A DEAL’S A DEAL
One cannot say if it was always planned this way, or it reflects Satyajit Ray’s growing bitterness towards the state of affairs, but the four films that make up the Rojgari Quartet (as I call it) are each more bleak than the one before. Through Mahanagar, Pratidwandi, and Seemabaddha, we see the protagonist’s grip on their own actions become weaker and weaker, and their forays into moral compromise get more degrading.
And so we come to the final part of the quartet where, in keeping with the disharmonious progression of the films so far, we get the bleakest take yet on the costliness of livelihood.
The Arbitrariness Of Chance
Like many of Ray’s protagonists, Somnath finds his life up-ended by events outside of his control. He is a studious young man and the only one among his peers who doesn’t cheat during his exams. But an absolutely tragicomical turn of events (the teacher who is marking his paper cannot procure the right pair of spectacles to read Somnath’s handwriting) he scores poorly and doesn’t achieve any distinction. As a result, despite all preparation he is flung into the job-seekers pool without any paddle.
A lot of us try to rationalise the rewards of hard work, to the extent that we fetishize it in the modern era. The more hours you put in the more reward you get out of it, is the popular thinking. Yet, an unending list of examples can be compiled of instances in each person’s life when plans have failed due to unforeseen circumstances. You may miss a bus and hence a meeting, your manager may be replaced, the political situation can bust your project, an illness can take you out of your debut performance – these are just some examples. In the previous film of the quartet (Seemabaddha), a botched paint job puts an entire shipment of fans at risk.
[Of course, one can also get lucky in the same way. Many people in loving relationships can vouch for that. Or, take Ray’s own case where the arrival of Jean Renoir – one of the all-time great directors – to shoot a film in Calcutta changed Ray’s life forever.]
In cascading fashion, one bad exam result can impact what first job you land, if at all, which impacts your next job and so on. Somnath finds himself looking down just such a barrel. His father is even more outraged on his behalf. A person like him, a product of possibly more honourable times, cannot believe that there can be such arbitrariness in the world and wants to take the matter all the way up to the chancellor. What he hasn’t accounted for, and nobody ever does, is that with every generation there are more candidates and more job-seekers, and a diminishing chance that each will be matched to a job most suitable. Instead of an expert player shooting a dart at the bullseye of the board, the job situation is more akin to throwing a handful of blunt nails at a wall and seeing what sticks.
A chance encounter (another chance) with an acquaintance puts Somnath on to the path of becoming a self-employed businessman. Bishuda himself runs many brisk businesses, including sub-letting his office premises to others like Somnath. It appears co-working spaces were popular much before Silicon Valley started putting labels on everything. The USP of this line of work, as per Bishuda, is that one is no longer reliant on managers to take care of you. A businessman can take charge of their own destiny through their own actions. Sky’s the limit for a businessman, unlike a company limited.
And yet this is only part of the story. After all, the place of the manager is taken by the client. The competitor is not your colleague but another supplier. The qualification may not be a degree, but rather the favours you are willing to offer.
In Bengali culture, there is a fairly broad distrust of business and businessmen as being more likely than not to be corrupt. It is hardly unexpected that Somnath’s family, particularly his father, is less than enthusiastic about his son’s decision. Yet, he gets behind his son, because nobody knows what progress is supposed to look like anymore. Characters are the victims of circumstances, not necessarily of each other.
Morality Is Not Good Business
There is a real sense of order in the business world, at first. There are people who offer their expertise to Somnath to help him set up. Each one is a consummate professional at their level. The peon can take calls, make breakfast, and organise small loans. The stationery printer can make business cards, letter pads, and name plates in a day, and knows all the possible spellings of a person’s surname better than the person himself. Bishuda and Harish Adak, an accountant, guide Somnath on all the basic do’s and dont’s and initiate him into the world of business and get him his first prospects.
Though there is help at hand for everything, it is made clear to Somnath that there’s no free lunch. Everything will eventually have a cost, whether in cash or kind. The reason is not because people are petty, but rather because time is money for most of them and any extra time they give Somnath will cost them somewhere else.
Moreover, everybody also makes it clear that naivete or slowness to learn the ropes is a sign that one isn’t going to cut it in the world of business. Rather than prolong someone’s eventual failure, the men of the marketplace believe in mercy killing. False hope is certain death. This man-made jungle follows the (discredited) principle of social Darwinism – the survival of the fittest. And the fittest is the one with the cash, not the morals.
Such lack of sentimentality about work is distilled to its purest form in the figure of Mittir, played with flair by Rabi Ghosh. In simplest terms Mittir is a fixer. He is a middleman’s middleman who greases wheels where required, however required, to get contracts signed. It’s his job to know everybody’s price. So when Somnath desperately needs to land a contract with a corporate buyer, he is put in touch with Mittir.
Over lunch, Mittir gives Somnath a masterclass in leaving behind one’s idealism at home before stepping out into the world of contracts and commissions. He talks about bribes, drugs, and sexual favours. He disabuses his young friend of any notions of fair play and patience in this world, and tells him that all preconceptions are a liability on the path to getting a contract. Unlike the salaried life, there is no guaranteed pay-cheque. A competitor can swoop in and steal your catch right out of your hand.
Morality has no place in business, he seems to be reinforcing for Somnath and for the bhadralok viewer, leaving them both pink in the face. Multiple times he shows just how far he is willing to go for his earnings, and at the same time he is convinced that it doesn’t reflect on him as a husband or father. He is doing his duty, and that doesn’t condemn him. Failure to do his job will be his only crime.
Isn’t morality an artificial concept after all? There is nothing natural about it like air or water. It is merely a shared agreement between individuals, and ceases to exist if the parties don’t agree to it. In the human forest it is eat or be eaten.
It is to Somnath’s credit, or maybe to his detriment, that he still holds on to his morals even after so many hard lessons. Compared to him, Shyamal in Seemabaddha is much quicker to dump any morals to get his promotion. Like Mittir, Shyamal can just hide the unsavoury details of his success from his wife and child, and only put the success and glamour on display. He operates from an ivory tower while Somnath is on the ground.
[It’s ironic that the character with more to lose, has more hesitation to be unscrupulous. Can it be that the lack of material success makes someone more attached to their principles as being the only valuables they possess? Someone who can trade principles for golf club memberships may find it easier to do so.]
When Somnath has been at the receiving end of a flawed system that pretends to be purely ethical (the world of education and exam-taking), shouldn’t he learn to treat all questions of right and wrong with scepticism? After all, if the system isn’t fair, then why should we be?
Women And/In/As The Marketplace
Many of us viewers may like to think we have what it takes to make a great success in the world of business. We can dump our morals, no problem. We can be competitive and cut-throat, with pleasure. We aren’t victims, we assure ourselves, and we can take any product and sell-sell-sell!
But then the story throws something at us that can make even the most mercenary hearts quiver – the image of women selling their bodies.
We have all heard the adage about sex-work being the world’s second oldest profession. Naturally that is not true, but it does reveal something about the nature of exchanging sex for favours. And yet, it is a shocking sight to many to see women, that too quite openly, take part in this profession. It is societal hypocrisy that we are okay if women are forced to give over their bodies, but cannot bear to see a woman willingly give her body for love or money.
Mittir convinces Somnath that the only way for him to win a big contract is to bring a woman to his client’s hotel room. Somnath is naturally appalled, but is given an ultimatum by Mittir – it is a do-or-die situation, and Somnath is free to walk away but then he will never be successful in this line of work. And Mittir will still charge his fees, because time is money after all. Thus, Somnath reluctantly agrees. He knows his father is worried about him. He knows his sister-in-law is placing a lot of trust in him to do well. He knows his brother is funding the entire household on his sole salary. He knows there is no job to go back to. He has even lost his chance to marry the woman he loves because he cannot afford to start a family.
What follows is a theatrical farce, with the two of them going from door-to-door to the many professional but part-time sex-workers Mittir knows. There is no greater example of the disrobing of polite Bengali society that I know of, than these sequences in the film and Mani Sankar Mukherjee’s novel.
The audience is taken to the homes of respectable women who are nothing like the desperadoes of decrepit brothels that we are given to expect. These are middle-class women who are wage-earners, either because their husbands spend more than they earn, or because there is no other source of income. One of them even operates the trade from her own home and has put her daughters to work.
What are we to feel about this? Are these women lowly, or dishonourable? But then isn’t Somnath? If he can be a victim of circumstances then why not these women. Then are they victims? They certainly don’t act like they are. Mittir is nothing but professional in his interactions, treating them as partners in his work. Just like Somnath looks to Mittir to deliver the contract to him, Mittir is looking to these women. But, can we be absolutely casual and blasé about their choice of work, treating it as no different from any office work? Probably not. But, that’s really for the women to decide. For everyone else it is a question of offering help if it is asked for, but no unsolicited advice. After all, so many people in honourable jobs play with the lives of others and aren’t made to feel guilty for their choices.
Somnath is naturally bewildered by what he sees and is ready to give up when none of the negotiations with the women work out. But Mittir is a man of his word and cannot let a deal fall through. There are principles, and there are principles. He tries one final place – a vocational training institute. Some of the young women who come here for classes turn to sex-work to earn some money while they train to find jobs. Their biggest assets at this point is their youth and some sophistication, and they cash in on it.
The final twist of the knife for Somnath comes when the girl who finally agrees to take the job is his friend’s sister. His friend, like him, has been jobless and also unwell. His sister has been making ends meet by herself. An appalled Somnath tries to back out and give her the money he promised, but she doesn’t agree. Her secret is out, and she doesn’t want to carry humiliation on top of it. She also understands how these deals work, if she doesn’t do the job, Somnath will certainly lose something. In this transaction they are there to help each other, not pity each other. A man who cannot get a regular job despite being earnest, and a woman cannot get a job despite being earnest, must unite in their efforts to do what it takes to make a living. And it doesn’t hurt that if the deal goes through, he cannot take the moralistic upper-hand and neither can he reveal her secret to others.
At the end, his work gets done, everybody gets what they need, and Somnath’s father is relieved at his son’s good fortune. If he doesn’t know how much his son changed, if his friend doesn’t find out he prostituted his sister, then don’t the ends justify the means? But, Somnath knows, and his greatest well-wisher the sister-in-law knows, so can things ever go back to the way they were? The balance sheet will always show the losses against the gains.