobi korchho? Ki shob shunchhi’ (What’s this movie you’re making? I keep hearing all these complaints).”

Ghosh revealed: “I had to give the script to Visva-Bharati and still they thought the topic is taboo — ‘You should not (make this film)’. Visva-Bharati was applying for UN heritage site and I know a lot of Bengalis objected to me making this film and so I am curious to know what their reaction will be.”

Ghosh emphasised as “a big follower” of Tagore’s works, he “took great care in writing the script (so) that in no way is he denigrated”.

In Nobel Chor, Ghosh has inserted an intriguing scene in which a gang member chooses not to fire a gun at point-blank range at a terror-stricken Bhanu who is cowering behind Tagore’s framed photograph . “That (scene) is very crucial,” Ghosh assured t2. “The baddie is not culturally erudite but Tagore is so imbibed in the Bengali (so that even the baddie thinks), ‘How can you shoot at God, at Thakur?’ so that (reverence for Tagore) still pervades Bengalis of all strata of life.”

Five years after the theft, said Ghosh, “a clueless CBI formally closed the case”.

Ghosh, who left India in 1996 and did his PhD at Cornell, now lives in Miami and teaches development economics as an associate professor at Florida Atlantic University — “I make a film every two years”.

Maybe what is needed is for Ghosh to make a sequel in which Sherlock Holmes visits Santiniketan, tricks the thief into revealing where the missing medal has been hidden (see A Scandal in Bohemia) and resolves “the mystery of the internal hand”.