Let there be Panchlait

In one of the many charming moments in Prem Prakash Modi’s film Panchlait , which released exactly a month ago, the stentorian, middle-aged Gulri kaki (aunt) (Malini Sengupta) is seething with rage at a young man called Godhan (Amitosh Nagpal), a resident of the same unnamed village, circa 1954. Godhan’s offence is, at least in Gulri kaki ’s eyes, a grave one indeed: he has been making googly eyes at her daughter Munri (Anuradha Mukherjee), singing decadent Bollywood songs while at it. Gulri kaki lets Godhan have a piece of her mind, shouting, “ Khabardaar jo aaj ke baad Munri ke aage-peechhe oo ‘salam salam saleema’ waala geet gaya (Don’t you dare sing those ‘salam salam saleema’ songs around Munri again!).”

It’s amazing how much ‘salam salam saleema’ (‘sanam sanam cinema’; ‘sanam’ means ‘beloved’ in Urdu) sounds like a sorcerer’s chant. It was the science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke who came up with this oft-used line: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” For Gulri kaki , who has never watched a film, the images on the silver screen might as well be magic. As it so happens, this grey area between science and magic — and how one’s faith or belief system decides which is which — is one of the key themes of Panchlait .

The film is based on the short story of the same name by Phanishwar Nath ‘Renu’ (1921-1977). Renu was one of the most influential Hindi writers of the post-Independence years, and ‘Panchlait’ (pronounced ‘punch light’) remains his most widely-read story, a staple on Hindi curricula across the country. The story is set in an unspecified village (the dialect places it in Bihar) in the ’50s, where the Mahato toli (‘clan/caste’ or the locality to which said clan/caste belongs) panchayat has procured a brand new petromax lamp (referred to as panchlait by the villagers) for itself. There is much fanfare around this development: it is decided that a puja shall precede the first-ever lighting of the lamp. But at the last moment, the sarpanch and the rest of the village elders realise that there is nobody among them who knows how to light the lamp (the Petromax lamps of that era had to be operated with a manual pump, only after the wick was properly doused in paraffin/kerosene, called ispirit (spirit) by the villagers).

The only man in the village who does know is the aforementioned Godhan, but he has recently been excommunicated by the panchayat. Will Godhan’s pride and the panchayat’s prejudice be overcome? Or will the panchlait lie unused? This is the dilemma at the heart of the narrative.

Director Prem Prakash Modi’s achievement with Panchlait is his skill in turning a three-and-a-half-page story into a believable universe. Yashpal Sharma is sparkling as always as Sarpanch Naginaa Mahto, while Nagpal (Salman Khan’s polio-stricken brother-in-law from Dabangg ) is impishly likeable as Godhan, especially in an extended sequence where he impersonates Raj Kapoor. The film is littered with cameos by character actors such as Brijendra Kala ( Aankhon Dekhi , Jolly LLB 2 ) and Rajesh Sharma (cricket coach Chanchal Banerjee from MS Dhoni: The Untold Story ).

For this writer, though, the biggest draw was seeing a competent Renu adaptation on the large screen. The only other time audiences had this opportunity was back in 1966, when Renu himself co-wrote Basu Bhattacharya’s Teesri Kasam (starring Raj Kapoor and Waheeda Rehman), based on his story ‘Mare Gaye Gulfam’. Despite winning a National Award, Bhattacharya’s film is remembered today mostly for the hit songs ‘Paan Khaye Saiyaan Hamaaro’ and ‘Sajan Re Jhooth Mat Bolo’. And that’s a shame, given that Renu is rightly considered one of the titans of Hindi literature.

His magnum opus, the novel Maila Aanchal is considered one of the cornerstones of the Hindi aanchalik sahitya (regional literature) movement. The story of a lone wolf doctor serving a nondescript Bihari village during the Quit India Movement, Maila Aanchal is perhaps the gold standard for literary realism, at least for Hindi novels.

As a whole, aanchalik literature is notable for capturing hyper-local inflections, dialects and minute idiosyncrasies within an overarching Hindi framework (these can, for Bihar-specific contexts such as ‘Panchlait’ or Maila Aanchal , include bits of Maithili, Bhojpuri and so on). As the Hindi scholar and translator Daisy Rockwell noted in a 2010 Chapati Mystery piece, even the name of Renu’s novel represents a classic translator’s dilemma. Aanchal can refer to the border of a sari, but also to ‘region’, and therefore, it is difficult to translate Maila Aanchal to something like ‘Soiled Border’ or ‘The Soiled Linen’ (both common choices, as she points out).

The Patna-based Renu wrote seven novels, in addition to several books of short fiction, reportage and autobiography. Often, a single Renu sentence would do more to highlight complex issues (at the intersection of caste, class, education and so on) than entire novels by lesser writers. In ‘Panchlait’, for instance, the Mahato toli is taunted by their Rajput counterparts with this missive: “ Kaan pakad ke panchlait ke saamne paanch baar utho-baitho, turant jalne lagega (Hold your ears and do five sit-ups in front of the panchlait , it will light up spontaenously).”

The allusion towards the panchlait being a kind of deity before which lesser beings must bow, the class/caste implications of the Mahato toli’s ignorance, the literal/metaphorical light of the lamp itself — Renu the master juggler is at his playful best here. And now, thanks to Modi, Renu’s magic comes alive onscreen.

Aditya Mani Jhais a commissioning editor with Penguin Random House