Sadgati- A Satyajit Ray Short Film

  Sadgati:

Today I had the time and opportunity to watch on YouTube, a Satyajit Ray movie made in 1981 for television. It is titled Sadgati, which means Deliverance. It is based on a story by Munshi Premchand. The cast includes well known actors like Smita Patil, Om Puri and Mohan Agashe. It is a short film that is only about 45 minutes long. 

The plot is about a low caste tanner who lives in dire poverty with his caring wife and sweet daughter. The man approaches a priest requesting him to give an auspicious time for his daughter’s betrothal. The priest exploits the poor man and forces him into free labor. The man succumbs to hunger, malnutrition ,heat and exhaustion while chopping wood for the priest. A sympathetic bystander alerts the tanner’s community to not move the body so police will investigate the incident and the priest will be found liable for the death. The priest is uncomfortable with his guilt and overnight hauls the corpse to a cemetery. The following day he sprinkles holy water at the site where the man had died in a gesture to purify the place. The film ends there. 

For some reason my mind anticipated that the tanner’s wife would pick the axe and kill the priest to avenge her husband’s death. But my estimation was wrong. The priest went scot free and the poor people got no justice.

It was a starkly realistic portrayal of society at large. The extortion and abuse of the poor and helpless, the hypocrisy of those in power, the lack of accountability in the offenders, and above everything else, the lack of empathy for fellow humans. 

It was this last part that was most appalling to watch in the movie. The priest is shown enjoying leisurely time in his home, feasting upon a big meal served by his wife, then taking a nap while the poor laborer has not had a morsel in his stomach all day and is asked to carry out several chores without being paid for them. Even after he dies, their emotions are not those of sadness for the lost life, but about how to save their own skins from being implicated for the death. They don’t want to hear the cries of the dead man’s wife. It’s all about themselves. About their lives going on unfettered. 

That is the kind of apathy all of us humans are capable of when we identify with our physical existence. Our survival, our comforts, our wellbeing matters above anything else. Even the death of a fellow human being does not move us when our future is at stake under the circumstances. What a pathetic way to survive! 

There was a lot that the movie conveyed. I am falling short of words to express all of it. 

Even with spiritual awakening when you know that everything you see is illusory, how can someone’s suffering not move you? Even as I was watching the movie I was becoming emotional and had to remind myself a few times that it is a movie, it is make believe, they are all actors. Sad part is that the movie was a portrayal of how things often are in real life. 

In the past, I have abruptly stopped watching difficult scenes in movies, even walked out of movie theaters when there was portrayal of lot of violence or suffering of any kind. My mind could not process it. I have actually fainted watching real life scenes of people suffering. But today as I was getting more and more uncomfortable seeing the protagonist’s exploitation I literally forced myself to sit through the entire movie and muster courage to witness hard truths rather than flee from them. To digest them and learn from them rather than avoid them. I may have to do this exercise again a few times until it teaches my brain to react appropriately to another person’s suffering. It is really not easy to be fully conscious and be witness to another person’s suffering. It requires a whole different degree of personal honesty, courage and compassion to intervene and minimize that ordeal that they are experiencing.

Imagine you are in the presence of another human being, one on one. How many times are we completely conscious of this human to human understanding and empathy as we face each other? How many times we disregard every other criteria that defines the other person and simply see ourselves and that person as human beings?

As I said earlier, the raw lessons that came for me today while watching the movie are difficult to put into words. They will remain with me for a long time. I hope they remain with me forever. Because they truly matter.