New Delhi, Sept. 13 -- In 2002, when Bratya Basu's play 'Winkle Twinkle', directed by Debesh Chattopadhyay, created much hullabaloo on the Bengali stage, the CPI(M) was in power in Bengal. The TMC was the opposition, and the BJP was almost non-existent in the state. 24 years later, the political landscape has been turned on its head. The BJP is in power in Bengal for the first time; the Left Front is barely surviving with just one seat in the Assembly and the TMC, now in the Opposition, is itself divided into two factions. Time, indeed, is a powerful warrior and a weapon. Srijit Mukherji's 'Winkle Twinkle', his adaptation of Basu's acclaimed 2002 play, shows that time changes everything.
Sabyasachi Sen (Ritwik Chakraborty), who disappeared from police custody in 1976, wakes up 26 years later. It's 2002. Sabyasachi initially struggles to understand the world around him, but what unsettles him most is the political ideology of his son, Indra (Parambrata Chatterjee), which is completely opposite to his own.
Tennessee Williams, in 'The Glass Menagerie', wrote that "Time is the longest distance between two places." That line seems particularly apt here. The distance between Sabyasachi and Indra is ideological, emotional and generational. Indra finds it difficult to call him 'Baba' and addresses him by his name. Sabyasachi, meanwhile, is taken back to another time, to the moment when his own father discovered that he was a communist and he, too, began addressing his father by his first name. Time has come full circle.
Sabyasachi is, of course, our modern-day Rip Van Winkle. He wakes up to discover that the political and social world he knew has been fundamentally altered. Now, Bengal has moved from the Left towards the Right and the political realities that Basu captured in 2002 have changed themselves. Yet the ideological clash within families remains remarkably familiar.
I caught a glimpse of that clash just four months ago. Even today, when friends and family gather, political and ideological differences can quickly become the centre of conversation. We may disagree about almost everything, but what 'Winkle Twinkle' makes clear is that disagreement itself is not the problem. The real question is whether we can debate, question and dissent.
In the penultimate sequence, Indra stands alone on a flyover, exhausted, fighting a battle with himself. He sees something of himself in Sabyasachi and realises that he is slowly moving away from the ideals he grew up with. At the same time, he understands the harsh realities of the present. Time has changed, and the world around him constantly tells him that the age of ethics and idealism is over. The conflict isn't simply between father and son or Left and Right. It's between what one believes and what one must become to survive. Dissent is perhaps the true yardstick of a healthy society. Today, a person's political belief or ideology often becomes the first thing by which that person is defined. But perhaps political identity shouldn't be the yardstick. The ability to dissent should be.
The film is also packed with some of the finest performances seen in recent Bengali cinema. Ritwik is extraordinary as Sabyasachi. Watch him wake up on the flyover in 2025. Or the scene where he encounters Anashua Majumdar as his older Rajlokkhi and then peeks from behind to look at the younger Rajlokkhi, played by Sohini Sarkar. There is an almost childlike wonder in those moments. 'Na Thaka Priyo' is a beautiful song about love travelling across time and one that is likely to stay with viewers.
I liked the way Srijit weaves the love story between Sabyasachi and Rajlokkhi. It's refreshing because it isn't built around the vocabulary of contemporary romance: likes, shares, messages and instant connections. Here, love is held together by shared ideals. Their politics doesn't merely coexist with their love; in many ways, it brings them together.
I was in school when 'Winkle Twinkle' was staged in 2002. I watched the play much later on 'YouTube'. Watching Srijit's film now, what stayed with me was this idea of consciousness, the uncomfortable awareness of who we are becoming.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.