Nagarkirtan

Porimal (Riddhi Sen) is a woman trapped in a man’s body. Unable to cope with the trauma of being ‘betrayed’ by his teacher Subhash-da (Indrasish Roy), Porimal runs away from home and joins a ghetto of eunuchs as Puti and sings at traffic signals to earn money. There he falls in love with Madhu (Ritwick Chakraborty), a delivery boy with a Chinese restaurant who moonlights as a flautist in kirtans. The love blossoms even as Puti dreams of raising money required for the sex reassigned surgery. But will society support their dreams?

Love has no gender. It is like the exuberance of tiny droplets that flow across electric wires only to occasionally dissolve into a whole. The lucky droplets unite. The unlucky others, pregnant with pain and anguish, suffer an emotional miscarriage. They either drop off the wire or wait in isolation to evaporate while the world around is happily romancing the petrichor in the air.

They are like the Putis and Madhus of the world whose heart-wrenching songs of love and loss remain mostly unsung and largely unheard. On rare occasions, their dirge echoes — as they have — in Kaushik Ganguly’s multiple National Award-winning Nagarkirtan. They make you feel helpless and empty. Finally, they leave you hopelessly in love again with the yearning that empathy and acceptance don’t remain rare virtues.

Evoking such reactions is tough. Writer-director Kaushik Ganguly surpasses all his earlier 21 films to present this cinematic ballad. Riddhi Sen is so natural as Puti/Porimal that he almost succeeds in delivering a masterclass in acting. From acquiring a feminine gait to expressing a gamut of emotions, he effortlessly slips into a National Award-winning performance where he is ably supported by fellow-winners Gobinda Mandal and Ram Rajak on costumes and makeup respectively.

What, however, is no less tough is the performance of Ritwick Chakraborty. Unlike Riddhi, whose cross-dresser looks help in character-building, Ritwick’s arsenal only has his own craft to portray the confusion of a man in love with a woman trapped in a man’s body. Complementing the duo is transgender Shankari Mondal Naskar in the role of a guruma. Without any acting background, Shankari gets rid of all inhibitions and courageously and confidently is just herself in front of the camera. Then, there is Bidipta Chakraborty. Her character brings the much-needed empathy in the film’s canvas dotted with ruthless voyeurs, who in the name of entertainment, exploit but not rescue a person trapped in the most inhuman situation.

Yet, the film is not without glitches. It’s difficult to ascertain the reason behind the English title – The Eunuch and The Flute Player. Riddhi – in love with Ritwick – is gay and not a eunuch per se. Besides, he wouldn’t ever find easy acceptance in Shankari’s hijra ghetto if his gay identity is disclosed right at the start. The subtitling too needed more attention as much as some of the preachy dialogues on the third gender that have been given to Manabi Bandopadhyay who plays herself in the film. The repeated use of Sri Chaitanya’s idol has also raised some unanswered questions about spiritual and gender studies.

But what still makes the film poignant is the top notch work of cinematographer Sirsha Ray, cerebral editing by Subhajit Singha and non-indulgent music direction by Prabuddha Banerjee. Consider the lovemaking scene where Madhu sees Puti undressed for the first time. Instead of being a tacky sexual encounter, this scene turns into an aesthetic passion-play with a tactile background score reaching a crescendo.

Timelines run parallel and yet, the editing avoids confusion. Emotions run high but thanks to restrained use of silences and theme music that intelligently merges the esraj with the piano-accordion, the music is miles ahead of the headache-inducing orchestral pieces passed off so often in the name of background score in contemporary Tollywood. What’s striking is that the score doesn’t bank on the kirtans to take forward the story.

Finally, Nagarkirtan doesn’t remain just another love story anymore. Incorrigible droplets threaten to brim over as a golf ball-sized lump of pain remains stuck in the throat long after the end credits have rolled. A few droplets evaporate. The rest trickle down as Ritwick’s hauntingly disturbing transformation in the last scene leaves the audience on a cathartic high.