There are stories that remain with us even as we grow older. Stories that in our childhood were bedtime stories, mealtime stories, and when we had our way, were all-time stories. Sometimes we are taken by surprise to re-discover a familiar story in another story, in another narrative medium, transmuted to a far-away land fairy tale, a ramlila manch, or the cinematic screen. When we do, it is like meeting a long lost friend, someone we’d left behind in the back alleys of sepia-tinted memories, yet someone who has stayed on our minds and in our hearts.
The fable of the hare and the tortoise—that wonderful tale with multiple maxims—has oft been transcreated by sundry writers, playwrights and filmmakers where more often than not, the fable became the governing metaphor of the story. And so, voila, we have Sai Paranjpe’s delightful film Katha.
However, to say that it is just a variant of the hare and tortoise fable is reductive to say the least. We would then, like the structuralists, be generally stating that it falls under such and such category of narratives. And that might be self-defeating to the whole exercise of writing this piece, which attempts to look at the film through the lens of binary oppositions, of semiotics and deconstruction theory.
By semiotics, we mean a domain of investigation that explores the nature and functions of signs as well as the systems and processes that lead to meaning making, expression and representation. It springboards from the theories of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, who felt that in order to understand how we extract meaning from a sign, we need to understand the structure of signs. To help us do this, he categorised signs in terms of the relationship between the structures. Saussure, who was primarily interested in language, defines a (linguistic) sign as dyadic— a combination of a signifier (sound image) and a signified (concept). The relationship between them enables us to derive meaning.
Semiotic analysis is just one of many techniques which may be used to explore sign practices. Signs in various media are not alike—different types may need to be studied in different ways. Similarly, the distinctions between and within signs are culturally significant and indicate the values and beliefs of different cultural groups. We shall look at the construction of an internal sign system within Katha and how it generates certain cultural and psychological patterns. Incidentally, we also see how Sai Paranjpe makes it a form of social criticism.
French philosopher Jacques Derrida contends that all human thought and narratives reflect a desire for a centre or originary guarantee of all meanings, ‘metaphysics of presence.’ This ‘logocentrism’ or presupposition of an absolute source emerges in conceptual oppositions such as nature/culture, good/evil, mind/matter, positive/negative, male/female, identity/difference, and artist/audience. Derrida says that contemplation upon these seemingly balanced dichotomies will reveal them to be not merely oppositions but also hierarchical distinctions, where the first term is conceived as anterior, essential, central, culturally favourable, the norm and is privileged over the second— seen as a complication, derivation or semblance of the first and, hence, marginalised. The second term is always put in a position of being a cross-grained version of the first. Thus, evil is the lack of good, error is a distortion of truth, and difference is the obstruction of identity.
All the signifiers in Katha hinge on Saussurian contrasts, the most important being the male protagonists. We are made to understand characters as relative to other characters. Rajaram (Naseeruddin Shah) embodies the tortoise of the fable. He is Everyman—the quintessential middle class Indian. He lives in a chawl, a place with little privacy, where people chew datoon sticks, play cards and gossip in their leisure time, run errands for their neighbours, participate in bhajan mandlis, festivals and weddings. “Chaal mein to sabhi rishtedaar hain,” says Rajaram.
His house has all the paraphernalia that we can readily identify in middle class homes from the seventies and eighties. Rajaram is naïve, caring, loves his parents, runs errands for his neighbours, and has a decent ‘white collared job’ that accords him respect and marks him as an eligible bachelor. He shies away from the women in his office but nurses a soft corner for Sandhya (Deepti Naval), also living in the same chawl. His singular ambition in life is to be head clerk in his office one day. The nameplate he nails on his door the day he bags a permanent post is a metaphor of all his aspirations. His approach to a career is summed up by the question he poses to his friend Vaasu (Farouque Shaikh), “Tum kahin tike kyon nahin? B.A. M.A. kar lo.” His only vice in life is: “Maine beer bhi piya hai”; and the virtue that puts him in trouble is the importance he attaches to friendship: “Main dost se paise kaise le sakta hoon?”
Pitted against Rajaram is his old college chum Vaasudev or Vaasu, who is everything the rabbit denotes in the fable — smug, full of himself, glib in his speech and suave in his manner; a compulsive liar and flatterer who will go to any extent to further his own ends. The space Vaasu aspires to be in is paradigmatically opposite to Rajaram’s — his boss’ house, which flaunts the bric-a-brac of affluence — crystal ware, rugs, lanterns, lamps, modern art and the boss’s sensuous trophy wife.
There are two broad spaces for the action: home and outside. The restaurants, cafes, clubs, nightclubs, and rendezvous spots that mark the outside all speak the same visual language of elegance and sophistication, and clearly mark differences of class — a way of discerning one from the other. Vaasu wears trendy clothes, knows his cocktails, makes small talk in high society soirees with élan, and aspires to be what he isn’t. Temporariness and flippancy mark everything in his life from his numerous short-stinted jobs to his dalliances with women. He spins trouble for everyone even as he spins his keys, his ‘sudarshan chakra’.
Colour has a significant role in drawing differences between the actors and the way they perceive others. Rajaram is always dressed in whites and Vaasudev in bright, gaudy colours. While Sandhya is femininity incarnate in a pink sari in the ‘Tum sundar ho’ song with Vaasu, she is visualised by Rajaram draped in the purity of white in the ‘Maine tum se kuch nahin maanga’ song. Both men prefer to speak in languages which are also played off against each other. The nameplate episode, where Sandhya nails Rajaram’s nameplate in Hindi, effectively brings this out. “Saab ki bhasha main rob hai, rubab hai,” she says of English. Vaasu keeps harping on the desi and ghaati tea Rajaram dishes out to him where tea is a metaphor for the mundaneness, and lack of sophistication and affluence in life. Interestingly, the names Rajaram and Vaasudev are rich in the cultural connotations of the mythological figures of Ram and Krishna: noble/ignoble or the standard good/bad dichotomy seems to be at work here, where “alls well that ends well” is usually synonymous with “good vanquishes evil.”
At first thought, we may critique Paranjpe for giving us a mutually exclusive binary pair. For not only do they limit our understanding of ideas but they are also insidious tools, used to create neat, understandable categories, which offer no latitude for grey areas. |
