Remembering Devdas

Who does not know about the Shah Rukh Khan, Aishwarya Rai, Madhuri Dixit starrer Bollywood  blockbuster DEVDAS based on Sharat Chandra Chatterjee's Bengali Novel of same title where Shah Rukh Khan played the lead role of Devdas? But had it

been the first time that  Devdas of Sharat Chandra was transformed into another form of captivance, from literary words to  words of pictures, captured in the tiny frames of celluloid. If we look back into the history of Indian Cinema Devdas was first filmed in the year 1935 in Bengali. The lead role of Devdas was played by a newbie in the arena of Indian Film Industry who changed the face of Indian Cinema. This aficionado gentleman was no one else but Pramathesh Baruah who hailed from Gauripur of

Assam. A 1924 Bachelor of Science, graduated from Presidency College of Calcutta, had his schooling done at Hare School, Calcutta, was born on October 24, 1903 to Raja Prabhat Chandra Baruah of the Gauripur royal family, the Zamindar of Gauripur of Assam. After completion of graduation he went to Europe where he got his maiden exposure to film making. Returning home he served  as legislator of Assam Legislative Assembly in1928. He was selected once again in 1930 and was offered a ministerial post which he refused to accept and joined the Swaraj Party of Chittaranjan Das. But this gentleman who already had the taste of the exotic world of film making left the field of politics and finally moved to Kolkata to begin a career in film industry. Pramathes Barua's father Raja Prabhat Chandra Baruah was much annoyed at this act of his son. By then Dhirendranath Ganguly, Dada Saheb Falke Award winner, popularly known as DG had to leave Hyderabad following order of Nizam who was enraged because of portrayal of a Muslim princess who fell in love with a Hindu in the film Razia Begum. DG was the distributor of this film. Returning to Kolkata DG formed his third film production company British Dominion Films. Pramathesh Barua invested some amount in this company. Pramathesh Barua went to London to learn more about movie making. Moved to Paris for procuring lighting equipments and then came back to Kolkata to start his film production company Barua Pictures Limited. Here DG also joined Pramathesh Barua. It's first major production was "Aparadhi" in 1931, followed by another film "Bhagyalakshmi",1932. Aparadhi, directed by Debaki Bose, starred Pramathesh Barua. In Bhagyalakshmi Pramathesh played the role of a villain. But before late both DG and Pramathesh joined B.N. Sircar's New Theatres.Devdas, a romantic film based on Saratchandra Chatterjee’s novel was a production of New Theatres in Bengali  in 1935. It was directed by Pramathesh Baruah and he himself played the role of Devdas. His third wife Jamuna Baruah played the role of Parvati(Paro). It was a He then did a remake of the same film in Hindi with Kundanlal Saigal in the lead role in 1936.

This Hindi version of Devdas became incredibly successful throughout India and Pramathesh Baruah became one of the top notch Indian Cinema Directors. Devdas essentially brought revolution to Indian Cinema and changed the look of social melodrama in cinemas with his unique treatment towards it. In Devdas he did not follow the contemporarily prevalent style of presentation and kept off the trend of extreme theatricality in acting and dialogue delivery. Rather he opened up a new avenue of natural style of acting impervious of stereotype melodrama. Pramathesh Baruah had exposure to European naturalistic trends in cinemas and that perhaps had been influencing factor to adopt a style of  dialogue which is somewhat like speaking in real life. Thus Pramathesh Baruah had been able to make Devdas a decent tragedy.Devdas was released on 26 April 1935 at Chitra Talkies. It was an instant all time Box Office Hit and it turned Pramathesh into a star overnight. Pramathesh created the climax of Devdas in a different way which was not present in Saratchandra's origin novel. Having seen Devdas Sarat Chandra said to Pramathesh -"It appears that I was born to write Devdas because you were born to recreate it  in cinema."

This legendary film director and actor and one of successful great Assamese died in the year 1951 at the age of 48 making Devdas a folk hero. He said-"No one has the right to live beyond the age of 50".

 

When Speculations Deceive You

 The Visitors Story

Naranarayan Setu over river Brahmaputra at Jogighopa

     
Speculation has never been a new thing to human character. Be it about a situation or a person, a stranger or a place and anything else. About three years or more I had to pick up some young people from Mumbai at Lokapriya Gopinath Bordoloi International Airport, Guwahati to my residence at Bongaigaon Refinery Township, Dhaligaon. On their way back to Mumbai they were routed to Guwahati, the state capital of Assam through NH37 on the south bank of mighty Brahmaputra. A trip via this rout offers  eye catching lush green landscapes of the places and small towns by NH37 with distant views of blue hills of Meghalaya. The travellers were mesmerized and astounded looking at the serene locations that they passed by. Their immediate reaction was "Oh one can easily take food on the road just by cleaning with a simple air blow through one's mouth". Appreciably the people living by this NH37, belong to various tribes like Bodos, Rabhas and Garos,  have  good civic sense.   One will not even see cow dung or animal droppings of anykind let alone human excreta. Contrary to this in many parts of Odisha, Northern and Southern India  people defecating by the roadsides is a common sight. 

 

During many tour across the length and breath of India by Bus and Train I had to battle with arguements during conversation with many co-passengers of other regions of my country regarding their misconception about Assam and North-East India at large and then convince them correcting their views about Assam and places in North-East India



A cultural rally

with facts and figures. But this time everything went wrong  and the only young lady confessed honestly who came with the vanity of being Mumbaian during the farewell session. She broke down on the point of separation, it was only a three nights affair, and burst into tears and said-" Aunty I was wrong.I could not even imagine that you, people of Assam, could be so beautifully loving, caring and above all kindhearted." Another guy said- " We knew that Assam is famous only for Tea and Rhinos and full of jungles. But there are lot more.

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(To be continued in next episode.)

Glimpses of Gandhiji's Assam Visit

 

Mahatma Gandhi visited Assam four times in his life. His first visit to this

state was in the year 1921. His subsequent visits to Assam were in 1926, 1934 and 1946. Till that Assam was in its regional cocoon. Gandhiji's visit helped it to pull itself out of the cocoon and its bonding with the national movement got strengthened. Gandhiji's second visit to Assam in the year 1926 bears a great significance. That year Congress session was scheduled at Pandu in Guwahati on the bank of river Brahmaputra. The entire pandal erected was to be covered by only khadi cloths. For this reason 10000 yards of Khadi cloth were necessary. Families of  four neighbouring districts of Assam were assigned the job of producing the special quality of Khadi Cloth required for the pandal and that was achieved in time. This was the first time in the history of Congress that the main pandal was covered by Khadi cloths. This motivated the Congress workers to set a trend to construct pandals of all future Congress sessions out of Khadi.During his last visit to Assam in 1946 Gandhiji inaugurated the Assam branch of Kasturba Gandhi National Memorial Trust and a Gram Sevikas Vidyalaya. This is the only branch in India that was inaugurated by Mahatma Gandhi himself.

While in Guwahati, Gandhiji was overwhelmed by the beauty of Brahmaputra. He compared  Brahmaputra to Thames of London in superiority and said that he had seen the glittering scenes of Thames in London but he could not recall any scene like the one sitting on the bank of which he was writng the notes.
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