Putulnaacher Itikotha (The Puppet's Tale)

Shashi (Abir Chatterjee) is not the ‘hero’ we’re used to seeing in mainstream cinema. He comes off as someone perpetually irate at the people around him, but it’s probably his powerlessness that gives way to his anger. The one and only doctor in a tiny hamlet in West Bengal, despite his best attempts, Shashi is never able to meet his own expectations. In the film’s first scene – he discovers a dead acquaintance, killed by a bolt of lightning. The man was on his way to find an educated groom for his teen daughter. More than anger, Shashi is disappointed how a life is lost in search of a 10th-pass prospect.

Suman Mukhopadhyay’s Putulnacher Itikatha or The Puppet’s Tale (part of the Big Screen Competition at International Film Festival Rotterdam this week) begins with a man on a boat, the twilight glistening in the swampy conditions surrounded by rural Bengal of the late 1930s. On the boat is Dr Shashi Bhuto (Abir Chatterjee), encountering his ancestral village and with it, death. “Everyone must face death someday”, his voiceover drones, insisting that he doesn’t, therefore, mourn. He lives a double life, one in his physical manifestation, as a doctor in a village in pre-Independence India, populated by people with little to no education and beset by all kinds of issues, from religious dogma, superstitions and lack of access to basic services amidst war in Europe and freedom struggle. His other life is in his head, his future he dreams of in a city, maybe London, as the affluent, posh doctor he wishes to be. In many ways, The Puppet’s Tale — adapted from Manik Bandopadhyay’s 1936 novel of the same name — is a curious film. It can be placed in the context of a particular time in India as well as a particular period in Indian cinema. It is set during a transitional, commotion-filled phase in modern Indian history — less than a decade for independence from British rule—with the movement touching every corner of the country. The film intentionally refrains from registering any of that. In cinema terms, it is almost two decades before Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali, which itself is a certain rural time capsule of new India, followed by forced migration towards busier parts of the country. Here, Shashi’s existential crisis takes precedence over India’s own. That’s not to say he is unbothered by the condition of a country that is just about incubating. His existential crisis eats away at him, he holds dreams of moving to London to be the doctor that he wants to be instead of toiling away treating the local villagers who are sceptical about his methods.