Jahnu Barua has done it again. His latest film Konikar Ramdhenu (Ride on the Rainbow) is yet another cinematic masterpiece from a very gifted film director. And the story is far from the run-of-the-mill stuff that much of the Bollywood commercials are made of. Eleven-year-old Kukoi runs away from his home in a remote village and his alcoholic stepfather to look for a job in an automobile workshop in the city. The owner of the workshop, who takes him on with the offer of just food and shelter but no pay, attempts to molest him one night, and Kukoi, in a desperate attempt to defend himself, hits the man on the head with an iron rod, killing him on the spot. The boy is produced before a court in handcuffs, and the magistrate sends him to a juvenile remand home. The trauma he has gone through makes him withdraw into a shell, and he refuses to talk either to the probation officer or Mrs Khatun, the affectionate superintendent of the remand home. Ultimately, it is the warden if the remand home, Biswa Boro, who is able to draw him out and get the details of his traumatic experience with the workshop owner that led him to batter him with an iron rod in self-defence. Perhaps the most significant psychological aspect of the film, which is the third and final part of Jahnu Barua’s Koka (grandfather) trilogy, is the kind of make-belief that Kukoi resorts to in order to create a fantasy world for himself to repudiate the real world of drunkenness, violence and exploitation that is the staple of his childhood experience. So when he finally agrees to talk about his past to Biswa Boro, the warden, he creates a make-believe world, where his village is replete with rivers, waterfalls and a riot of flowers. He projects his home as a mansion with two cars and three elephants, where he has affectionate parents; and his village school is an impressive three-storeyed building. And Kukoi, who is fond of drawing rainbows, subconsciously hopes to ride such a rainbow to escape his own sordid and cruel world. Kukoi pretends to be what he would like to be. This aspect of fantasy and make-believe is sensitively handled throughout the film.

The most outstanding and immaculate performance in Konikar Ramdhenu is that of Bishnu Kharghoria as Biswa Boro, the warden if the remand home. This is hardly surprising, considering his unforgettable performance in the first film of the trilogy, Xaagaraloi Bohu Door (It is very far to the sea) as also in the second one, Pokhi (The Flight), the film about a little orphaned Cinderella, for whom things come out all right in the end. In all three films, Bishnu Kharghoria is the Koka — real or adoptive — thrust into the role of having to forge a future for a little child. Then there is Ronik in the role of Kukoi, the fugitive orphan traumatized by the most unexpected experiences in the world of grownup people. He is equally impressive in his sustained and obdurate silence as when he is eventually coaxed to come out of his shell and communicate. His penchant for living in his make-believe world is underscored by his fondness for rainbows. He draws one for Meghali, the elder sister of his friend who is an oasis of cheerfulness and affection in his cruel world. It is a crayon drawing of a rainbow with a boy riding it. His next attempt to paint a rainbow on a large sheet of cardboard with expensive automotive paints gets him into real trouble with his cruel employer. And for a friend at the juvenile home, he produces a mini rainbow by filling his mouth with water and spraying it out against the sun rays. But Ronik’s innate talent for acting finds the best expression in the concluding scene when, on his way to the village home of his adoptive grandfather, he performs that impromptu dance with an imaginary drum with the "gabhrak gabhrak" refrain.

The other outstanding performance is by Moloya Goswami in the role of Mrs Khatun, the superintendent of the remand home, though her show of righteous indignation with the police officer who wishes to take out an inmate of the remand home without an official order is perhaps slightly overdone. Likewise, Dinesh Das, in the role of the workshop owner, overacts when Kukoi arrives at his workshop looking for a job.

The photography, as in all Jahnu Barua films, is remarkable even without props. Two night shots of the remand home are breathtaking in their beauty. The background music and the songs come out very well in the context of the situations, though they may not sound very melodious just by themselves. At times one gets the impression that the recording could have been better. One could say the same thing about the script-writing which leaves something to be desired. At times it does not match a Jahnu Barua film.

The trilogy is strung together not only by the grandfather figure of Bishnu Kharghoria, but also by vast expanses of water, perhaps symbolizing the progression from the stream and the river ultimately to the vastt ocean of human experience either over a bamboo bridge or the desk in the classroom or a rainbow that leads to a happier world at the other end.

Konikar Ramdhenu succeeds eminently in achieving Jahnu Barua’s stated objective: "I wanted to make a human statement in cinematic text on an imaginative and intelligent boy who has his life going horribly wrong, and is too young and powerless to do anything about it. Like hundreds of children from rural India who run away from home and end up in the cities, he finds abuse and exploitation. The question that I wanted to explore in the film is whether his desire to live in a beautiful world — a concept that he has evolved in his imagination — can be fulfilled in the society in which he lives."

This film is a must for all cinema-goers who have not had their sensibilities blunted by an overdose of substandard Hindi films from Bollywood.

Courtesy: The Sentinel (2002)