Teaching tones to ESL/EFL Learners: Music and Cartoons as Instruments

Surya Bhan

-Surya Bhan

Abstract

Whenever English is taught, the teaching of acceptable pronunciation becomes an essential part of the curriculum. Pronunciation comprises, besides the articulation of vowel and consonant sounds, the enunciation of right intonation patterns too. Sentence stress and tones have to be rightly highlighted. In this context, this paper recommends cartoons and music as teaching techniques to raise the learner’s awareness of different tones and the attitudinal meanings associated with them.

Keywords: intonation, tone, pitch, music, tetra chord, cartoon strips.

Introduction

Intonation is an integral part of any language and has a major communicative function. Hence, it forms an essential part of the teaching of a second or foreign language. It adds a great deal of additional information including the speaker’s attitude, to the verbal structure. If the intonation pattern of one language is used while speaking another language, it may convey an unintended and even wrong message. In this context, I find both music and cartoons very helpful in teaching tones and their attitudinal nuances, especially to students with intermediate proficiency. I use music to raise my learners’ awareness of the tones first, and then, with cartoons, I familiarize them with the attitudinal function of intonation.  

Many phoneticians refer to intonation as melody in speech (O’Connor and Arnold: 1973, Wells: 2006). Halliday considers it to be a network of three choices viz. tonality, tonicity and tone (1967). We convey our thoughts in chunks of speech and these meaningful groups of words are called tone groups. Dividing a long utterance into tone groups is tonality.  In each tone group, there is usually one word, which is important for conveying the message.  The accented syllable of the word, which has to be highlighted, is the tonic syllable, and placing it correctly in a tone group is tonicity. 

Example: I’m leaving for America (the second syllable in America is highlighted) 

Having located the tonic syllable, a pitch movement has to be initiated on that particular syllable.  Tone refers to the choice of tone to be used – either a falling tone, a rising tone or a combination of the two tones.

Example:  I’m leaving for America (a statement with a falling tone)

Out of the network given by Halliday, teaching tonality and tonicity do not pose as much of a problem as does the teaching of tones.  In this context, this paper deals with teaching tones. The concept of tone is the closest to music or melody that these phoneticians talk about. The tone is an essential ingredient of a spoken language. Tench puts it succinctly when he observes that often what matters more is how people say something rather than what they say (Tench, 1996). 

The Techniques

To draw the attention of the students to the concept of pitch, I asked them, if they had seen Robot (an Indian movie) and encouraged them to compare the robot’s speech to human speech. This highlighted the fact that the feature of rise and fall in pitch is an essential part of human speech. To reiterate the significance of intonation, I read two sets of interviews between an employer and a candidate using the same dialogue.  In one set, I used the right tones to convey enthusiasm, eagerness and competence. On the other, the tones that gave an impression of the interviewee being dull, lackadaisical and uninterested. Here is the example:

Interview1

Interviewer- Would you like to join our team?

Anita- Oh èyes. I would be èdelighted. Thanks for giving me this èprivilege.

(a high fall conveys enthusiasm, eagerness and gratitude).

Interview 2

Interviewer - Would you like to join our team?

Reema- Oh °yes Sir. I would be °delighted. Thanks for giving ne his °privilege. 

(A low fall conveys a very lackluster response and a routine “thank you” without any warmth).

 Then, the students were asked to guess as to whether Anita would be favored or Reema.  This way the young students were made to realize how the tones make a difference.

Pitch is generally associated with music. Many phoneticians have used the keys in a piano to demonstrate it. For our Indian students, it was very effective when the teacher demonstrated tone by singing sa, re, ga, ma, pa, da, ni, sa, starting from low pitch and going through one octave to the higher pitch. This was related to the rising tone and alternately the teacher uttered a few sentences using the rising tone. In the same way, starting from a higher sa, the teacher went down by one-octave sa, ni, da, pa, ma, ga, re, sa. By singing thus, the teacher could connect the tone and sentences spoken in the falling tone. If given graphically it would be as follows: (For other non-native speakers do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do can be used).

The teacher may also sing some jingles or songs to illustrate different tones.

Apart from being able to effectively perceive the rising and falling tones, this method is a viable one for students to further differentiate between the low rise and low fall and high-rise and high fall. There are a lot of attitudinal nuances associated with the degree of fall or rise. For example, if it is a low fall, it denotes being disinterested, resigned or bored etc. if it is a high fall it signifies indignation, a strong command etc. Students must be able to distinguish between the high and the low fall or rise.  In this context, the same series of sa to sa can be made use of.

In the series of notes from sa to sa(one octave), there are four notes at a lower pitch and four at a higher pitch.  The notes in the lower pitch are called the lower tetrachord and the notes in the higher pitch are called the higher tetrachord.

As can be seen from the representation given above, a low rise and low fall are in the range of the lower tetrachord and a high-rise and high fall are in the range of a higher tetrachord. In this way the concept of low and high tones can be conveyed to the students.

So far, I have discussed the form of intonation i.e. how it is manifested in speech. In the following section, I will discuss the linguistic application of intonation with the focus on attitude. There are quite a few functions, but three important functions are discussed here- the accentual, grammatical, and attitudinal functions. The accentual function refers to highlighting a particular word in a tone group, to draw the listeners’ attention. The grammatical function enables the listener to recognize grammatical structures. Intonation reveals a person’s personality, psychological state etc and this is the attitudinal function.

The usual practice is to take up each tone and list the different attitudes that each tone conveys as follows:

 Low-fall – It sounds detached, calm, impatient, unmoved, resigned and unconcerned.

No/today (resigned)

Tragic (detached and unmoved)

It’s becoming too much. (Impatient)

Morning (routine greeting)

This seems very monotonous. Instead, if comic strips are used, learning will be made interesting. Sometimes the teacher might face some difficulty in showing different attitudes through voice or expression. It is at this juncture that the teacher can make use of cartoons with varied expressions and dialogues to suit the context and thus relate the tone to the picture and the dialogue. This approach is not only interesting but also drives the point home. Given here are a few such cartoon strips. The tones conveyed are given in the second part of each dialogue:

Falling tone sounds detached and unmoved.

Wife: I heard Vera eloped.

Husband: Tragic.

Tone (low-fall) conveying Impatience 

Wife: I am dog tired after a hectic day at office. Why don’t you cook?

Husband: You are making me cook almost every other day. It’s becoming too much.

Tone (high-rise) conveying shock and horror

Ben:   Last night I had a very eerie feeling when I 

  saw some apparition near my bed.

Rita:  You mean you  actually saw a ghost?

In sum, intonation plays a significant role in conveying a message because it gives additional information. Portraying a tone through a picture makes a learner retain in memory the emotion captured in the picture and, thus relate it to the tone used.

 

REFERENCES

Halliday, M.A.K. 1967. Intonation and Grammar in British English. Mouton.The Hague.

O'Connor, J. D. & Arnold, G. F. 1973. Intonation of Colloquial English. Longman. London.

Tench,Paul, 1996 : The Intonation  System of English. Cambridge University Press, London.

Wells, J.C, 2006: English Intonation. An Introduction. Cambridge University Press, London.

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Bio: Dr Surya Bhan is an Assistant Professor of English at LLOYD LAW COLLEGE. He has completed his B.A. from Lucknow University and M.A. from The English and Foreign Language University Lucknow campus. Further, he has completed his Ph.D. (Linguistics and Phonetics) entitled ‘The Variables that Influence Awadhi English: A Sociophonetic Study’ from The English and Foreign Language University, Hyderabad. He has qualified UGC-NET JRF/SRF in December 2011 in Linguistics. His area of research majorly focuses on Language Teaching, Sociophonetics, Sociolinguistics, Phonetics, Systemic Functional Linguistics etc.

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Setu, December 2022

A Portrait of Two Carnages: A Comparative Study of Jallianwala Bagh and Croke Park Massacres

Rebanta Gupta

 

Abstract:

This brief article attempts to make a comparative study between the two infamous massacres orchestrated by the British Empire: the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre of 1919, and the Croke Park Massacre of 1920. By discussing the issues of the identities of the perpetrators and the victims, and also how the martyrs of these massacres are remembered in the present times, this article aims to draw a historical axis connecting the predicaments of Indian and Irish independence movements against colonial despotism. It also highlights the representations of these two incidents in the domain of popular culture.

 

Keywords:

British Empire, massacre, bullets, Reginald Dyer, memory, popular culture.

 

Introduction:

The mighty fist of the British Empire, which used to boast about its perennially glowing Sun, attained dexterity in silencing the voices of dissent and revolt in its colonies. India and Ireland, the two states suffering from the cancerous warts of British imperialism, have been witnesses to this art of silencing. This article would attempt to make a comparative study between the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre of 1919, which shook Amritsar, the epicenter of the Indian state of Punjab, and the Bloody Sunday Massacre of Ireland, which took place a year later, in 1920. These two incidents witnessed unpremeditated firings made on the common people by the British forces, which combinedly resulted in the deaths of hundreds. While Bloody Sunday claimed the lives of fourteen people and injured at least sixty civilians in Dublin’s Croke Park stadium, the Amritsar chapter of British atrocity had been more notorious; nearly four hundred to a thousand unarmed civilians were gunned to death by the British forces under the command of General Reginald Dyer, while almost fifteen hundred people reeled under excruciating injuries. Apparently, it would be unjust to juxtapose these two events, which varied largely in terms of intensity and death tolls. However, this article will try to connect these two massacres to highlight one point, how India and Ireland, the two protectorates of the British Empire, suffered deep wounds in an uncannily similar manner, against the backdrop of their independence movements.

 

The Issue of Identity:

A peaceful political gathering to protest against the arrest of the independence leaders Saifuddin Kitchlew and Satya Paul at the walled garden of Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar on 13 April, 1919 soon turned into a nightmare, when General Dyer surrounded nearly fifteen thousand protesters with his troops. The exit points were blocked, and fifty Indian soldiers fired indiscriminately into the crowd, causing bloody havoc.¹ Several civilians were crushed to death in the ensuing stampede, many tried to take refuge in the narrow openings, while the others were mercilessly mowed down by nearly 1650 bullets. Dyer, when enquired later about the massacre by the investigative panel dubbed the Hunter Commission, had replied, “…I considered it my duty to fire on them and to fire well.”²

The scintillating part of this bloody saga is its question of identity. The massacre appears to be a force-field of conflict between the Empire and its oppressed subjects, so a binary could have been drawn between Michael O’Dwyer, the Lieutenant Governor of Punjab who endorsed the firings, and the victims of the carnage. But the binary collapses, when it is observed, that Indian soldiers from the Gurkha, Sindh-Sikh, and 52^nd Sikh Regiment, under the command of a white general, played the roles of the marauders.³ This massacre underscores the imperial colonization of the martial faculty of the Indian soldiers, where their nationalistic spirit had been suppressed by their loyalty to the Crown. However, the Amritsar incident helped to turn the tide of nationalism; the massacre nourished the deep-seated anti-imperial sentiment across the country, and it would take another twenty-five years for the Indian soldiers to reverse their loyalty from the Crown to their motherland, when the Indian National Army under the leadership of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose gave the ultimate war cry against the British Raj.

The Irish War of Independence, which was being spearheaded by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) since 1919 against British domination, took a violent turn on November 21, 1920. Earlier that Sunday morning, some British intelligence personnel had been assassinated by the IRA agents across Dublin in a series of attacks, and eventually, the vengeful British army marched into the Croke Park stadium, where, the officials suspected, a number of assassins had disappeared into a crowd attending a Gaelic football match. In Jallianwala Bagh style, the exit points were closed to conduct a cordon and search operation. Panic soon overwhelmed the crowd, as the army started firing indiscriminately into the crowd.⁴ Fourteen lives were shed, including those of three school children, who had flocked to watch the football match between the Gaelic Football team of Dublin and the Tipperary team.

            Complexities surface when the identities of the victims are analyzed; the British and the Irish identities and affiliations occasionally overlapped during this mayhem. Johnny McDonnell, the goalkeeper of the Dublin team, had taken part in an IRA assault on the British agents earlier that morning, also the name of Michael Hogan, the Tipperary player, must be mentioned, he was an IRA informant, who was also killed. However, Michael Feery, who was shot dead, was a former British soldier; he was still dressed in his British Army fatigues during his transfer to the hospital. Hogan’s comrade in the game, Frank Butler, the Tipperary goalkeeper, was a former British soldier⁵. It becomes conceivable, that the stadium became a chequered floor of variegated identities, and people were united by the spirit of the game against the backdrop of political turmoil, but the bullets did not discriminate between the identities or affiliations, and the massacre took the lives of even those people, who had once owed allegiance to the mighty empire.

 

The Project of Remembrance:

            Let’s now have a look at the efforts that have been made to preserve the memories of the victims in the national consciousness. Kim A Wagner, the author of Jallianwala Bagh: An Empire of Fear and the Making of the Amritsar Massacre laments the status of the official memorial built in 1961 to honour the Amritsar victims, in an article published by The Print, “The road leading to Jallianwala Bagh and the Darbar Sahib (Golden Temple) was turned into something resembling the set of a Bollywood film with fake facades in some vaguely ‘traditional’ style. Garish statues of Punjabi dancers gave the entire area the look and feel of an amusement park, rather than one of the historically most important cities of India, and the holiest site of Sikhs.”⁶ The memorial and the museum, despite recording the names of the officially announced 379 victims, celebrated the national heroes who were not even present in the vicinity on that fateful day. The mourning site has been translated into a commercial set up with light and sound shows, 3D projections, and most interestingly, a ticket counter that charges the tourists before entering the garden. This “Disneyfication” of the sacred martyrs’ memorial, Wagner observes, has divested it of its soul and purity, and ironically, British dignitaries, who have refused to apologize for the carnage, come to visit this spectacle.

            Perhaps a different attitude could be seen in the treatment of the Bloody Sunday victims. Karina Leeson, a relative of the victim William Robinson, observes, “They weren’t just statistics…they were people with families who loved them and who suffered greatly after their loss.”⁷ The Irish citizens, unlike the Indians, never converted the essence of the martyrs’ site into a tourists’ memorabilia. Indeed, they have established new gravestones, but the hundred years’ remembrance of that incident, instead of spiralling into a spectacle, focused much more on revisiting the personal experiences of different families of the victims, who had been brought together after hundred years. The victims, who were forgotten by the society, and buried in unmarked graves, are now being given marked gravestones, to inform the people about the violence that unfolded in the midst of jubilation, and the trails of tears it left behind.

 

Conclusion:

The machine of popular culture has absorbed the contours of these two massacres and translated them into viable cultural products for mass distribution. While Jallianwala Bagh        has received a sufficient amount of limelight from the authors, painters, and filmmakers, the Croke Park chapter has not enjoyed immense popularity, if its media reception is juxtaposed against the attention received by its Indian counterpart. If the domain of celluloid is taken into account, Jallian Wala Bagh (1977), directed by Balraj Tah, remains one of the earliest films to document the atrocious turn of events in the 1919 Punjab, a separate canon of Indian and international films has emerged, which never failed to mention the Jallianwala Bagh massacre as a watershed event moment in the colonial history of India. Richard Attenborough’s Academy Award-winning film Gandhi (1982) has meticulously depicted the carnage and its subsequent developments, and this has been carried forward by films like Legend of Bhagat Singh (2002), Rang De Basanti (2006), Midnight’s Children (2013), to name a few.⁸ On the contrary, popular culture has not coughed out many films on the Croke Park Massacre; Neil Jordan’s Michael Collins (1996), which bagged the prestigious Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival provides an excruciating portrayal of the incident, albeit with historical inaccuracies.

A strange contradiction could be observed if the reception of these two events was scrutinized. While Jallianwala Bagh has been immortalized on celluloid, it remains in the Indian psyche just as a colonial memorabilia, the cursed garden of Amritsar is now a destination for curious tourists gathering to watch nothing but a historical spectacle. On the other hand, though the incidents at Croke Park have not been depicted voluminously in the popular culture, they still reverberate in the Irish psychological atmosphere as manifestations of uncompromising nationalism, unjust cruelty, and celebration of the Irish nationalist zeitgeist under the leaders like Michael Collins and Eamon de Valera, who challenged the authority of the Imperial Crown. 

 

 

Works Consulted

1. McCann, Eamonn. “Bloody Sunday: In Derry and in Amritsar.” Rebel News, Rebel News, 28 Jan. 2020, www.rebelnews.ie/2020/01/28/bloody-sunday-in-derry-as-in-amritsar/.

2. Saha, Abhishek. “I Had to Fire Well: Jallianwala Bagh Butcher Gen Dyer's Testimony.” Hindustan Times, Hindustan Times, 15 Apr. 2015, www.hindustantimes.com/ht-view/i-had-to-fire-well-jallianwala-bagh-butcher-gen-dyer-s-testimony/story-C68lHCuJBYfSjfBlng6XKN.html.

3. “Jallianwala Bagh Massacre.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 19 Apr. 2022, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre.

4. “Bloody Sunday 1920: Croke Park Killings Remembered 100 Years On.” BBC News, BBC, 21 Nov. 2020, www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54908852.

5. Ibid

6. Kim A., et al. “Jallianwala Bagh Victims' Memory Deserves Better. Disneyfication Isn't Preservation.” The Print, The Print, 31 Aug. 2021, theprint.in/opinion/jallianwala-bagh-victims-memory-deserves-better-disneyfication-isnt-preservation/725084/.

7. “Bloody Sunday 1920: Croke Park Killings Remembered 100 Years On.” BBC News, BBC, 21 Nov. 2020, www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54908852.

8.  MyNation, Team. “6 Movie Tributes to Jallianwala Bagh Martyrs That Will Bring Tears to Your Eyes.” Asianet News Network Pvt Ltd, MyNation, 13 Apr. 2019, www.mynation.com/gallery/entertainment/6-movie-tributes-to-jallianwala-bagh-martyrs-that-will-bring-tears-to-your-eyes-ppw0v0#image1.

 

Bio: Rebanta Gupta is currently working as a Research Assistant at Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies, Kolkata, where he is working on a project titled “Women Hindustani Classical Musicians in the Age of Recorded Music.” His area of research interests includes Literary Theory, Hindustani Classical Music, Film Studies, Popular Culture, and Cultural and Intellectual Histories of Kolkata.

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Setu, September 2022

Narrating Lives and Constructing Selves: Uttam Kumar and the Construction of the Hero

Adrija Guha

Adrija Guha 

Assistant Professor of English, JIS College of Engineering, Kalyani, Nadia, West Bengal.

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Abstract

This paper seeks to study various intentions and objectives behind writing autobiographies and how various factors come together in the writing of this text. With a close textual analysis of Uttam Kumar’s autobiographies Amar Ami (1979-80) and Harie Jawa Dinguli Mor (1961-63), this essay will explore the various reasons that are responsible for the making (or writing) of an autobiography, the factors responsible for that and the complex relation between the subject, author, reader and the publisher, and the construction of an image or an identity. The paper will focus on the construction of image, how autobiographies and life narratives are reflexive by nature and how they are constructed by human beings through active ratiocination and, in doing so, will offer a new paradigm for an understanding of the autobiographies of film stars.

 

Keywords

construction of an image, ratiocination, creation of ‘star’ persona, publicity.

 

Main Text

The film Nayak begins with the matinee idol, Arindam Mukherjee, who is going to Delhi to receive a prestigious award. In the train he meets Aditi Sengupta, editor of a women's magazine, Adhunika. Though not his fan, she expresses her wish of taking his interview for her magazine as this would increase its popularity. When asked about his life, he replies that his biography has been published in quite a few journals and hence many people already know about his life. Aditi reveals that she already knows what others know about his life; she is more interested to know about his regrets. He sternly says that revealing his regrets might have a drastic effect on his career; they (filmstars) wander in the world of shadows and hence it will be better not to expose their body of flesh and blood in front of the public. When asked whether she has understood what he has said, she replies in positive, saying that they always want to remain a ‘hero’ in the eyes of the public. Hence only those facts about his life are published which will help him to maintain this status quo. Though it is said that Nayak is the fictionalized autobiography of Uttam Kumar, Bengal’s matinee idol, this essay will not focus on the film’s autobiographical elements. Rather, the essay would take this film as a starting point to understand the various intentions and objectives behind writing autobiographies and how various factors come together in the writing of this text. Focussing primarily on Uttam Kumar’s autobiographies Amar Ami (1979-80) and Harie Jawa Dinguli Mor (1961-63), this essay will explore the various reasons that goes into the making (or writing) of an autobiography, the factors responsible for that and the complex relation between the subject, author, reader and the publisher, and the construction of an image or an identity.

 

Uttam Kumar needs no introduction. He was and is a well-known personality not only in Bengal, Bangladesh but also all over India. Describing Uttam Kumar, Shoma A. Chatterjee writes, “Uttam was to Bengali cinema what Amitabh Bachhan has been to mainstream Hindi cinema …” (Chatterjee 30). The Bengal film industry never ever saw the rise of another star. Till today, all the Bengali heroes taken together cannot match Uttam Kumar’s charisma and his versatile performances. He is still the Matinee Idol. His father was the chief operator in Metro cinema and his mother was a simple housewife. Born in an extremely middle class family, Uttam Kumar worked at the Calcutta Port Commissioner’s Office, before making it big in cinema. Till now, Bengali cinema can boast of only three ‘stars’ – Durgadas Bandopadhyay, Pramathesh Barua and Uttam Kumar. Durgadas Bandopadhyay was primarily a theatre actor and during that time (in the early 1900s), film acting was heavily influenced by the theatre. Pramathesh Barua was primarily a director. However, Uttam Kumar was a complete package: be it his versatile acting, bewitching smile, golden voice, demeanour, ‘star’ status or attitude towards others – he was unparalleled. No doubt various eminent personalities have tried to pen down his biography and, most of the time, have earned a positive result. However, this essay will discuss the autobiographies written by Uttam Kumar . Harie Jawa Dinguli Mor was published in the Nabakallol journal in a serialized form from 1961 to 1963 and covers his life till 1962 when he was at the peak of fame, success and popularity. Thus it is incomplete. Amar Ami was published in a serialized form in Prasad journal in 1979-80. The 1^st edition was published by Mitra & Ghosh and the 2^nd edition, by Dey’s Publishing House. In a letter to the editor, Uttam Kumar writes that he did not want his autobiography to be published then but he could not say no to the young writer-journalist Gourango Ghosh; hence he has given his consent. Having said so, he also confesses that though the genre of autobiography demands to be told everything, at that time it was not possible for him to reveal everything about his life. However, in the second edition, he promises, that he would write more about the unknown things about his life.

 

Harie Jawa Dinguli Mor begins with an interesting line: ‘At first I thought that I would not write. Later I was forced to take the pen in my hand, thinking that I also have something to tell you. Hence here I am to give voice to my unsaid words’ (my translation). He goes on to write what audience thinks about him – that he lives in a fairy-tale-like-world – and what he actually is and how his life is shaped by the joys and sorrows, just like anyone else’s. He tells us in great details where he was born, why he changed his name from Arun Kumar Chatterjee to Uttam Kumar, his family members, the lasting impact on him of the death of his elder sister, Putul, his struggle to become an actor, all those years of frustrations when he vacillated between the idea of resigning from the job (which would have been a high risk as he was the only earning member of the family) and giving up on acting (as the films where he managed to get some roles, flopped and he was tagged ‘flop master general’ by the industry) and, above all, he tells us about his relationship with his wife, Gauri, how he madly fell in love with her, pursued her, quite in the manner of a film hero, and, at last, married her. Said in a nutshell, this story does make him a real life hero who never quits. His is the story of rags to riches, a story which is a common story of all the successful people! It follows the same pattern: how poor they were, the struggles they had to go through, how they put up with life, faced the hurdles and, ultimately, turned out to be winners. Thus he comes across as the exact persona whom the audience have imagined all throughout. Hence we cannot dismiss this autobiography as a mere confession, where he is simply letting out his thoughts to the audience. It was in 1961-63, when he was at the peak of success. Publication of this autobiography, in a serialized form, helped him to add to his ‘star’ value.

 

Shoma A. Chatterjee in her book Suchitra Sen: The Legend and the Enigma addresses this question – Who is a ‘Star’? Quoting Richard Dyer, who in his Stars has said how a ‘star is an image’ and not a real person and how this image is constructed out of a range of materials, Chatterjee writes how “icons and celebrities are constructed by institutions for financial gain, and target a specific audience/group of people” (Chatterjee 77). She goes on to write:

[T]he ‘star’ persona is a fictional identity that almost subconsciously creates fashion trends, popular phrases for the audience to imitate and imbibe and so on. The persona of the star is, therefore, a fictional identity created, constructed and designed, consciously by the film industry and the media, and subconsciously by the audience. Thus when an individual attains ‘stardom’ and becomes a star, like Suchitra Sen, and reigns over the audience and the industry for a long span of time, she can influence her audience and her fans if she so wishes. Even if she does not wish to do so, they can get influenced by the screen image of the star as they see her on screen and through magazines, interviews and so on. (Chatterjee 77).

The same thing can be said for Uttam Kumar as well. In this connection we should keep in mind that during that time there was no outburst of media and the only place where the audience got a glimpse of their favourite stars was the print media and film magazines. Whereas the films portrayed them in a stereotypical manner, the print media was the only platform where the audience could see or read about the private lives of the stars. Since there was no television during that time, these magazines played an important role: they helped the stars in publicity which helped them to retain their images even when they were not doing any film. On the other hand, the audience got to know about their favourite stars and the more they came to know about them, the more they craved for. This helped the ‘stars’ to maintain their image which was really important for the marketing of their films. Uttam Kumar was well aware of his image. It is said that Satyajit Ray had once thought about filming Ghare Baire with Soumitra Chatterjee playing the role of Nikhilesh, Uttam Kumar playing the role of Sandip and Suchitra Sen playing the role of Bimala. The project did not materialize then as Uttam Kumar declined the role of Sandip because he did not want to do a negative role at that phase of his career as that would have destroyed his ‘image’. Years later, Ray did the film with a different casting. Thus Uttam Kumar was very much aware of his position as a ‘star’ and did everything to maintain that image.

 

The years mentioned here – 1961 – 1963 – were some of the turbulent years in Uttam Kumar’s life. It was in 1963 that he left his house forever and started living in with Supriya Devi. Though he mentions this incident in Amar Ami, still other details were consciously omitted. Writing about his love life, he writes in great details about his wife Gauri Devi but hardly mentions the names of Suchitra Sen and Sabitri Chattopadhyay with whom, he once admitted to a reporter, he had an emotional attachment. In an interview, director Saroj De once told Himangshu Chattopadhyay, a reputed journalist, that after the release of the films Agnipariksha and Sobar Upare – films that ushered the Uttam-Suchitra pair and made them ‘stars’ overnight – Uttam Kumar was offered two films – Bhalobasa by Debaki Kumar Bose and Sagarika by Saroj De. Undoubtedly, Debaki Kumar Bose’s film was a better choice considering Debaki Kumar Bose’s stature as one of the top directors of that time. However, Uttam Kumar chose the film Sagarika just because of his friendship with Suchitra. Incidents like this were in abundance. However, their friendship went through a tough time and often there were ego clashes, which have been accepted by the biographers of both Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen and the technicians and personalities of the film industry. It was around 1958-59 when he got involved with Supriya Devi. Stories of their escapades were quite known to everyone. In her autobiography, Madhabi Mukherjee, a renowned actress of that time, also writes at one place how Uttam Kumar had made a pass on her during the shooting of one of their films. Though in his autobiographies, there are mentions of how due to his work load, he could not give time to his son, hardly there is any reference to the marital problems between him and his wife and his cheating on her. There is also no mention of his proposals to Suchitra Sen of marriage. In this connection we have to remember that love outside marriage was considered a taboo and his image was that of an ideal man, a one-woman man, an upright and honest man. Any revelation regarding his romantic relationships would have had disastrous effect on his career. Uttam, the author, knew this very well and hence he did not make Uttam, the character, do any such thing.

 

In this connection other things should also be mentioned. He had ego clashes with Suchitra Sen, Satyajit Ray and Soumitra Chatterjee. As a result, many times he referred to Supriya Devi for the female lead role instead of other heroines. Incidents like his insecurity related to Supriya Devi; how he forced her to decline various projects in Bombay or the news of Supriya Devi being pregnant with his child and the eventual abortion - have been carefully averted. There were also incidents where his murder was planned. Apart from this there was a constant tussle between his two families regarding his property. Even the initial flame of the Uttam-Supriya romance did not last long and he was a lonely person. Uttam Kumar consciously did not mention these too. Of course he did not want to expose the dark sides of the industry where he had to survive. We come to know about these incidents (except the financial one) in Supriya Devi’s autobiography (Amar Jiban, Amar Uttam). The logic is simple. The author Uttam Kumar knew very well what the public would like to know about him. Even when he mentioned Supriya Devi in the 2^nd edition of Amar Ami, he repeatedly said that Supriya Devi was passing through a troubled time in her marriage; he tried to patch things up; later he realised how dependent she was on him and hence, one night when he had a quarrel with Gauri Devi, he left his home and came to Supriya Devi. This narrative again makes him the ‘hero’ that he was onscreen, rescuing a damsel in distress.

 

Apart from this there were mentions of Shilpi Sansad and his contribution as its President. He has also highlighted his social roles and how he has tried to stand by the people in times of need; be it flood or Indo-china war or any personal problem. He has always been there for everyone. There is also a mention of an incident in Amar Ami regarding the shooting of his film Harano Sur. He was also the producer of this film. According to the incident he was busy shooting for another film and just because the director requested, he decided to complete the shooting of this film. This required him to cancel the shooting of his own film – Harano Sur- on that day. Without thinking about the loss he would face, he cancelled his shooting of Harano Sur just for the sake of the director of the other film. Even when he had left his Bhowanipur house and was living with Supriya Devi at Moira Street, we are told that he visited his mother daily before he went to the studio and always fulfilled his responsibilities. I am not questioning the authenticity of these incidents. What I want to highlight is that his autobiographies are filled with such instances only. Thus the image of a responsible, dutiful son, husband, father, friend, colleague, and above all, a citizen is maintained all throughout.

 

Does this mean that Uttam Kumar, the author, invented Uttam Kumar, the character? Definitely no. Autobiography is not a fictional narrative of a person’s life written by the same person; it is rather factual. Various factual narratives of a person’s life are chosen and are integrated and incorporated into a structured narrative which is then told to others and also to oneself so that the author of the autobiography can lead a functional life. According to Louis A. Renza, “we can stress that in selecting, ordering, and integrating the writer's lived experiences according to its own teleological demands, the autobiographical narrative is beholden to certain imperatives of imaginative discourse” (Renza 269). James M. Cox is of the opinion that many autobiographies are “charged, condensed narrative[s] through which the autobiographer symbolically reckons with his life as it was lived in socially dramatic situations, in revolutionary periods, for example, "when politics and history become dominant realities for the imagination" (p. 252)” (Renza 269). The same theory can be applied on Uttam Kumar’s autobiographies. Whether the deaths of Rabindranath Tagore or the charismatic figure of Subhash Chandra Bose or the Indo-china war or the Vietnam War or Naxal Andolon or the deaths of famous personalities, for example, Charlie Chaplin, Uttam Kumar has tried to live the life in his autobiography as he was ought to have lived. In that case the author-Uttam Kumar is a double of the character-Uttam Kumar.

 

Writing autobiographies by the celebrities have become a common phenomenon. Almost all the famous stars of the Golden period of Bengali cinema have written their autobiographies, with the exception of Suchitra Sen. Quite interestingly, Suchitra Sen not writing her own autobiography led to the publication of her numerous biographies by various authors which still have a huge market demand. Whether it is the autobiography of Uttam Kumar or Amitabh Bachhan or Prasenjit or Priyanka chopra, autobiographies of famous celebrities are always in demand as one gets to have a peek into the life of the celebrity. Secondly, a market is also created for the same. Most of the time the catch line is that in his/ her autobiography, the celebrity has opened his / her heart and has revealed the secrets which are unknown to the audience so far. This traps the audience’s curiosity and works in both ways. It helps the audience to get to know some factual details of the life of the star; the stars get a chance to be in the limelight and this helps in their marketing; it helps them to earn a lump sum also; the publishing house encashes the popularity of the star and makes the most out of it. The more popular a star is, the more his / her biography/autobiography is in demand.

 

2020 and 2021 are years which have left a lasting impact on the people all over the world. Amidst this pandemic, Penguin Random House released the much awaited book on 9 February 2021. The book is Unfinished: A Memoir and is written by Priyanka Chopra. Soon after its release, it got listed as the Number 1 bestseller on Amazon. Com and Amazon.in, a fact shared by the author herself in an Instagram story. Announcements of its publication was made long ago in 2018. The book was to be published by Penguin Random House in India, Ballantine Books in the US and Michael Joseph in the UK. Regarding the book Chopra said in an interview, “The flavour of the book will be honest, funny, spirited, bold, and rebellious, just like me” (“Priyanka Chopra”). She added, "I have always been a private person; I've never spoken about my feelings during my journey but I am ready to do so now" (“Priyanka Chopra”). Talking about the purpose behind writing this book, she said: "I would like to tell my story in the hope of inspiring people - especially women -- to change the conversation, to shatter glass ceilings. Women are always told we can't have everything. I want everything, and I believe anyone else can have it too. I'm proof of it" (“Priyanka Chopra”). The few aspects which get highlighted here are the social position of a person, his / her ‘life story’ as an inspiration, a specific motive behind writing that ‘life story’ and the role of the publishers; all these aspects come together in a life narrative. Priyanka Chopra is not the first person in the film industry to write an autobiography. This path has been treaded by many celebrities.

 

Various factors come together in the writing of an autobiography. No doubt the wish to explain oneself to others, to share one’s experiences with others are there. But one cannot ignore the other factors behind the writing and publication of an autobiography. No doubt, biographies of Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen are still written and are reprinted whereas hardly any biography is written of Sabitri chattopadhyay, undoubtedly much more gifted actor than Mrs. Sen though could never match her ‘star’ personality. Her only autobiography was published in 2010 !

 

Once in an article ‘ Nijeke Janai’, Suchitra Sen wrote that it is impossible to know an artist through a few factual details of his/her life. She adds that there are questions which can never have any specific answer; whatever answer the artist gives, is superficial. Though she was talking about interviews of artists, still the point she raised is applicable on any writing by an artist. Autobiographies and life narratives are reflexive by nature. Keeping aside the problems of verification, determinacy and authenticity, there are other problems too; especially with the “autobiographical narrator’s irresistible error in accounting for his acts in terms of intentions when, in fact, they might have been quite otherwise determined” (Bruner 13). In Aristotlean sense art imitates life whereas in Oscar Wildean sense life imitates art. Similarly, narrative imitates life and life imitates narrative. “ “Life” in this sense is the same kind of construction of the human imagination as a “narrative” is. It is constructed by human beings through active ratiocination, by the same kind of ratiocination through which we construct narratives” (Bruner 13). Hence, an autobiography can be best read as another text where the author and the protagonist are the same person and the characters do not have any fictional names but real-life names. As about the details provided in the autobiography, the facts are taken from real life (though sometimes we can question their authenticity as well) and to that is added a reflection and imagination which more often than not colour any narrative.

 

Works Cited

Bruner, Jerome. “Life as Narrative.” Social Research, Vol. 54, No. 1, Reflections on the Self            (SPRING 1987), pp. 11-32.

Chatterjee, Shoma A. Suchitra Sen: the Legend and the Enigma. Harper Collins, 2015.

 “Priyanka Chopra to come out with memoir in 2019.” Business Standard. 19 June 2018

            https://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/priyanka-chopra-to-come-out-       with-memoir-in-2019-118061901176_1.html

Renza, Louis A. “The Veto of the Imagination: A Theory of Autobiography.” New Literary           History 9 (1977), pp. 1-26.

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Setu, August 2022