Unflashy, Witty Tribute To Satyajit Ray

Two gentlemen – one sells cotton, the other spins yarns – meet when the former, sleepless in Ahmedabad, employs the latter, an inveterate raconteur from Calcutta, to tell him original, unpublished stories to help him deal with insomnia.

That, the kernel of The Storyteller, is derived from a short story by Satyajit Ray. Screenwriter Kireet Khurana develops a larger plot around it. In an unflashy but witty tribute to the master, the film explores creation and appropriation, delusion and actualisation. To its credit, it is anything but imitative.

Ananth Narayan Mahadevan’s film adds new strands to the story to probe the differing mindsets of the two men. Yeh duniya sochne waalon ki nahin karne waalon ki hain (this world is not for thinkers but for doers), mild-mannered Ahmedabad trader Ratan Garodia (Adil Hussain), taunts the hired storyteller, Tarini Bandopadhyay (Paresh Rawal).

The two characters at the core of Ray’s Golpo Boliye Tarini Khuro (Uncle Tarini, Storyteller) are poles apart culturally and temperamentally. It is the chasm between them as individuals that The Storyteller hinges on.

Be it the fate of a tree in the Aravalli forests one hundred years ago (told through lively animation) or that of a captured Second World War spy pigeon, any idea that strikes Tarini is grist for his storytelling mill. The listener is all ears.

While most of the departures the film makes from the original text pass muster, not all are equally effective. At least one of the tweaks amounts to over-simplification. Ray did not intend to harp on the degrees of separation between Bengalis and Gujaratis.

He used the difference between the two men to point to divergent ways of looking at life’s principles, priorities and paradoxes, and at the process of telling, grasping and disseminating stories. He had no avowed interest in the food habits and other idiosyncrasies of the two men. The Storyteller does.

It tends to stereotype the two linguistic groups. The Bengali is predictably defined by his love for fish and Durga Puja, the Gujarati by his obsession with pecuniary profit. A little more imagination would have helped skirt around this pitfall.

The Storyteller, streaming on Disney+Hotstar, begins with flipping a Man Ray quote: “To create is human, to reproduce is divine”. The avant-garde visual artist meant the exact opposite: creation is motivated by inner desire; imitation by mere necessity.

In Ray’s story, Tarini’s recollection of his experience with Garodia goes back to a time two decades ago, when they were in their 40s. The screen adaptation is expectedly set in an era of rotary telephones and Ambassador cars.

In the film, Tarini as a sexagenarian (which is what Rawal is in real life). The character is superannuated. His son wants him to visit him in the US. Tarini stonewalls him. To him, America is a rakto-chossa (blood-sucking) Dracula.

Gently wending its way through shadows cast on it by Ray and Tagore (especially his musical compositions, which are either hummed by Tarini or are woven into the background score), besides Gorky, Tolstoy and Picasso, The Storyteller delves into the predilections and memories of Ratan Garodia.

The entrepreneur is surrounded by books he has never read and paintings he cannot comprehend. Ray made no mention of this aspect of the cotton merchant’s life. Mahadevan uses a reference (by Ray) to the baron’s struggles with sleep and turns it into a pivotal character trait.

It is Garodia’s insomnia that brings the fish-eating and capitalism-detesting Calcutta storyteller to the strictly vegetarian and plush home of the thriving entrepreneur with a massive chip on his shoulder.

Tarini, whose late wife (Anindita Bose) – one of several characters who aren’t from Ray’s fictional world – gifts him a pen on his birthday (in a flashback) and exhorts him to write instead of merely relating stories, is acutely reluctant to put pen to paper. He is happy doing what he does.

Garodia, in turn, suffers from a complex about his limited education and Garodia, in turn, suffers from a complex about his limited education and perceived lack of sophistication. Your inability to catch a few winks is a byproduct of capitalism, Tarini says to him.

The two men disagree on most things. But Tarini takes the job very seriously. Garodia gives him no reason not to enjoy his time in the sprawling household run by resident manservant Manikchand (Jayesh More).

A pet cat – the “right creature” in the “wrong place”, quips Tarini – roams around the Garodia household and steals from the fish tank. Its fortunes turn when the Bengali house guest conspires to smuggle fish into the kitchen and persuade Manikchand to cook it for him.

Ray’s story has only three characters, including an editor of a Gujarati literary periodical. Apart from adding a handful of new figures, the film replaces the editor with librarian Suzie (Tannishtha Chatterjee), whose family name, Fibert, is a wink at her propensity to fib outrageously about writers.

Also in the film is Saraswati (Revathy), who, once upon a time, was an important part of Garodia’s life. Both Suzie (a guardian of books) and Saraswati (named after the Hindu goddess of learning) indirectly help Tarini stumble upon truths about the difficult-to-fathom Garodia.

The Storyteller is an earnest, assiduously composed hommage – an instrumental version of a composition from Ray’s Hirak Rajar Deshe plays over the end credits – and a genteel ode to the stories we experience, tell, commit to memory and, when needed, borrow or steal to make sense of life and its complexities.

Rawal and Hussain bring great solidity to the table. Consistently at the top of their game, they employ aptly dissimilar styles to play men from two different orbits of experience. Wry humour run all through their layered portrayals and gradually unfolding engagement.

It may seem odd that Rawal plays the Bengali storyteller and Hussain essays the Gujarati merchant. The former has to speak a fair bit of Bangla. You cannot but wonder at times if the latter would have been better suited for the role. But coming to think of it, the ostensibly askew casting adds a quirky dimension to the film.

Not that there is nothing else in The Storyteller to pique our interest. There is plenty.