History retold

While the display background was anything but flattering,what walked away with the trophy for tackiness would be the unimaginative captions accompanying some really nice photographs. The caption for a nice profile of Roy in a suit read, ‘Stylish Man: Bimal Roy was always correctly dressed’. One wishes it was a little more imaginative than that. Roy’s Sujata,a 1959 classic that critiqued the practice of untouchability founds recurrent depiction in the exhibition. From behind-the-scenes shots to stills from the Sunil Dutt-Nutan starrer,the photographs make for quite a feast for Bimal Roy fans. However,the captions again act as spoilers. True,the film deals with untouchability,but one still fails to understand why the captions spell out ‘An Untouchable Love’ with every Sujata still. While you can indulge in deep rhetorical interpretations of the same,the caption didn’t do anything to highlight the significance or profundity of the film.

However,there were interesting exhibits made up for bloopers. As for example,a production still from the 1952 Bap Beti,which was the first and only film Asha Parekh did as a child artist. Or the delightful array of posters that show how poster-making,strangers to sophisticated digital technologies then,were exercises in wit and subtlety. The bold red of the Bandini poster broken in by a shot of just Nutan’s traumatised eyes staring back at you,or the kitschy hand painted Biraj Bahu poster,all of them are an art lover’s delight. What stands apart is probably the Naukri poster,again an outline of a man against red,made from collage of ‘situations vacant’ columns from newspapers. At times you wonder where thought got lost in the digital sophistry of posters today.