Janala

Janala,written and scripted by Dasgupta himself,is about Bimal who works in an old-age home for men in Purulia.

Written by Shoma A. Chatterji

Mumbai | March 4, 2011 07:36 PM IST

5 min read

Janala,written and scripted by Dasgupta himself,is about Bimal (Indraneel Sengupta) who works in an old-age home for men in Purulia. He has a live-in relationship with a pretty young girl Mira (Swastika Mukherjee) who works in a call-centre. Once,instead of returning from work to Kolkata,he takes a bus running in the other direction to land at Jhumurpur,a small town he grew up in. He visits the school he studied in and is sad about the window in the classroom he spent four long years in high school. So he suddenly decides to gift a window to the school.

Janala is about this strange journey of an ordinary young man who forgets everything when nostalgia takes over and begins to run his life. There are other windows hidden behind the physical window Bimal orders from the local furniture merchant at a cost he cannot afford. One such window is the directors sarcastic comment on the irony of giving that worries the giver when no takers are ready to accept his gift. Another metaphorical window opens up as Bimal runs around desperately to find a taker for his beautiful window for which he has willingly sacrificed the faith his fiancée had placed in him and thus destroys the relationship forever. He loses his job for remaining absent without notice and it is a job that Mira helped him get.

The other windows are bytes of social realities that underscore the decadence in human values and the travesty of faith that is a part of our lives today. Mira is constantly harassed by foreigners who are either trying to make a pass at her over the phone or insulting her for being an Indian. An inmate of the old-age home laments that this year too his son will not come to see him from the US. The school board refuses to accept the window built at a cost of Rs.25,000(!) because for the members,it is a gigantic blow to their ego as Bimal has decided to make the gift without having consulted them. The meeting reveals the window to the ugly politics where money changes hands under the table and party favours take precedence over school welfare. In other words,they would have preferred cold cash! No Purulia resident is prepared to accept the window free because,we hardly have a roof over our heads so where will we place this huge window? The furniture supplier extorts a massive sum for the window when he senses Bimals desperation to get it done and his ignorance about market rates for wood and furniture!

The truck driver (Shankar Chakraborty) Bimal has befriended and who takes him from door to door with the window,advises him to gift the window to the local health centre as its windows are broken.

The boyhood scenes flashing through the grown-up Bimals mind are a high-point of the film. The poet in Dasgupta surfaces when an adolescent Bimal,oblivious to the geography lesson in class,looks out of the window and sees the waves of the sea flooding into the classroom. The snatch-and-run thief (Tapas Pal) who steals anything that catches his fancy but gives them away at will or tries to sell them off at the local market,is supposedly one of Dasguptas poetic metaphors he loves so much. But despite Pals wonderful performance,it fails to blend into the narrative or the message.

Indraneil as Bimal is very convincing and credible in his naiveté,his amorality and his irresponsibility. Swastika gives a powerful performance as Mira. Unlike his usual

oeuvre,Dasgupta has presented scenes of physical intimacy between Bimal and Mira without allowing the camera to titillate like a voyeur. Sunny Josephs cinematography caressingly pans across the picturesque expanse of Purulia,though it is dry and not as green as other pockets of the state. Biswadeb Dasguptas music blends into the random ambience of Bimals haphazard journey into the unknown and the uncertain. Dasgupta handles this very original script with his low-key,feather-light treatment,underplaying the satire and making it more intense but only for those who are able to peep behind the physical window and read into the hidden ones.

VERDICT: ****

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The film deserves four stars – for direction,story,acting and cinematography.

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