Ghosts from the past

Two things prompted me to revisit the Abrar Alvi-Guru Dutt classic Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam this week. One was the release of Tigmanshu Dhulia’s Sahib Biwi aur Gangster, a reasonably well-made film that takes some of the character types from the original and recasts them in a contemporary north Indian hinterland noir. The other appetite-whetter was an excerpt from Vinod Mehta’s 1972 biography of Meena Kumari — the chapter in question is mainly an analysis of Kumari’s iconic performance as the Choudhury haveli’s tormented Chhoti Bahu, driven to alcohol in a last-ditch effort to make her husband stay with her.

Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam, based on a novel by the Bengali writer Bimal Mitra, is one of Hindi cinema’s most striking treatments of a transitional period in India’s social history — the dying days of the zamindar class, its decline (and its continuing profligacy in the face of that decline) contrasted with the rise of a working class that is riding on education and initiative. This contrast is presented mainly through the character of Bhoothnath, a young lower-class man who becomes confidante and emotional ghulam to Chhoti Bahu, while being both fascinated and repulsed by what he sees of life in the mansion.

The story operates on many levels, keenly observing class equations as well as the responsibilities thrust on women in traditional settings. Chhoti Bahu is doubly trapped, stifled as an individual and saddled with maintaining the family’s “honour” (something that doesn’t concern the menfolk who spend their nights outside with dancer-prostitutes). Her existence is necessarily one of extremes: when cast as the virtuous lady, which is her principal function, she is nothing less than Lakshmi incarnate; but even a minor transgression puts her so far beyond redemption that her fate is to be murdered and buried without ceremony in a hidden grave.

It’s instructive to contrast her with the film’s other main female character Jaba (played by Waheeda Rehman), who is allowed to have a mind of her own — and show different facets — without being judged for it. Educated, playful and moody, given to bantering and flirting with Bhoothnath but also capable of making a steely decision at a time of personal tragedy, Jaba is alive in a way that Chhoti Bahu isn’t. And this is one reason why I can’t help thinking of Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam as a ghost story, though its narrative is presented in realist terms.

There’s a morbid scene near the end involving skeletal remains beneath the ruined house, but even when Chhoti Bahu and the haveli are both “alive”, there is something otherworldly about them. The mansion — gloomy and claustrophobic — is like a purgatory for restive souls, from the nearly deranged badi bahu who washes her hands obsessively to the watch-keeper who shouts that time no longer has any meaning in this place. Chhoti Bahu herself is a wandering spirit and her scenes with Bhoothnath seem almost to be set in a time continuum, with past and future in uneasy but sympathetic collusion. Their relationship can be seen as a brief encounter between two people who belong to different dimensions.

But of course, the past never really loses its grip on the present; in the film’s very last shot, we see that the middle-aged Bhoothnath is still haunted, perhaps marked for life, by Chhoti Bahu’s memory. Like another major film made in another part of the world that same year — John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance — Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam is a reminder that however much we progress or change, the shadow of a bygone world is not easily escaped.

Jai Arjun Singh is a Delhi-based writer