The Human Jungle

Last night I saw ‘Jana Aranya’ again. Everybody else was fast asleep. I hooked up my small portable DVD player, put on the earphones, put the disc in and off it went. 

As a Ray fan, I hardly ever missed his movies, but this one came out in the mid 1975’s when I was ten, and this was a rare Ray movie with an ‘A’ certificate, 16 years or older. Why it got a adult rating escapes me because, the most “adult scene” in the movie would be a girl hurriedly covering herself changing as her brother comes into her room to tell her that people have been watching her through the open window. Other than that there are no kissing or bed scenes or even violence. True, the theme of the movie is very much adult and perhaps the most astonishing thing I discovered this time was a small piece of dialogue which I missed in my previous viewings. 

This is the only Ray movie where a character says a Bengali equivalent of a four letter word. If you don’t believe me, I urge you to see the movie again, the scene where Somenath goes to Sukumar’s house after earning his first commission as a middleman. Listen carefully what Sukumar’s Dad says when Sukumar taunts him.

I never understood the reason for calling this movie ‘The Middleman’ in english. I know Ray chose  carefully his english titles for his foreign audience, but Shankar’s story had the perfect name, and literally translated would mean the human jungle. That’s exactly the story was, a innocent human being slowly transformed into a primeval specimen for his survival in the corrupt business  world and finally even resorting to pimp his best friends sister for a ‘contract’. 

As we watch the movie we see gradually the downward spiral that Somenath takes and as the Rabindrasangeet ‘Chhaya Ghonaichhe Boney Boney’ plays in the background we know that the shadows of immorality have already engulfed him, and there is no way out.

To me, Jana Aranya is the darkest movie I’ve seen and probably the best from Ray.