Rituparno Ghosh

Can we start all over again? Do it right this time?

That was the BBM status message of Rituparno Ghosh this week as he was busy wrapping up his latest film on the floors. That was to be his last BBM status message as he passed away in his sleep early this morning.

The modern-day custodian of Rabindranath Tagore. The brightest torchbearer of Satyajit Ray. The filmmaker who got Bengali audiences back to the theatres. The director who populated regional movies with national stars. The man who championed the third sex in life and cinema.

Rituparno Ghosh was all that and more. But he will perhaps be best remembered as the humanist and socialist writer-director who kept challenging the difference between shobhab (habit) and protha (custom) through his art.

Ghosh passed away in his south Calcutta home at Indrani Park on Thursday morning around 7am. The cause of death was attributed to “cardio-respiratory failure from long-standing insulin-dependant diabetes mellitus and early renal compromise”. He was 49, the only immediate family member being his brother, art director Indranil Ghosh.

A student of South Point School, Ghosh graduated with economics from Jadavpur University before joining the ad agency Response as a copywriter. In his stint in the world of advertising, Ghosh caused quite a stir with his campaigns for Boroline and Frooti. Before making his feature debut with the Children’s Film Society of India-produced Hirer Angti, he made a documentary for Doordarshan called Vande Mataram, exploring the roots and creation of the song.

It was Unishe April in 1994 that changed everything for Ghosh. The Aparna Sen-Debasree Roy mother-daughter tale, a very Bengali adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s Autumn Sonata, won the National Award for Best Feature Film but more importantly had Bengali audiences, which had almost given up on their cinema post-Uttam Kumar, flocking back to theatres.

He followed it up with the searing Dahan based on a Suchitra Bhattacharya story inspired by the real-life incident of a woman being molested at a Metro station. Another round of awards and acclaim followed and the adman was a complete convert to a filmmaker.

Not one to waste time, Ghosh quickly served up one film after the other, each one touching upon a social problem but never in a language that would alienate the audiences he had earned with his initial successes. In his words: “At that time when I could identify a certain problem and figure that everyone else could see that problem but no one was doing anything about it, I realised that I needed familiar tools to show it. With those everyday tools I could sensitise people about the problem they were ignoring.” From the anguish of adolescence to the wounds of incest, he lent the subjects a human touch.

This first phase also saw Ghosh working with largely local Bengali actors — some seasoned (Soumitra Chatterjee to Madhabi Mukherjee to Prosenjit) and some new (Konkona Sensharma to Arpita Pal) — and even if there were imports from Mumbai (Kirron Kher, Sharmila Tagore and Nandita Das), they were not stars. There was also a very strong Ray flavour in his cinema, whether it was in the basic storytelling style or in the oddball casting or in the usage of motifs and mise en scene. And he himself was always conscious about the influence and the inspiration. “A lot of people look at me as the bearer of Satyajit Ray’s legacy.”

In his flashier next innings, the Bollywood connection became pronounced and almost a new identity for Ghosh. The lavish period piece Chokher Bali, adapted from the Tagore novel, made maximum noise thanks to the presence of Bollywood queen Aishwarya Rai. Although the film and its dubbed Hindi version made Rituparno Ghosh a brand name for everything Bengali across the country, there was criticism back home for casting a non-Bengali as Binodini.

“‘Rabindranath-er golpo, abangali naayika… ’ ‘Tomar lobh Bollywood-er proti (You are sold on Bollywood)’ they said!” was how Ghosh interpreted the Bengali audience reaction. That ‘lobh’ or fascination with stars from Mumbai continued as everyone from Ajay Devgn and Abhishek Bachchan to Preity Zinta and Bipasha Basu camped in Calcutta for ‘a Rituparno Ghosh film’ and Amitabh Bachchan himself landed up to play The Last Lear. But while the cast line-up became starrier and the budgets bigger, Ghosh stuck to his forte — intimate chamber dramas exploring the many nuances of complex human relationships.

Between 1997 and 2004, Ghosh was the editor of Anandalok, the Bengali film magazine from the ABP group.

And then came his final phase. Where Ghosh was not just a filmmaker but also an actor. He played an androgynous character looking for love in his acting debut Arekti Premer Golpo even as his own appearance and clothes at social gatherings and appearances took a distinctive turn. “I didn’t take up the film with the aim to ‘come out’,” he said later. “I don’t need to prove a point to anyone. To me it’s important that a film on this issue is being made.”

The film became a box-office success and his transformation to an actor well accepted. “The way I have reached the audience with this performance is something I have never been able to do as a director. Because the connect between the audience and the director is primarily cerebral, while the connect with an actor is more emotional,” said the man, who had always been a very keen student of cinema and had a profound knowledge of Indian mythology and Bengali literature.

Ghosh would go on to mix his two obsessions — Tagore and gender studies — in Chitrangada, a film he wrote, directed and acted in. While he had adapted Tagore in Chokher Bali and Noukadubi and even made a documentary on him (Jeevan Smriti for NFDC) — “For me, Rabindranath is someone I can laugh with and cry with. I can hug him and I can also touch his feet” — here he was tweaking the original text to tell his tale of a gay dancer hanging between his gender and sexuality.

“At a time when I was very secure, the toast of Bengali cinema, being compared to Ray, I came out and did all this. After I was 45... it was no rush of youth. I felt that if I don’t tell my story now, when will I say it? Now whether you are accepting this just because it is the politically correct thing to do, that’s up to you.

“You have to learn to look at art in a non-judgemental way. Look at art as art. It’s time to bring in the changes.”

Perhaps he was again bringing in the changes and moving to a fresh phase of his career with his new film Satyanweshi, a Bomkesh Bakshi murder mystery which he completed shooting on Sunday. His casting coup? Getting Sujoy Kahaani Ghosh to say yes to playing Bomkesh. And again, even in a detective story, he was trying to say something about us and the society.

“With every passing day I realise that I would never figure in the top 500 filmmakers in the world. Yet I understand that this is my skill and I have to continue doing this. And using that skill let me say the couple of little things I want to say. It’s not necessary that those things have to make history.”