JOIN USSimone de Beauvoir once said: “One is not born a woman, but rather, becomes one” and no one perhaps knows it better than Chapal Bhaduri alias Chapal Rani.
Since his debut as Marzeen, a female role, in Alibaba, Bhaduri has continuously slipped out of his gender-by-birth and entered into a make-believe world of artistic femininity.
Bhaduri’s performance functions as a heritage site because he is the last torch-bearer of an almost extinct theatrical tradition, which unlike in the West, continued in India into the later half of the 20th century: professional female impersonation.
Since the complete social acceptance of female actors on the Bengali stage in the 1960s, the female impersonator has often been relegated to the task of providing
visual comedy. But Bhaduri’s performances are not ironic because it is marked by his conviction and skill which, over the years, he has perfected, matured and
created his own school of performing arts.
In a way Bhaduri’s art is predicated as one like that of Keatsian negative capability where the genetic masculinity is erased as much as possible so that only one gender—the feminine—completely takes over the actor’s body.
Interestingly enough, Bhaduri’s this one-off artistic skill started from his urge to survive. After his mother’s death in 1952 the family was in dire financial straits and Bhaduri was offered a job only if he could perform the role of a female for the Railways Recreation Club.
“One of my relatives who used to work in the Eastern Railway told me that he could get me a job if I was ready to play the role of a female. Actually, they had a recreation club where they used to perform plays but getting a female for the plays was very difficult at that time. I was little tensed and surprised. I had no other alternative but to accept the offer,” Bhaduri told Deccan Herald.
“I played the role of Marzeena in the play Alibaba. It was highly appreciated. Young people (who didn’t knew that I was a male) fell in love with me and I started getting a number of proposals from them,” Bhaduri jokingly recollected.
Hold your breath. There were attempts to abduct Bhaduri and many a time people tried to molest the actor without realising the gender. “For my female role I got the job of a chainman where I was supposed to hold the chain during measurement but I was never allowed to go out for work because it would get dark and I could not perform. This helped me to concentrate only on my performance and gave an opportunity to develop female characters more effectively,” Bhaduri said.
Son of Tara Kumar Bhaduri, a noted actor and nephew of Sisir Kumar Bhaduri, the legendary actor-director of pre-independence Bengali theatre, Chapal, to concentrate only on acting, left his railway job and became a professional actor.
“Actually my father was an actor and we didn’t have any stable family income. I had one brother and two sisters and everything depended on me. So, for some time I worked in the Eastern Railway but as I started getting recognition I left the job. Also, I was earning more from acting and I felt it would be better if I concentred only on acting,” Bhaduri said.
In the course of his long career on the Bengali stage, he has often played roles of powerful women. He has played Raziā Sultana, Chand Bibi, Devi Kaikeyi and the Goddess Sitala.
Occasionally he has played representatives of the common humanity, such as Mahinder Kaur in a play based on the massacre of Jallianwallah Bagh or Jnhabi Devi, the heart-broken mother of Michael Madhusudan Dutt. Even when he once played the role of a brothel madam his character wielded obvious power over the sex workers at her establishment.
When asked whether Marzeena was the first role he performed, Bhaduri said: “I first acted when I was eight years old. Every day I used to go with my mother to see plays at Sree Rangam Hall. I used to sit on the wings of the stage and watch the play. I used to dream of acting one day.”
“At that time a play was running successfully at Sree Rangam theatre-- Bindur Chele, written by famous Bengali novelist Sarat Chandra Chattopadhayay. I used to watch the play regularly. There were two boys of my age Amulya and Ratan and I used to watch them very keenly,” Bhaduri said.
“My mother was on good terms with the theatre people. In 1945, I didn’t go to the theatre one day. My mother suddenly came and asked me to play the role of Amulya because the boy was sick,” Bhaduri said.
“I didn’t know anything about acting but my mother dressed me up and told me to look at the prompter. He would utter dialogues and I would have to watch him and repeat them with my eyes wide open. I did and everybody appreciated my performance,” Bhaduri said.
“I got Rs five as remuneration and I can still remember that I ran all the way home waiving the note,” Bhaduri added.
Embracing the feminine character as he did as an integral part of his professional life, that gender also formed itself into a psychic entity which seemed to manifest itself physiologically in him.
“I watch women very carefully. I watch the way they speak, their style of walking and all their external activities, so that I can make my acting as perfect as possible. In fact, today performing the role of a male, which I have done once, is bit difficult for me because my feelings are closer to a woman than that of a man,” Bhaduri who is still a bachelor, said.