Kolkata:
A Bengali film that hit the screens in Kolkata on Friday has the most unusual star. He is a man once convicted for kidnap and murder, sentenced to life imprisonment but acquitted after nine years in jail.
Muktadhara, the film, revolves around the real life story of Nigel Akkara who became a new man thanks to a dancer who conducted dance therapy in Presidency Jail Kolkata. Dance therapy was introduced there in 2005 as part of a drive to turn jails into correctional homes.
Nigel, 32 and a drop out from Kolkata's well-known St Xavier's College, plays the role of Yusuf Mohammed Khan, a convict who reluctantly enrolls in dance classes at Presidency Jail. As in real life, Yusuf is a called a "
goonda" who pokes fun at efforts to make "
goondas wear
ghungroos". But he falls under the spell of the dance teacher Niharika, played by Rituparna Sengupta, and after initially addressing her as madam ends up calling her "ma".
That is what happened to Nigel in real life. For him,
Muktadhara is much more than a film.
"
Muktadhara for me is a very big message for society." he says. "The message is you know prisoners in prison they are punished once for their crime or their faults they had done. And after coming out, they should not be punished twice. They should be given a second chance. And they are also human beings...they are also human beings."
In real life, it was the Inspector General of Prisons BD Sharma who, in 2005, invited renowned dancer Alokananda Roy to train prisoners. She taught them, including Nigel, to perform Tagore's dance drama,
Valmiki Pratibha - the story of a dacoit Ratnakar who reformed to become the sage Valmiki who wrote
Ramayan. The dance drama has been staged at least a hundred times across the country to rave reviews.
The police officer would allow a group of almost 100 prisoners out on parole to perform
Valmiki Pratibha. He knew he was taking a risk, certainly with Nigel. But not a single prisoner ever tried to flee. As their mutual confidence grew, the prisoners were allowed to first perform in jail, then in Kolkata's public auditoriums and then in Mumbai and Delhi as well. The police officer's effort has earned international recognition for trying to truly turn jails into correctional homes.
Indeed, after leaving jail in 2009, Nigel has set up a facilities management company from where he hires out security and housekeeping staff. He also employs 38 of his fellow former jail inmates, giving them what he always wanted: a second chance.
When director Shibaprasad Mukhopadhyay came across Nigel's story, he knew he had to make a film on him. Of course, he has fictionalised much of Nigel's story. And there is a strong subplot as well. Dancer Niharika, played by Rituparna Sengupta, is trapped in a difficult marriage to a top criminal lawyer played by West Bengal's education minister Bratya Bose who was an actor before he joined politics. They have a daughter who is hearing and speech impaired.
Both the stars are full of praise for Nigel.
"I think Nigel is the main USP of this film because he was in prison and Alokananda Roy, when she did
Valmiki Pratibha actually in jail, Nigel performed superbly. I have seen the performance on stage. But this is the first time he is in a film, in celluloid, and I personally believe that he is the most important discovery in this year as an actor," says Bratya Bose.
Rituparna Sengupta says she has seen many actors in her years in films, but few like Nigel. "He can be marked as one of the best debutante actors in recent times. And of course he is such a diligent actor, he is such a good looker and he has done it with so much elan, so much personality and so much of great conviction... I also felt inspired by him."
But if there is one real life star of the whole
Muktadhara venture, it is dancer Alokananda Roy, the woman who went into Presidency Jail, didn't ask a single question about the inmates' past but simply encouraged them to internalise the rhythm of dance. She says Nigel is perhaps her most public success story but there are many other prisoners who succumbed to the healing touch of dance and came to think of it as meditation.
"It was not just dance that I was teaching them," says Alokananda Roy. "And I was not just teaching them. I was connecting with them as human beings, something they had perhaps forgotten to be in the confines of the jail. I think I restored their faith in themselves."
At the end of it, says Alokananda Roy, it was not dance therapy at work but love therapy.
Muktadhara has attempted to capture just that. A therapy that extends to the prisoners what they desperately need the most: a second chance in life.