Decision Time

The choices are easy, right? Like...well, like choosing between Weetabix and an economy brand; the packaging, the cost, on special offer, the taste.... You pick up one, think about the other and decide: ‘this’ll delight my breakfast table.’ Simple, no? Trolley it to the checkout. What about cultures? Another day out along the aisles? The place from which you emerged, umbilically tied to customs going back centuries...swap it for a smart office block, whose doors you opened only last week. Easy, no? Take off your sari and zip up that dress. No worries. No troubling doubts. Satyajit Ray doesn't think so. In Company Limited these choices prove very difficult indeed.

Tutul has come to Calcutta to make a life-changing decision. Born into a family of teachers she is uncertain about her destiny: an academic like her father, or a job in tune with modern India, where wealth and status derive not from learning but commercial acumen; the business success of her brother-in-law an attractive option. Tutul also has doubts about her relationship. Time away a chance to shift her thoughts.

None of this is stated in the film. It is implicit.

Tutul has told her sister she’s coming to Calcutta to see the family and the city. A holiday. Fascinated by the cosmopolitan ways of the metropolis, she wants new experiences and to understand their meaning; which she will judge for herself, using the standards of the past. It is why Tutul refuses to give Syamal Chatterjee a definitive opinion on his lifestyle until the holiday ends. Such judgements require considerable time and careful thought.

I see a smile on your lips, opening to make some ironic quip...the diabetes of dichotomies? No no my friend, Ray is a super-subtle artist not some tub-thumper. This not a game of Punch and Judy, the Past knocking down the Present. Tutul no dull conservative. She is too clever, too curious, too excited by all these new things to be so stupidly obtuse. Carried away by the drama of the horse races, she is disappointed when Syamal doesn’t get drunk. Part of the occasion, surely? Tutul wants to see Calcutta on its own terms; its strangeness, those surprises, its twists and turns. In one wonderful shot Tutul watches the weirdness of this city: attractive women walking out of a factory. Production line beauty! Wrong! A fashionable hairdressers is discharging its clientele. So surprising. So tempting...Tutul is enjoying herself. But like all wise people she has her own standards to judge what is seen. Drunkenness is forgivable, cruelty is not.

Calcutta is changing, and much has changed since Tutul’s previous visit, seven years ago. British rule is fading. Indians now allowed in the Bengal Club; while Peters, the firm where Syamal is a Sales Manager, has locals on its board of directors. And it is here, at the apex of power, that the greatest changes are taking place; for to run the company you have to act like a Brit. Can Syamal make it? During Tutul’s visit, he is competing with a colleague for one of these directorships, the decision to be made before she goes home. Unknown to him it is the biggest test: how he behaves how she will judge Calcutta, the city to reflect her brother-in-law’s character.

As British control diminishes, British influence increases, transforming the mores of the middle classes, who must change to compete and keep ahead. Syamal and his wife, like most of their class, have already internalised the values of commerce, so erasing much of the past. In their company flat the Chatterjees accept the rule that parents must not live with them; even though they have a spare room – it is for guests. This enforced break-up of the extended family is easily justified; Syamal telling Tutul that his life is now Peters. An institution, not the family, his loci of interest and loyalty.

As life changes so are values transformed. This is what Tutul wants to understand, the reason for her numerous questions. ‘Now Syamal, why is this course of action right, and that one wrong?’ Different cultures - rural Bengal, urban Calcutta - have different kinds of judgement which produce different moral ideas and outcomes; Syamal encapsulating these differences in a simile: ‘like when I studied geography. I didn’t like it, but because part of the syllabus I had to do it to get a pass mark.’ He is alluding to the compromises he makes, as the old values surrender to the new. The example a sleight-of-hand, which handily deceives himself. For these compromises are not like studying a subject. Little immoralities – white lies, rule bending, using others – are allowed, because they add value to the business, while draining off the moral value from a community; which learns that to lie, cheat and manipulate others is a profitable enterprise. Money above morality, the self above caste; one’s comforts before the ideal. Can this be correct? Of course Syamal quickly demolishes such reservations, as he shows the spiritual fruits of a wealthier culture. An out-of-date India harms the majority of its citizens. Unconvinced? He’ll pull out Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill to prove the point. On this view, a firm like Peters is a vanguard party advancing the revolution. And we all believe in revolution, don’t we.... Big questions for a newcomer from the provinces, so easily overwhelmed by the surface brilliance. The full implications, the social mechanics behind the dazzling façade, take time to investigate. Then an abstract discussion sands down all the rough edges of social action. It is why at first Tutul appears to agree with Syamal. But we forget Tutul is clever. She will not condemn a culture because different. First she must understand it, then compare with her own, before judging those inside it. Much time and close observation is needed. Tutul takes her time and looks closely, suspending judgement until sure of her own mind.

We imagine this act of philosophy is hard for our heroine, who must accept behaviours that are not only strange but grossly alienating: the Chatterjees’s embarrassment when the parents interrupt a party; Syamal’s colleague ogling her at the Bengal Club. She can cope. Tutul is self-contained and strong. Then she has her affection for the family; their obvious good sense and virtue.

Although not framing it in this way, here is the question Tutul is asking: ‘Syamal, do you slavishly copy this new culture, or are you carving out your own territory?’ His own man....

Own man? Yes. Seemabaddha is an extremely subtle study of cultural change. Change is inevitable – no society, even the most simple, is completely static. But when thinking of change what is our image of it? A tiny detail - a petal placed in a rose dish - forgotten in an ancient ritual? A doctor, in white coat and friendly face, giving us medicine? An engineer building a bridge over the Ganges - what does the ferryman think of that? Or do we imagine a tank crashing over the garden wall then smashing through the house.

To formulate the problem in this way is an error of modern thought, which treats change as singular and unitary. Progress. Moral decline. Wealth. Anomie. (I’ve chucked in a few favourites to please you.) Yet even in the same place change occurs at different speeds, producing multifarious effects. Change consists of a few big ideas and millions of little actions, whose results cannot be reduced to a single value or concept; while the ideas and values are themselves transformed in the process. Endlessly fascinating! For individuals there are two key questions, which have immense impact on their lives: how much should be changed; what is lost as a result. Always trying to balance the scales, which are being constantly recalibrated.

Is Syamal Chatterjee a stereotypical Bengali businessmen or the brother-in-law Tutul has always admired? To us he looks the stereotype. Something of this ambiguous quality is suggested by Ray in an opening sequence showing dozens of young Bengalis in the street. There are over a million literate unemployed in Bengal, says the voiceover; and we assume Syamal belongs to this group; until he tells us of his success; conveyed in a brilliant sequence of images taking us up to and through the credits. Syamal is not one of them. He is different. Yes, but what is the quality of this difference? A natural talent for business allied to a strong moral sense, sensitive to the old traditions, or a perfect fit with a commercial environ? that intellectuals and moralists have always distrusted, and for good reason: in the market everything is for sale, and this includes truth and morality. But values are changing, and the market, central to the country’s prosperity, is now believed a site of beneficence. Do we trust the propaganda? Thus Tutul’s other big question: does Syamal recognise the limits to business, the moral line he must not cross? Has our man the strength, does he own his independence, to keep the sensibility of the Brahmin caste, its delicate intuitions, intact? Tutul hits hard. Resist the pressures of your environment. Stick to the ideal. Concerned about moral honour she asks the toughest question: ‘your own man, Syamal?’

Tutul is actually asking: are you a hero? Strong in character but flexible in action; somebody who does the right thing because never betraying their spirit. A hero, Syamal?

He has already changed. It doesn't take long! In the first minutes of the film a train carrying him to Delhi montages into a plane flying abroad. But what precisely is this change? What does a three-piece suit do to the Brahmin inside it? Change has a myriad quality; the effects on character unpredictable, especially on the talented, whose talents rise them above their milieu. This what Tutul is probing. How exceptional is her brother-in-law? We cannot assume change goes in one direction, that a sales manager will behave like all other managers. It is to assume too much; to underplay the variety of the human landscape. Tutul is too smart to think in such a crude way. However, maybe she errs in the other direction...she expects too much of this man. It is fanciful to expect someone, especially when a success, to resist their environment, especially when the moral risks appear so low. She forgets that the ideals of the Brahmins have become habits, their ideas perfectly adapted to the lives they lead. It is why a life dedicated to the ideal is not so difficult for a talented member of her caste. Fitting in no fighting! This not so in the marketplace. To resist its temptations one has to be a very special Brahmin indeed.

Is this what Tutul wants, why dissatisfied with her current life? Caste is not good enough, she is searching for the best, wherever that maybe.

Syamal is not a typical businessman, and his views are fluid; the different sides of his character and experience knocking against each other. During a party Syamal only has one drink, while his friends get drunk. His wife doesn’t work, yet he encourages his secretary to consider staying on at the firm after she is married. He is thoroughly modern inside the workplace; unlike his rival for the director’s job, who puts his faith in Indian astrology. This the wrong application of ancient wisdom in a modern world where we must play two quite different roles: the public persona of the institution and the private individual at home; the tensions never quite resolved. Astrology good for our feelings, but hopeless for navigating the specific institutional practices of a modern business, which demand we know its rules and culture. It is this balancing act - modernity is in Syamal’s bones -, and which is the source of his success, that Tutul finds most puzzling.

Wholeness and authenticity are the qualities of the old culture; and they have left a deep imprint on Tutul; it is why, after her initial attraction, she rejects Calcutta to take up, we assume, a career in academia. She spurns the spirit of the times. Yet there is a paradox here. Her decision has more profound consequences than Syamal’s simple acquiescence to his firm’s mores; for she is adapting herself to the essence of the new, where public life has the greatest value; a woman downgraded if remaining at home. It is to retain ancient riches by giving them new forms.

Gawping at the obvious - those modern apartment blocks - we miss the radical changes taking place in the tumbledown palaces. It is in the sprit that we seek depths. Tutul, in trying to capture the truth of this new life, ends up taking only what she needs to cultivate herself - a sense of change, of shifting values - and rejects in toto its amoral economy. Syamal, in contrast, expertly skates across its surface features, never worrying what horrors the ice hides.

Success. Change. Modernity believes them identical, which accounts both for its power and all the damage done.

Easy to put a single value on social change. No thought required! What is more interesting, and complex, is to lay a range of values across the ever-changing scene. It is to look at how individuals react to change; following the little transformations and resistances that together create something new; and only afterwards put down a value, that should be nuanced and tentative. What is change? It exists on two levels and moves at different speeds; at its most obvious there are the large scale shifts in culture - politics, technology, work - the more obscure those small scale adaptations of private life. Both to be assessed on their own terms. Inside the privacy of the soul is where we find the greatest test. How does the individual handle the chance effects that change necessarily creates? Chance? Chance! because, in the clash between the old and the new, the unexpected is forever arriving to disturb our equanimity, to challenge us. A person’s quality defined by their ability to deal with this uninvited guest, how they improvise. Although, as we shall see, such improvisations can be read in many ways. Another test, and a difficult one. To put one’s mark on society. But what kind of mark shall it be? ‘Syamal, do you have the moral strength to act in accordance with your moral code, so subtly altering the culture of this firm; or will you succumb to its conventional ideas and routines, a company man through-and-through?’ A mere cipher for industrial capitalism.

Am I clear? Change itself is not a good. The mistake so many make. Change less a value than an event; whose consequences are multitudinous. Is Syamal subtle enough to realise this? Has he the quality to make the right decisions not the wrong ones? At first all goes to Tutul’s liking. Yet this restless intellect is not sure; suspending judgement until the day she leaves.

Tutul is in love with Syamal, who loves her. Tutul more beautiful, clever, interesting, more enigmatic, than his wife, who has become lazy and somewhat inert: too weak to shape a life for herself, she is defeated by her husband’s success. Mrs Chatterjee an example of the side-effects of a social change that produces an imbalance between the sexes in middle class households; the enforced creation of a nuclear family, with its single wage earner, denaturing the wife, who literally has nothing to do. Modernity is making Mrs Chatterjee more primitive not less. The contrast with the ‘conservative’ Tutul couldn’t be more extreme.

Who knows what change will do. At first it dazzles. Beguiles us with its special brand of beauty. The Bengal races. That hairdressers. The easy conviviality of Syamal’s colleagues. Tutul enjoys what she sees. And the risks seem slight. Syamal effortlessly adapting to the values of the new, while wisely and judicially holding onto those of his past. The compromises seem good ones; the tensions resolved without strain. Of course, she doesn’t like all that she sees. The breaking up of the extended family, and the Chatterjee’s insouciance over its consequences, distresses her. The lascivious behaviour of one of the directors at the Bengal Club is unpleasant. But, hey, they’re in the Bengal Club! It is a heady mix. Our heroine cannot make up her mind. Maybe she will come to Calcutta.

Tutul has overlooked one essential feature. Change picks up speed and increases its force over time. This especially so with modern capitalism, with its effortless ability to deliquesce the values of the old world. How can they survive? We cling onto the cliff as the waves sweep it away.

Now occurs one of those crises that periodically affect every company. Having secured a large order to Iraq, Syamal is informed that all the items have a defect that will take three weeks to fix (the paint on the fans is not even). What to do? Any delays and the contract will be broken and Peters will have to pay a penalty clause; putting the firm’s accounts into the red; the first time in its history. Goodbye promotion! To save the order and his own reputation Syamal has an inspiration; he arranges with a dubious character to start a strike in one of the factories. Strikes do not break the contract, so giving them time to fix the defect. The ruse works. Hooray for the new man!

A sequence of quick editing takes us up and over the crisis to land us in a nightclub. Our hero is visibly relaxed. He knows the order is secured, the directorship guaranteed. During a long and brilliant scene, Syamal is embarrassed to admit such deceit to Tutul; so tries to turn the conversation from this factory strike towards generalities. To a sensitive ear such an evasion is a sign of guilt. Here is the moment of decision. The camera rests for a long time on her face, as she looks away from the crowd and thinks about Syamal’s words. As the friends converse a half-naked dancer wriggles her torso to an ever-quickening rhythm. The camera becomes obsessed with this dancer, who, on finishing the dance, puts one of her flower laurels around Syamal’s neck. The symbolism is brazen. No Brahmin to feel comfortable in such a spot. We touch Tutul’s emotions: there is something disreputable, even sleazy, about this whole enterprise.

The next day, and to the congratulations of his staff, Syamal is elected to the directorship. He returns home in triumph. The lift is out of order! He walks up many flights of stairs to his flat. A subtle metaphor for his recent success. To become a director Syamal has done more than learning a subject he doesn’t like. There is no moral cost in the examination room. Not so inside a company. The moral choices he makes are not easy ones. There can be no carefree ride in the elevator to the top. Not at all! After a hard trudge up many stairs, he arrives home tired and sweaty...his moral capital is worn out and threadbare. He has broken his own caste code. His values are now those of the firm.

When he enters the flat he is very happy. So is his wife. Sitting down on the settee he calls out to Tutul to come and share his victory. No answer. He calls a second time. She walks out of her bedroom and walks to the window, to look out over Calcutta, a view she once found so delightful. Tutul is utterly detached. She is silent. Now she walks over to an easy chair, sits down, and looks into the distance – anywhere but at Syamal. She removes the wristwatch he gave her, and places it on the table. And sits back. Neither talks. The camera moves away and we look down up them, a Peters’s ceiling fan swirling in the foreground. Syamal’s head is in his hands. All three are frozen in cinematographic time. Then Tutul disappears. Syamal is left facing an empty chair. Tutul has made her judgement. One too powerful for words. Our hero has lost his morality. His fall is total. It is devastating; the woman he loves, whose honour he feeds off, has rejected him. He has become an outcast. An untouchable.

Review: Company Limited