THE HIGH COST OF POVERTY
Poverty can most easily be defined as the state of having less than adequate money or other assets. But this doesn’t address many other forms of poverty. One person can inherit a grand old mansion but not have a financial security. Another can buy food but not afford to replace ripped clothes. A parent may be able to afford to feed and clothe a child, but not to be able to send them to school or college.
We can move from poverty of money to poverty of the soul or spirit. Sometimes, a beautiful soul can have nothing to their name but be full of love and laughter, and a mean spirit can have a lot and yet deny themselves all sources of joy. The former is certainly poor, and yet we may envy them.
Pather Panchali, the most spectacular debut film seen in a generation(s) explores poverty in ways that cannot be added to any dictionary definition. And yet it is formed of such depth of compassion that one cannot resist being moved by a viewing.
Yes, it is about poverty. We all know that. No new ground is being broken. But have we truly grasped what the film is trying to say if we do not see poverty as an assault on human dignity in ways that can never be wiped away? Poverty is not only material.
Poverty As An Assault On The Mind
Harahar Ray, his wife Sarbojaya, their children Apurba (Apu) and Durga, along with the aged relative Indir Thakrun, form a cosy household in a small village. Their state of living is at once poor and also not. They have a mud hut with a courtyard and kitchen. They possess a cow and even a few dogs and cats. They don’t seem conventionally poor like the homeless people we are used to seeing on city streets. They even have well-off relatives, and their caste-status (a typically Indian concern) is high.
But, then where does the poverty show? Well, it is visible through the huge hole in the old woman’s shawl. Or the collapsed sections of the boundary walls. Or in the curtain in the window that cannot keep out rain. Or when the children cannot afford to buy from the sweet-seller and instead follow him around hoping somebody else buys it for them.
Starting with these visible details, we can see the most acute manifestation of poverty as a wound on the soul in the character of Sarbojaya, the mother. At first, Sarbojaya may come across as the nagging wife or the angry mother. She is outright insulting and aggressive with the bent-backed Indir Thakrun, the second most abused character in the film after Durga (Indir Thakrun can, after all, be seen as an aged version of Durga in many ways).
But neither the writer of the original novel, Bibhutibhushan Bandhyopadhyay, nor Ray were the sort of storytellers to offer such shallow characterisation. It is when you treat the character of Sarbojaya with some sympathy that she reveals her torment to you.
Her husband and children all lead happy-go-lucky lives. The children, after all, are just children and aren’t expected to grapple with issues of pride and social standing. If young Durga steals a guava from her richer relative’s orchard she is not expected to understand the right-and-wrong of the situation, nor the effect of snide comments on parenting from the relative.
Her mother, on the other hand, understands all too well. She knows the societal price of having a delinquent child, especially a girl. If they were richer, or if Durga were a boy, a certain boys-will-be-boys attitude may well have glossed over the minor trespass. Better yet, they could afford to buy guavas for their child, or even possess an entire orchard of them.
But, when luck has not favoured you with any such means, and your children have the same natural desires as any other children, the cost extracted for that one guava may be a lash on the psyche. Sarbojaya pays a high price for her children’s desires. She loses any free or happy self she may have once possessed because only she knows the costs being extracted from her and her entire family. This awareness has carved out her soul.
Poverty As A Stain
In a separate incident, Durga steals a necklace of beads from her cousin, but manages to lie her way out of trouble. Her mother, and even younger brother, initially don’t believe her but are ready to defend her in the absence of evidence. At the very end of the movie, after Durga’s death, Apu discovers the necklace in a clay pot and realises his sister had indeed stolen the trinket.
In the final scene he grabs the necklace and chucks it into the pond outside their house, and the camera lingers on the water’s surface as the layer of small leaves (maybe duckweed) that had parted where it fell, then slowly re-cover the water’s surface. Nature cleaned up the evidence.
But why did Apu do that? And with such vehemence?
Even a young child like him knows how poverty and petty crime can be a stain on the most helpless characters. Lady Macbeth may have struggled to clean the stain of actual spilt blood, but for Durga and her mother, the tiniest of transgressions can colour an entire person’s life like a permanent record or a poisonous what-else-did-you-expect.
Durga wasn’t a thief, even if she had stolen the necklace. But Durga couldn’t be anything else either, because poverty doesn’t give you options to define yourself. She couldn’t be a good student, a medal-winning swimmer, a singer, a doe-eyed beauty, an obedient child, a budding artist, or any of the other ways that we were defined as children. Growing up so poor means you are nothing more than a wretch, a nuisance, a suspect. All the things we viewers may have stolen over the years will never haunt us as that one necklace would have haunted Durga’s spirit and her mother’s ego.
Durga As Forest Spirit
Even though this film trilogy is named for her brother, Durga is at the centre of this story. She is the one who starts and ends the film, Apu being younger arrives only later. Her mother is most concerned by Durga’s actions; the brother loves to follow her around.
So who is Durga really? Of course her name itself feels like a bit of a tragic joke. Durga, the goddess, controller of destinies, destroyer of enemies when all else has failed, mother to millions – that is not the Durga of this film. This one is condemned from her very birth. As a girl she doesn’t get to study, she is to be married off when she is barely a teenager, she cannot galivant through the forest openly like her younger brother. She cannot be mischievous, loud, or even openly happy.
Yet, she is all this and more. Nevertheless, she persisted, one might say of her today.
To me Durga is a forest spirit. She is happiest among the trees and the birds, unbridled by family or society. Often she is followed around by kittens and dogs like she is their most kindred spirit. We first see her in an orchard, she catches her fatal sickness from spending too much time in the rain, exacerbated by a torrential, near-mythical storm that breaks into her home and takes her life away. What feels like a tragedy is actually her being rescued from a life far more miserable than what her younger brother will go on to face. The stain on her character, the necklace, that Apu flings into the pond is also covered up by nature, symbolically and with finality. Nature is her protector, her parent, her one true love.
Similarly, Indir Thakrun, who is in many ways the same person at the end of her life, also dies in the cradle of the forest and not among her family. She too loved the delights of stolen fruit, of mischievous looks exchanged with Durga, her partner-in-crime as it were. Why she was unmarried and without a family of her own one doesn’t know from the film, but even Durga doesn’t like the idea of getting married and might have ended up like that in her old age.
And this may be her secret to never letting the burden of poverty get to her. In the forest nobody is poor. The forest provides for everyone. The harangue of social order is not heard there.
Pride And Penury
Poor people cannot afford most things – clothes, food, repairs, even laughter. Can they afford pride?
Pride is after all an act of defiance in many ways. Whenever I have faced rejection from people, I have taken refuge in a fierce sense of pride. It may not have been the level-headed thing to do, but it always gave me a sense of power.
But the price I have paid for pride may yet have been worth it. Can the same be said of the family in Pather Panchali? Harihar is a proud man. His upbringing doesn’t allow him to discuss things like salary or unpaid dues with his employers. Perhaps that makes him feel like a free man who cannot be bought by anyone. And yet, this is a burden left to his wife, who has to keep cajoling him to either demand his wages or quit and not waste any more time on unreliable employers. Harihar wants to earn money by writing and remains optimistic that he can make ends meet because the Lord will provide. This makes him all the more sympathetic when compared to his wife.
What is this optimism though? Is it simply a better, cheerier approach to life, or is it a wilful ignorance of many harsh realities? If his wife is worried about keeping everyone fed, is it rational for her husband to be gone for weeks without sending a letter, even if he is bringing back some monies?
Similarly, Sarbojaya is ever-sensitive to the taunts of her richer relatives and will not hesitate to throw old Indir Thakrun out of the house or mercilessly thrash her own daughter when it comes to protecting her family’s good name. How easily we can turn against our near and dear ones when faced with the archaic and reprehensible pressures of a heartless society. This kind of behaviour may look unpardonable to the viewer, but we are all guilty of the same behaviour in lesser degrees in our own lives. The question is not whether Sarbojaya is uniquely attached to her pride, she isn’t, it’s whether she can afford to be in the same way as us. And if not, what a pity.
Optimism is an expensive commodity and those of us born into families of means and good social standing can adopt it more easily than others. The can-do attitude we value so much is not the tonic we’d like to think it is. Very often basic realities can neutralise even the most optimistic attitude. This is a theme that comes up repeatedly in later films by Ray as well.
A Perfect Film
That’s what I feel after multiple viewings of Pather Panchali across years. I can compare it to the sense I get each time I see the Taj Mahal in person.
Undoubtedly, this is a biased opinion. Other great movies exist, other great monuments exist. I will not be the least bit surprised or offended if many people point out how flawed and limited the film is, how poorly it represents the nation, or any other comment people can make against it.
But to me, the individual that I am, everything about this film attains perfection.
Right off the bat there is the musical score by Pandit Ravi Shankar. The ethos and pathos of his score, the signature flute theme music, the heartfelt notes of the sitar over every reaction shot, the thick, dripping rasa in each melody, there has never been a match of story and music quite like this. In many ways music is the primary mover, even actor, in this film. It is verbose, it speaks and speaks volumes to us, more than any character. It cuts us then heals us. It transfixes in ways only Indian classical music can and it tells this story in ways only this land can.
Then there is the location and its beautiful rendering on camera. The film is known for its long production history full of many obstacles, not least of which was the budget. If at one end of the spectrum of difficult film-making journeys was Apocalypse Now, at another end sits Pather Panchali. Ray was ambitious and confident right from the start of his film. This was one of the first, if not the first, such film shot entirely outdoors (not in a studio) and utilised a lot of natural lighting. Even the hovel-like home was shot impeccably despite severe limitations, and by a crew comprising mostly of young professionals. If you cannot grasp exactly how this was an achievement, think of the times you have tried to take a photograph on your phone in low-light and were disappointed with the results. To light up each face so beautifully, to shoot with such contrast outdoors, to find locations fulfilling each requirement of Bandhyopadhyay’s novel, all of this required the utmost patience and love from the team.
A special mention here of the Academy Film Archive that has restored so many of Ray’s films. All of us owe them a great debt of gratitude for doing what we couldn’t do for ourselves.
Even the actors surrendered themselves entirely to the location, dressing the part, and stayed with the project for the nearly three years the film took to complete (they had to keep raising funds, film some more, raise more funds, film some more, and so on).
This is not a film like any other. It is a mission, a calling, a myth, and a shining star.
Whose Path, Whose Panchali
Finally, we can ask ourselves this question – whose is the path (same as the English word ‘path’) and whose is the panchali (song)?
This title, the same as given to the novel, is enigmatic. It is not a direct reference to anything in the story. One could assume it is a metaphorical music of life, most perfectly recreated by Ravi Shankar for the film. But is this exceedingly beautiful film trying to tell us that the music of life is relentless misery and the throttling of joy? I would like to think not.
Then is it about Apu, whose lifetime is the path and who’s story is the song? Well, I don’t think Apu is the protagonist of this movie, it is his sister. It is true that the original novel tells the story that is contained in the first two films of the trilogy (this, and Aparajito). I don’t know if Ray knew when he was making this film that he would complete the story with two subsequent films. But, I don’t feel the relevance of the title of the film would depend on that alone.
There is no definitive answer to this question, and it may not even need one. Something lyrical, like this title, doesn’t need explaining. It is evocative, it stirs something in the recesses of our consciousness and we need not try and explain it.
So, it is only for my own satisfaction that I say this – the song of the road is “be kind, be kind, be kind”. When faced with human suffering be kind. If you feel for any of these characters then be kind to them if you encounter them in real life. Do not come away unmoved by this film. That would be a crime on humanity.
You don’t have to take the responsibility to restore the family’s wealth. You don’t have to accept any part in societal inequity (though we all do). Just don’t take away human dignity. Don’t refuse them music, don’t grudge their smiles.
If you let the music play for them it will play for you too.