🎶Sadabahar Geet🎵 Thread # 3 || Members only || - Page 8

The Inheritance of Rosy’s ‘Shame’.

In the myriad narratives of Rosy’s story, the silence of her children is the most conspicuous.

No one can ascertain how much they actually know about their mother. “She didn’t talk about it with anyone. It is said that there was an agreement between husband and wife (not to talk about it),” says Kunnukuzhi. He says that Rosy had five children, three of whom have passed away. Her son Nagappan Pillai and her daughter Padmaja are alive. Kunnukuzhi spoke with Nagappan once. “He lives as a Nair, so doesn’t talk about this too much. I have talked with him on phone. Then he had agreed to everything. But now he won’t talk. Because he says it causes family problems.”

Madhu says that Rosy didn’t give her children too many details about her past. Also: “They do know what happened. But they don’t want to say that she was like this (a Dalit who was Malayalam cinema’s first leading actress).” Why? “Nagappan has married into a big Nair family from Alappuzha (Kerala). If he says that his mother was a Dalit, then the marriage would be in trouble. That is why he won’t talk about this. He doesn’t want to have anything to do with this. They (the children) grew up in different circumstances. They say: ‘Please leave us alone. Don’t involve us in any of this.’”

Vinu Abraham concurs: “In Nagercoil she could never reveal her real identity because she lived as a Nair. Her son doesn’t want to reveal that she was a Dalit, that a Dalit was his mother— he will never admit to that.”

Abraham says that when he asked Nagappan about Rosy all he had to say was: “I don’t know. I only know my mother was a Nair woman. That her name was Rosy, that she was a Pulaya lady, that she was an actress— all this I’m hearing from you. It is totally news to me.”

Yet, with the release of Celluloid, Nagappan is likely to be asked about Rosy again, many times. The secret shame of this Dalit who played an upper caste has been resuscitated, even after her death. Malayalam cinema’s first lady, a Pulaya driven to become a Nair, by a sequence of events that were set into motion by those who were enraged at her playing a Nair, has been resurrected on screen, 75 years after she had first appeared on it. And with this has been bared the scar of a wound that may have been inflicted long ago, but which refuses to disappear. Not with a change of name and caste. Not with the passage of time.

On Celluloid, again.

Kamal calls Celluloid a biopic that has been treated in places with fiction, “But I haven’t changed incidents or history. I have presented it as I know it. The portions of his (Daniel’s) life or Rosy’s life that we don’t know about— in such places I have fictionalized the account for the sake of the film.”

For Kamal, the film was about J. C. Daniel’s life. “The connection between Rosy and Daniel was over once the film’s shoot was complete,” he says. Also, the confusing details of Rosy’s story have stopped Kamal from delving deeper into it: “So we don’t know what the facts are. Maybe she didn’t want to tell people that she has acted in a film. I have taken what I can from history. I have never said that everything in the film is a real fact.”

Ajith Kumar A. S., a filmmaker and writer on Dalit issues, believes that Kamal’s excuse, about Rosy not being the main character of the film, does not hold because she is there for more than half of the film. “He has shown her, not just as an actress of the first Malayalam film but as a tragic character, treating her with extreme sympathy. She becomes representative of caste.”

Rosy’s submissive representation bothers Ajith: “She is shown as someone who feels that she doesn’t deserve anything. She is the only one shown bearing the burden of caste.” And Daniel becomes the uplifter. Ajith finds it particularly disturbing that the film looks at casteist issues as vices of the past and, in the same vein, conveniently casts Rosy in the mould of a tragic actress of the yesteryear.

Filmmaker Rupesh Kumar, another important voice on the Dalit discourse, agrees with Ajith: “Kamal in his cinematic text, through camera angles, through script representation, through directorial representation, through various cinematic techniques, effectively sidelines Rosy’s character.” An important question, according to Rupesh, would be how Kamal, as a male director, views Dalit femininity. “Considering the physical environment, the geographical environment and the working class atmosphere in which this Dalit woman lived, there is no way she would have been this submissive. That is my personal inference. If this cinematic text had been produced by a Dalit—male or female—her representation would have been very different.”

“I made it (Celluloid) the way I thought it would have been,” says Kamal. “It is not only Dalits who have the right to portray how she would have been. I did it from my point of view. If they object to that, it’s fine. I have nothing to say to that.”

***

In March this year, Director Devaprasad Narayanan has announced plans for another film on the life of P. K. Rosy.

Meanwhile, the commemoration of P. K. Rosy continues.

At the muhurtham (a ceremony held when the film went on the floor) of Celluloid, in September last year, Kerala’s Chief Minister Oommen Chandy said, “I have received a request to honour Malayalam film’s first actress Rosy by instating a film award and I am pleased to announce that the state government is all for it.”

The address by Jenny Rowena, Associate Professor at Miranda House, at the P. K. Rosy Memorial Lecture held in Jamia Millia Islamia, echoes the sentiments of Ajith and Rupesh Kumar. She said: “Mainstream discourses… enhance the progressiveness and castelessness of their present with this new and attractive museum piece called P. K. Rosy.” Rowena encouraged those present to understand the social context in which the harassment that Rosy faced arose— and to question whether anything has changed at all.

The debate and discussion that has emerged among filmmakers, academicians and writers, against the backdrop of Celluloid has propelled Rosy’s tragic personal story into becoming the nucleus of a larger sociological discussion that examines the interrelationship between caste, gender, society and cinema.

Cinema especially. That white screen on which ‘Rosy’ was projected, and which was torn down. Which made her an emblem for many things. Women’s rights. The caste struggle. And also, for cinema itself.

For films and film journalists and film historians have told and retold the story of Malayalam cinema’s first heroine in many voices, and many versions, which provide us with an array of narratives to choose from in order to reconstruct the life and times of Rosy.

Yet what continues to remain untold is Rosy’s story in her own words. The story she took with her to her grave. What stands out in the various reports, written and cinematic, on Rosy’s life, despite so many of these being produced before her death, is the absence of her voice, her version.

While the films on Rosy’s life were made after she had passed away, even the journalists who have researched and written about her—while she was alive—have never met their subject. More than three decades after Vigathakumaran released, Chellangatt Gopalakrishnan had gone looking for the place where Rosy’s house had stood. He had taken directions from J. C. Daniel. He found a hut near where her house had been. He spoke to the old couple in the hut. They said that they didn’t know what had become of her. He writes: “The old lady spat in hatred… ‘Must have died. What will you get from finding about that shameless woman?’ The woman got angry and went back into the hut.”

Even Kunnukuzhi, said to be the first person to know and write about Rosy, possibly the one who has researched and written on her the most, never met her in person. “At that time, there wasn’t much information on her or where she was,” he says. “It is only after the year 2000 that we came to know. We hadn’t known where in Tamil Nadu she was. I went four to five times and looked around in Nagercoil but couldn’t find her. We knew she had gone to Nagercoil but we got the complete details (of her address) very late.”

Kunnukuzhi found out finally from her nephew Krishnan, who had met her and stayed with her in Nagercoil. Kunnukuzhi, along with some others, had organized a memorial service for Rosy. “There was a seminar,” he says. “Krishnan came and spoke there and that is how the details started to come forth.”

Krishnan, not Rosy. For emblems do not speak. They are tired, and resigned.

Beautiful song from the movie Mamta. I was very touched when I saw the court scene in the movie

Originally posted by: DelusionsOfNeha

These songs make us miss a significant other we don't even have 😭 what say Ritu?

Cheers..

Originally posted by: DelusionsOfNeha

These songs make us miss a significant other we don't even have 😭 what say Ritu?

Imaginary significant other...YO MA'AM! 💔

Originally posted by: Viswasruti

There seems to be an adoption frenzy going on at this melody mansion!

One Mom with Two Daughters...with sibling rivalry, which was calmed down by a strict glare!

Ab sab theek hai...mainn accept ho chuki hun iss family mein...

Originally posted by: Savera84

Are you implying that our significant others keep singing sad songs?😒

Cheers..

No she's implying that even though we have literally no one (I'm assuming it's me and her) this song makes us go 'Missing my lover...' without having a lover. LMAO. 🤣

Originally posted by: Savera84

Are you implying that our significant others keep singing sad songs?😒

Cheers..

Idk anything about your SOs

Originally posted by: EuphoricDamsel

Imaginary significant other...YO MA'AM! 💔

Originally posted by: EuphoricDamsel

No she's implying that even though we have literally no one (I'm assuming it's me and her) this song makes us go 'Missing my lover...' without having a lover. LMAO. 🤣