Chapter 8 - From Fidelity to Creativity: Benegal and Suraj Ka Satvan Ghoda

Summary

This aim of this chapter is to read Shyam Benegal’s adaptation of Dharmavir Bharati’s novel/novella, Suraj Ka Satvan Ghoda (The Sun’s Seventh Horse), into a film of the same title, and attest to its role in the chronicling of Benegal’s achievement as a filmmaker par excellence. This chapter is a study and a consideration of the book, its cinematic remake, questions of adaptation, and the outcomes of the changes made by Benegal while transcoding the text to cinema.

Bharati’s book was first published in Hindi in 1952, and critically applauded for its formal and technical inventiveness. Suraj Ka Satvan Ghoda follows a narrative technique that, like an Escher diagram, confuses the contours of the narrative so that, depending on how one looks at it, the novel can be seen as comprising one story or three interweaving stories. Because of repeated entries into the same narrative from different points in time, which thereby challenges temporal sequencing, the three stories may well be the same story told three times. Two narrators, each framing the other in turn, make the novel self-reflexive.

In 1999, Bharati’s novel was translated into English by Sachchidanand Hiranand Vatsyayan ‘Ajneya’ as The Sun’s Seventh Horse. In 1992, Suraj Ka Satvan Ghoda was made into a film by Shyam Benegal. It opened to mixed responses, as evinced in Sukanya Verma’s ‘Great film, no audience’. But the audience was not to have the last word on the fate of this film, which perhaps predictably enough, went on to receive the year’s (1992) National Film Award for best feature film in Hindi.

SHYAM BENEGAL

Born in 1934, Shyam Benegal shot to fame with Ankur in 1974. Meaning The Seedling, this film based on a real story became a milestone in the establishment of what is popularly known as parallel, or non-mainstream, Indian cinema. This was a genre associated with the well-known filmmaker Satyajit Ray, and is the genre within which many of Benegal’s films find their feet. Ankur won three national awards among several others and starred stalwart actors like Anant Nag and Shabana Azmi playing out a rural drama of caste and feudalism. It was to herald the start of an illustrious career in cinema for a brilliant filmmaker.