Friday Release | Of Bengal, Babri and Boyhood in ‘Dostojee’

A still from 'Dostojee' (Two Friends) (2022).

In the dark times, will there also be singing? And Bertolt Brecht said, yes, there will also be singing, about the dark times. Prasun Chatterjee’s Bengali feature debut Dostojee (Two Friends) is one such song. It is affecting and effective. The Cinemascope lens gives us a pan view of the verdant expanse of blue skies, green paddy fields, white kaashphool and river Padma that run along this border dividing the two Bengal. Imagine rain-drenched days of a carefree childhood amid the greens, one which even a smoggy, choking adult world can’t touch. In remembrance of the things past, the filmmaker juxtaposes a politically-rife early ’90s Bengal — touched by the communal violence that followed the Babri Masjid demolition (this December 6 marks 30 years since the day!) and the ’92 Bombay blasts — with the purity of two thick-as-thieves happy-go-lucky friends, the eight-year-old non-actors Palash (Asik Sheikh) and Safikul (Arif Sheikh), both locals of Domkal (Murshidabad).

Their innocence is unmarred by a city-life exposure or socio-political grating, their curiosity and playfulness, like the landscape, hearkens back to that of Durga and Apu’s from Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali (1955). The boys are innocent but not unaware of the goings-on around. They just happen to be born into two faiths. One’s father is a Shiva priest who’s grappling with how to now offer puja to Rama, a god not traditionally worshipped in Bengal, as his wife betrays feelings of fear being part of the minority there, while the other’s father is a weaver of saris, which will eventually be worn by Hindu women.

The boys, however, are two bodies one soul, and almost always up to mischief, Sholay’s Jai-Veeru-like or Ray’s Goopy-Bagha-like. They are both also fans of Bengal’s starry jamai (son-in-law): Bachchan senior and try to perfect his iconic pose now and then — one of the many heartening lighter moments in the film. There are heavier ones too, like the interactions of a child who’s lost his soulmate/best friend with a mother — Jayati Chakraborty as a reticent village mother — who’s lost her son. Finding metaphors in nature isn't new, but weaving them — caterpillar, butterfly, tree, cuckoo’s call — as part of the narrative/script, with Tuhin Biswas' cinematography which freezes time, accord the film a distinct visual grammar.

In the film’s backdrop are cacophonies by two religious groups, one wants to make Chhota Babri Masjid and the other to start Rama puja and do Ramjatras (Ramleelas). If one of the dialogues of the men rehashes that iconic Om Puri dialogue from Maqbool (2004): “Shakti ka santulan bahut zaroori hai sansaar mein. Aag ke liye paani ka darr bane rehna chahiye” (for the balance of power, fire must keep fearing water)”, the madman metaphor standing between, and reviled by both, the Hindu and Muslim men, harks back to Saadat Hasan Manto’s Toba Tek Singh (1955) whose eponymous protagonist is a lunatic standing on no man’s land — by Partition — he belongs neither there nor here.

But that’s in the background, in the foreground, the kids care two hoots about the adult-world dynamics. Safikul brings seviyan for Palash on the day of Eid and builds a Jesus’ nativity crib-like Jhulan (Radha-Krishna festival) with him. Free as butterflies, they would flit around and seek unsullied joy of belongingness and camaraderie. One would walk all the way to school instead of taking the tuk-tuk to buy his friend a kite that he broke by mistake and make him speak with him again, the other would bear a thrashing by his father for going to the Ramjatra despite his refusal.

Now, if speaking about the big picture, showing social realism by deploying children sounds Iranian cinema to you, you are not wrong. It borrows that utensil to cook a broth of our times, of our home. Chatterjee, very Ritwik Ghatak-like, is trying to let his film speak for the provincial man, that in the end there is a flicker of hope, even if the road to that end is an ill-fated one.

This is a children's film, as much as it's for the adults. At its core, it's about friendships, humanity, empathy, and boyhood and offers a salve for our venom-manufacturing times, in real and on reel. It demands patience from its audience, and with all its highs and lows, pluses and minuses, this one calls for a watch, because honest storytelling and independent (non-studio-backed) cinema getting a theatrical release here is a big deal. In true Sholay style, yeh dosti (Dostojee) hum nahin bhulenge.

The film, with English subtitles, released in theatres today.