In my eyes,
in my heart, ‘Memories in March’ stands as one of
Rituparno Ghosh’s three finest scripts.
I cannot recall when a Bengali film last moved me so deeply.
The songs in the film, especially the one—Sakhi ham mohan abhisare jaun…/Bolo ham etak sukh kahan paun?—are
extraordinary gifts for those of us who love music.
My love and reverence to Rituparno.
‘Memories in March’
is a story of pure love. Not merely romantic love,
but deeper affection. The beloved is dead. A road accident. The scene:
the clinic’s veranda. The body is being wheeled away. A shoelace has come undone. A man hurries behind the trolley,
tying the shoelace. The dead have no need for shoes, but the one who loves them does. The beloved never truly dies………….When my friend’s father passed away and the body was being cremated, my friend ran toward those lighting the pyre,
snatched the burning wood from their hands, and stroking his dead father’s head tenderly, cried out, “Father’s hair is burning!
Father cannot bear the heat.”……….The dead feel no pain when their hair burns, yet someone does—someone for whom that person is still not gone.
That scene made me weep terribly, and I kept wondering, is there anyone who would tie the shoelaces of my corpse?……………There is no greater gift in life than being loved.
People leave, but memories remain. The beautiful moments shared with them, their belongings,
everything they held dear—all of it keeps the person alive. For whom? For the one who loved them. Does separation dim happy memories? I think not. Though they may not be beside us now,
do those beautiful moments they gave us
simply vanish? People can live wrapped in memory’s warmth. Various earthly and unearthly presences, perhaps quite small,
yet the person lived through all of these—
memory’s birds are precious indeed—at least to the one who loved them………no, that’s wrong………not “loved,”
loves. Everything that existed during the days of love—some object,
some place,
some melody,
some habit or quirk,
some nature,
some preference or distaste—people live on through these too………..This is life, after all—
it passes one way or another!
After my death, someone will immediately come and fill
the place where I sit and work. More bluntly put……….occupy it. The office is no place for love. Where there is no love,
why should any space remain empty for me?
But will nothing remain empty anywhere?
Does my bodily death end everything? My existence of all these years?
My being alive?
All my memories? All finished? No. Some people carefully preserve emptiness in their hearts. Love has a claim on emptiness.
Let us see how the love story of Siddhartha and
Ornob begins.
Ornob is saying:
One day. Deep in the night. The phone rang. In a sleepy voice I said,
what’s wrong?
The answer came:
I like your caller tune.
I thought he was drunk and talking nonsense. I asked, did you call me just to tell me this?
Or do you have something else to say?
Give me your caller tune, he said.
Fine. I’ll give it to you. Hang up and call me again. Press star, dial. The tune is yours. That’s it!…………I noticed the sound of his long sigh on the other end.
Some time passed……….Promise me, you’ll never change your tune,
never give this tune to anyone else.
Hearing those words, something happened inside me. I don’t know
what to call it. Maybe I’m an idiot, but my feeling was real.
Yes, that night love was born between two people. Relationships happen between human beings,
not between woman and man,
man and woman. If during one’s lifetime someone finds another whose presence brings happiness,
whose company makes sorrow retreat and laughter flow like a fountain,
then a bond of love will naturally form between them. Whether that relationship is socially sanctioned or not—
what does it matter?
It is life-sanctioned!
Any relationship that can hold and shelter
a person’s feelings,
thoughts, affections, joys and sorrows,
habits—everything—that relationship is human and
desirable, is it not?
To deny it would be to deny life itself. From Rituparno Ghosh’s pen through Sanjoy Nag’s lens, ‘Memories in March’ is a silent narrative of intense love.
Here the emotional life of love grows larger than the physical,
mutual understanding and interdependence have taken love from thought to feeling. When the kind of selfless and genuine love that comes from a mother
comes from another person, how can the heart distance itself from it?
We even see that a mother’s pain at losing a child is matched by the pain of that child’s beloved—
though there is no comparative measure for the heart’s ache. Love is entirely a matter of feeling; in that light, love can exist between man and man,
woman and woman. The formal name for this is homosexuality,
but as long as that name does justice to love’s claim, names don’t matter.
But the reality is this—
society and its people are more concerned with the externalities of concepts. How so? Let us look at a dialogue from the film.
Ornob asks Siddhartha’s mother Arti:
Which is more important to you?
That your son is dead?
Or that he was gay?
Arti says:
Look, my son is no longer alive—
this is something I can never, ever accept easily. And that he was gay—no matter how much I claim to accept it or genuinely try to accept it, as a mother I will say that deep down I can never truly accept that my son was gay.
In another scene we hear Ornob say……….Who am I to decide whether they should live confined in a circle
or live like the rest of us? Perhaps it’s best for everyone to let them live confined in their own way. If we don’t learn to accept someone
as they are,
how will we survive in this world?
This film has created many answers. The courage to question those answers doesn’t quite come. That is the film’s true beauty.
I am going far away. Before I leave, shall I place some of my memories with you?
……………Such a plea from Rituparno
brings tears to the eyes of those of us who love him,
who love his work. Before his death, he wrote on Facebook:
Remember me…………..Can such a remarkable creator ever be forgotten?
Is it even possible?
সম্পূর্ণ সহমত পোষণ করছি…
শ্রদ্ধেয় ঋতুপর্ণ ঘোষ অসাধারণ চিত্রনির্মাতা এবং অভিনেতা ছিলেন।
আপনার ভাবনা ও লেখা মন নাড়িয়ে গেল…
লেখাটি থেকে আমার ভীষণ প্রিয় কিছু ভাবনা উদ্বৃত করলাম :
(১) ” স্মৃতির উষ্ণতা গায়ে মেখে মানুষ বাঁচতে পারে। নানান পার্থিব কিংবা অপার্থিব অস্তিত্ব, হয়তো খুব ক্ষুদ্রই, তবু মানুষটা ওইসব নিয়েই বেঁচে ছিল, স্মৃতির পাখিরা খুব দামি—অন্তত তার কাছে, তাকে যে ভালোবাসতো………না, ভুল হল………ভালোবাসতো নয়, ভালোবাসে।”
(২) ” ভালোবাসার দিনগুলিতে যা কিছু ছিল—কোনো জিনিস, কোনো জায়গা, কোনো সুর, কোনো অভ্যেস কিংবা বদভ্যেস, কোনো স্বভাব, কোনো পছন্দ কিংবা অপছন্দ—তা কিছু নিয়েও মানুষ বেঁচে থাকে।………..এর নাম জীবন তো, একভাবে না একভাবে কেটেই যায়!”
(৩) ” কিছু মানুষ তাদের হৃদয়ে শূন্যতা বাঁচিয়ে রাখে খুব যত্নে। ভালোবাসা শূন্যতার দাবি রাখে।”
(৪) ” সম্পর্ক হয় মানুষে মানুষে, নারীতে পুরুষে, পুরুষে নারীতে নয়। বেঁচেথাকার সময়টাতে কেউ যদি এমন কারো দেখা পায়, যে পাশে থাকলে তার সুখের অনুভূতি হয়, দুঃখ দূরে সরে হাসির ফোয়ারা ঝরে, তবে তাদের মধ্যে ভালোবাসার বন্ধন তৈরি হবে, এটাই তো স্বাভাবিক। সে সম্পর্ক সমাজসিদ্ধ হোক না হোক, ওতে কী এসে যায়? জীবনসিদ্ধ তো!”
(৫) ” মানুষের অনুভূতি, বোধ, ভাললাগা, আনন্দ কি যন্ত্রণা, অভ্যেস, সবকিছুকেই ধারণ করতে পারে, আশ্রয় দিতে পারে যে সম্পর্ক, সে সম্পর্কই তো মানবীয় ও প্রার্থিত, তাই না? তাকে অস্বীকার করার মানে তো জীবনকেই অস্বীকার করা।”
(৬) ” ভালোবাসা সম্পূর্ণই অনুভূতির ব্যাপার, সে নিরিখে ভালোবাসা হতে পারে পুরুষে পুরুষে, নারীতে নারীতে। এর পোশাকি নাম সমপ্রেম, তবে সে নাম যতক্ষণ পর্যন্ত ভালোবাসার দাবির প্রতি সুবিচার করতে সক্ষম, ততক্ষণ পর্যন্ত নামে কিছু এসে যায় না।”
(৭) ” যদি আমরা কাউকে, সে যেমন, তেমন করেই গ্রহণ করতে না শিখি, তবে আমরা এ পৃথিবীতে বাঁচবো কীকরে?”
ধন্যবাদ জানবেন 🙏🏻🙏🏻