Barah by Barah review: A quiet, stirring requiem for Varanasi’s past

At one point, as a typical procession passes by his tiny stall, he finds a man recording the event on his phone nonchalantly. “Shove that thing up your as*,” he mumbles not-so-softly but nobody pays an ounce of attention to his mini-rant. Sooraj might lose his livelihood because of the new face of technology and while that’s a scary proposition, his bigger worry is perhaps to be rendered obsolete.

A slow, indifferent death

The film is thereby as much about death as it is about a quest for identity, a search for at least a semblance of meaning in life. Almost every character is caught at a crossroads. Sooraj’s friend Dubey (Akash Sinha), who sells pyre wood, volunteers to protest against the refurbishment of Banaras because he fears that the legacy of his family, one that is imbued with the essence of the city for generations together, will be wiped out in a single swipe.

Old buildings will fall and new and snazzier ones, much like the mobile phone, will replace a world that Dubey has thrived in for so long. His charisma and his devotion to the cause are inspiring at first and Sooraj feels good in knowing that there’s hope after all for people like him. But much like everything else around him, he sees those traits too dying a slow, indifferent death.

And indifference is such a key sentiment in Madan’s debut film. At no point does Sooraj reveal his true feelings because there’s a good chance he isn’t aware of what to feel or how to navigate the situation. He sees his own ailing father (Harish Khanna) refuse treatment and make quiet peace with death. He sees that modernity is well and truly here (there’s now a swanky cruise ship that plays Jazz and serves Chinese during the tour of the Ghats) and he has probably missed the bus.

He also sees his only colleague in the Death Studio business quit the profession and set up a tea stall on the other bank of the Ganga, where there is no traffic jam on the path to attain moksha. Being a quiet witness, though, seems like a good option to him but how can he go on without reacting?

So, out of obligation or genuine interest, Sooraj makes small efforts to combat the disquiet in him. When he finds his father reciting tales of the Manikarnika ghat (one of the two main cremation sites in Banaras) to his tweener son (Prithvi Singh as Anshuman), he wishes for that to stop. When the kid says he wants to visit the same ghat for a school project, he takes him to the Assi ghat instead because he clearly doesn’t want the kid to have anything to do with cremation or death.

When a much more seasoned, international photographer visits the ghats to document his version of death, Sooraj duly approaches him to learn a thing or two. His relationships with his wife Meena (Bhumika Dube) and sister Mansi (Geetika Vidya Ohlyan), too, hardly feel strained because the man just isn’t angry with circumstances.

Evoking the feeling of a lost time

The story of the film is set during the lead-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi was gearing up (sounds of political rallies is another constant presence in the film) for his second win from the Banaras constituency. Times and technology have evolved drastically since then and people like Sooraj are relegated further to the backdrop. But it’s hard to explain what the conundrum is.

If Sooraj confides in someone that he has no money because of photography, they might ask him to pick a new line of work. And if he says he wants to remain a photographer come what may, the response he gets could be about sticking to his passion and serving the art form. More than sadness or despair, it’s confusion that controls his life at this point.

Tonally, Barah by Barah is like a hangout film that unfolds mostly in drawn-out silences and conversations about almost nothing. I loved the scene when Sooraj and Meena lie next to each other on the floor after attending a wedding and laugh hysterically over one banal issue or another. I loved how the film communicates Dubey’s change of heart with simple imagery in a barbershop and then on a boat. I also found the chats between Sooraj’s sister Mansi and the kid to be particularly endearing and tender.

Madan opts to shoot the film on stock (Sunny Lahiri’s cinematography) and his decision to do so is a fascinating juxtaposition with what the film is out to say; not only does the film stock capture hues, the decay and the ethos of Banaras with striking graininess but it also evokes a feeling of a lost time that Sooraj and countless other look back at slightly happier times. Barah by Barah is a touching portrait that never tries to hammer down its message but captures a time of melancholia without any intrusion, allowing life, death and everything in between to simply take its course.

Barah by Barah is currently playing in theatres