The Cloud-capped Genius

Featuring insights from relatives, students, experts, and collaborators, the narrative captures Ritwik Ghatak's fiery passion for cinema

- BALAJI VITTAL

There was a bad boy in school disobedient and moody. Some teachers didn't like him. The word spread, and soon, he was ignored by almost everyone.

Expelled from the school, he struggled to survive an othered existence and finally stumbled to an early death. And then.... people discovered the talent that he really was.

If this story reads like a blurb of filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak's life, it is. But did all those who had billed him enfant terrible know about the pain of his land getting torn apart that he tried capturing with his art? And why the sudden outpouring of awe for him from the hour of his passing in early 1976 and its continued torrent in the global cinema community for the next 50 years? This is what Unmechanical: Ritwik Ghatak in 50 Fragments, edited by Shamya Dasgupta, tries to excavate. It is an up-close view of the man and his works as told by many who had been close enough to observe the trauma in his eyes and smell the alcohol in his breath.

The book is neatly divided into different sections. A Bio-sketch in Seven Parts streetlights the lonely walk of his personal life with anecdotes and revelations from nieces Mahasweta Devi and Aroma Dutta, twin sister Pratiti Devi, and former colleagues Kumar Roy, among others. Ghatak had an unhappy life; hardly a sentence by the contributors speaks of Ghatak having ever been in a happy state over a span of 40 years.