Speaking up for the voiceless

Goutam Ghose’s Raahgir takes the veteran filmmaker back to the social terrain he explored in the first few films of his career

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Saibal Chatterjee

Veteran Bengali director Goutam Ghose’s Raahgir (The Wayfarers), his first Hindi film since Yatra (2006), is a significant addition to a varied and robust body of work. It marks a return to his creative rootsin spite of being a clear departure from the tone and texture of his early films made in the 1980s.

In a career spanning nearly 40 years, Ghose has run a wide gamut as a filmmaker – from the experimental Telugu-language Maa Bhoomi, a striking blend of fiction and documentary realism, to Yatra, a music-laden drama starring Rekha as a mujra exponent reduced to dancing to popular tunes to keep up with the times.

After all these years, the first three films that Ghose made – Maa Bhoomi (1980), Dakhal (Bengali, 1981) and Paar (Hindi, 1984) – remain his finest achievements. These films, which document the lives of the poorest of the poor and their intense struggle for dignity, continue to consistently figure on the best of Indian cinema list.

Ramaiah, the landless Telangana farmer fighting oppression in Maa Bhoomi; Andi, the nomadic scavenger struggling to protect her land in Dakhal; and Naurangia, the labourerwho turns violent in the face of grave provocation in Paar are all engaged in a bitter battle against atrocities heaped upon them by the powerful and merciless who derive their unbridled clout from an unjust system.

Inherent in the manner in which the three tales unfold is both simmering anger and a deep, debilitating sense of despair.In Raahgir, Ghose, now 69 years old, is back among the most marginalized people of rural India through a story that, in contrast to the films mentioned above, underscores the goodness of the human spirit amid crushing poverty and deprivation.

The spirit that drives Raahgir is markedly different from the one that informed Maa Bhoomi, Dakhal and Paar. The plaintive tone of the film is tempered with profound humanism mirrored in the solidarity that the dispossessed build among themselves as a defence mechanism.

Raahgir, which looks for beauty and brightness amid an air of gloom, brings together three of the finest screen actors of our times – Adil Hussain, TillotamaShome and Neeraj Kabi – in a restrained drama that probes the ramifications that privation has on individuals who are condemned to exist at subsistence level.

However, the screenplay, written by Ghosh and Jagannath Guha, goes beyond the hardships of the protagonists to examine the ways in which they hold on to the core of kindness of strangers who are united by hunger.

Shome plays Nathuni, a mother of two.Hunger stares her, her children and her paralytic husband (Onkar Das Manikpuri) in the face. With no food left in the house, she heads to the nearest town in search of employment. “My family is used to being hungry,” she laments but points out that her children do get a meal in school.

Hussain is cast as Lakhua, a perennial nomad, a loner without a family.He too needs work. The desperate mother/wife and the cheerful former folk performer meet on the way and a bond develops between them. “It’s all destiny,” he says after he has finished sharing his story with Nathuni. His fatalism echoes that of Nathuni’s husband Dharma who, earlier in the film, who believes “this is my destiny”.

As they make their way towards their destination, the sky turns dark and it begins to rain. Nathuni and Lakhua run into Chopatlal (Neeraj Kabi), whose van is stuck in the mud. Nobody stops to help him. Nathuni and Lakhua do when they realise that Chopatlal is transporting an old beggar-couple to a hospital for urgent medical attention. Their shared plight brings them closer to each other and humanity triumphs.

But the act of solidarity makes no difference to Nathuni and Lakhua’s plight. They still must find a way to make a little money to see them through the next few days of their lives.

Raahgir, filmed in Jharkhand, offers views of the lush, panoramic landscape that the two protagonists trudge across. The shifting moods of nature reflect the uncertainty that Lakhua and Nathuni face, but the sun does break through the darkness occasionally to light up the environment. They live in hope despite the odds stacked against them.