Sex symbol to Phalke awardee

An obit of Kanan Devi by Ashok Mitra had him drawing an interesting contrast between two icons of Indian cinema — Satyajit Ray and Kanan Devi. Both died within three months of each other and at the same nursing home in Calcutta. Ray had contemporaneity. He received an Oscar and also a Legion of Honour. Kanan Devi, the Calcutta crowd decided, did not belong to that league. What they perhaps failed to realise is that Kanan had delinked herself from cinema and wanted to be tagged as an ordinary citizen. Somebody who was once the favourite poster girl of Indian cinema, she was successful in achieving that goal.

While the contrast is poignant, it also tells us something very important — Kanan Bala, also known as Kanan Devi or just Kanan, lived life on her own terms, and probably could be labelled as one of greatest women achievers in the history of the subcontinent. Mekhala Sengupta’s biography of Kanan Devi, Kanan Devi: The First Superstar of Indian Cinema, brings out the essence of her personality and life in a manner both informative and incisive.

First thing which strikes you is that the book has no forward. Sengupta tells me, on a Facebook chat, that this is by design. The author’s notes and introduction suffice in setting up the background to the story of Kanan Devi. The chapters which follow are in chronological order and are titled intelligently — “The Haze of a Lost Childhood”, “Breaking into the Sounds of Silence”, “The Making of a Superstar”, “The Tempestuous Tryst”, “At New Theatres from Kanan Bala to Kanan Devi”, “The Independent Years”, “Shrimati Pictures and life with Haridas”, and “Life After Films”.

The chapters are ensembles: Stories of struggle, pain, endurance and, most importantly, the zest to fight all odds. Kanan, we are told, never had it easy, but took the struggle in her stride. She also celebrated and relished her success, the pinnacle of which was the Dada Saheb Phalke Award. The chapters meld nicely too. They tell the tale of Kanan — from unanswered questions regarding her biological parents, to her demise — in an enticing manner.

In the process, Sengupta covers multiple milestones, which include Kanan’s childhood spent in extreme poverty in Howrah/Bhagalpur; her audition for cinema at Madan Theatres; her first film, Jaidev (1926); the transformation from a child artiste to an adult; her recording with HMV, Columbia label and with Megaphone; her various music teachers, including the likes of Allah Rakha (not to be confused with the tabla maestro of the same name), Anadi Dastidar (here Sengupta could have added that another of Dastidar’s students at that time was Meera Dev Burman, mother of R.D. Burman) and Kazi Nazrul Islam.

Her working relationships with singer-stars and music directors are well explored, from Rai Chand Boral, Pahari Sanyal, Panjak Mallick to K.L. Saigal. Kanan’s lively but platonic relationship with four male friends — who were collectively known as Chaturmukh — is one of the highlights of book, and paint a picture of a youthful, fun-loving individual who defied norms and spent many nights out on Pranab Roy’s (again, Sengupta could have given some background about famed writer-cum-lyricist Roy, a descendent of the Sabarna Roy Choudhury family of Behala, Calcutta) jalopy with the other members of Chaturmukh, an act which was not only taboo in the 1940s, but continues to be questioned even today by chief ministers of states. Kanan’s married life — from the little known one with Ashok Maitra to Haridas Bhattacharjee — is explicitly covered. The reportage is not only all-encompassing, it also goes beyond the obvious and incorporates nice- to-know details. The story of Kanan as a wife, mother and a doting daughter-in-law is a major takeaway from the book.

Kanan’s film career, which was the reason she was “The Kanan Devi”, is a thread omnipresent in most of the chapters. Her work and inter-personal relationship with the institutions that actually made her are fleshed out in detail. It includes Madan Theatres, Radha Film Company, New Theatres (NT), etc., and her work with Pramathesh Barua after both separated from NT is dealt with wit and kindness. The paradigm shift, from an actress-singer-sex symbol of great repute to a film producer, an activist for women’s rights and, most importantly, an incredibly compassionate and zealous human being who saved Jorasanko Thakurbari from demolition is not only well researched, but has enough depth to warrant multiple readings. Sengupta also does not mind being politically incorrect: she talks about the bitchiness that existed then, in an era we thought all men were saintly and women pious.

I do have some disagreement with Sengupta though. My major issue is with some numbers which have been thrown in rather nonchalantly. Sengupta is a banker, a successful one too, and one expected her to do due diligence when quoting numbers. Sadly, most are hearsay.

Archival is a word alien to the Indian, and the world of cinema and music boasts of stories which would be good fairy tale material. Some examples are — Ashok Kumar acting in 300 films by 1952, Kanan charging a record `1 lakh for a song, or she being paid `5 lakh for a film. One would expect Sengupta to check and re-check these, as the yardstick for financials in the 1940s had no room for six-digit salaries for a music director, forget a singer. There is also a tendency to eulogise, especially the works of Barua and Deboki Bose. While it is imprudent to comment on someone’s taste — one man’s ceiling can be the other man’s floor — it is a fact that both Barua and Bose are viewed more from the viewpoint of nostalgia than supremacy of their work.

One might do up some reading on Satyajit Ray and find that he was thoroughly dismissive of their cinema, for reasons legitimate. There are also some mistakes in cast and film names vis-à-vis songs, but these are cavils in an otherwise fabulous book, where the intent is honest and the effort, sincere.

The book has acknowledged many people, and some of them, like Dr Jyoti Prakash Guha, are stalwarts when it comes to old Bengali cinema. I would have been happy if Sengupta had thanked Professor Mahato of Bhagalpur too, who has been passing on details of Kanan’s Bhagalpur roots and Banaphool’s story about Kanan (revealing the same here is akin to a spoiler), including me and Dr Guha, and is an acknowledged expert on Bhagalpur and its history.

I met Kanan twice. The first time I was too young to realise the importance. The second and the last time was when I had accompanied an aunt to a Mahila Samiti meeting where Kanan had presided. She was touching 70 then, looked older than her age, spoke little, but one could sense the poise, the eye for detail, and the sheer sincerity of purpose. After reading the book, I felt Sengupta had pigeonholed the traits I had observed in the grand old lady, and a lot, lot more. There couldn’t have been a better tribute to Kanan in her birth centenary year (2016). Period.

Anirudha Bhattacharjee is a consultant with IBM and the co-author of R.D. Burman: The Man, the Music and Gaata Rahe Mera Dil with Balaji Vittal