City of Joy (1992): A Religious Studies Perspective

Director: Roland Joffe.

Producer: Jake Eberts.

Screenplay: Mark Medoff.

This book on which the film is based was by Dominique Lapierre (1990) who co-authored, with the Director, scriptwriter and producer City of Joy: The Illustrated Story of the Film (1992).

City of Joy (apart from the opening scene, which is in Houston, Texas) is set in Calcutta. It transports us vividly into the lives of some of the poorest and most powerless of India’s poor. The film may appear to be an odd choice as part of a course on Indian religion and culture, though perhaps not on politics (which is also a concern of this course) since no one would claim that religion is a major or even a peripheral theme. Indeed, there are very few direct references to the religious beliefs of the colony’s inhabitants, around whom the narrative takes place. Joan Bethel, the colony’s British organiser, is Catholic and that is made quite explicit. However, even she does not say all that much about her faith and seems to be motivated as much by humanitarian concern as by religious conviction. Here, the book is somewhat different; the Bethel character is a Catholic priest who develops a profound respect for Indian culture. The book is replete with vivid and quite detailed descriptions of Hindu beliefs and customs. Yet there is much in this film to interest students of Indian religion, culture and society. As someone familiar at first hand with some of the places pictured in the film, it certainly evokes some powerful memories of a city of which I am rather fond.

First, the social-economic situation of the colony reflects the varna (class) and jati (caste) systems’ impact on Indian life, themselves more than a thousand years old (note Jean Bethel’s comment, cited below). Second, although the film does not explore religious belief in detail, it does place several profound religious remarks on its character’s lips. Third, the film shows how encounter with and exposure to another culture (to the religious and cultural Other) can lead to the transformation of all those involved in the encounter. Of course, Maz Lowe, the young Houston doctor who decided to ‘drop out’ and to ‘seek enlightenment’ in India might have done so elsewhere where he may even have had a similar experience of self-discovery. For example, had he gone to South America he might have become caught up in a struggle there for liberation and for justice. Nonetheless, it is often to India, or to points Eastwards of the ‘Western world’, that Westerners go, like Max, when they want a radical change of environment, or question whether the West can offer them what they need.

As an example of how India changes many who visit her, the City of Joy is well worth viewing. In fact, Indian literature and thought had significantly influenced no few Westerners, even from a distance. For example, the Boston transcendentalists never went to India but drew on her philosophies in their own. In the film, Max also influences the little colony where, at first reluctantly, he volunteers his medical services. It is Max who first inspires the colony to take a stand against the Godfather, who exploits and terrorizes them. Yet traffic is certainly not one way. Somehow, in the process of empowerment that follows, all realize their true human dignity and potential. Max tells us that he had ‘never felt more alive’. He discovers who he really is. ‘The gods’, says Hasari, ‘have not made it easy to be a human being’. However, in the film, it is humanity that shines through, in the end. Max’s initial impatience and anger slowly gives way to a deeper appreciation of the reality of his new friends’ lives. When told to ‘go home’ (back to the USA) by the Godfather’s son, Max instead moves from his hotel into the colony. It is now his home and he is now ‘Dada’ (elder brother) to Hasari’s children.

Some of the early scenes, in which Max is hustled, set up and mugged, accurately depict what can happen to luckless foreigners in India. Westerners, even if travelling on a tight budget, are all taken to be rich and hustlers will want to carry your bags for you (when you do not want them carried), to act as your guide (when you neither need nor want one) and to fix you up with partners of the opposite sex. To benefit from what India offers, visitors need to penetrate through this unappealing façade of poverty and of need, just as Max does in the film. In a sense, the film portrays a ‘real India’, which is not always experienced by tourists who stay in five star hotels and who travel in first class, insulated buses.

Religious Studies’ Motifs and Content.

• Max had visited an ashram (religious retreat) and in his hotel room we see some religious tracts, such as Guide to Inner Peace.

• As Hasari’s family, forced from their farm in Bihar by draught and debt, spend their first night in Calcutta on the riverbank, a dead body is ritually bathed.

• Next morning, as Hasari looks for work in the bazaar, a Hindu shrine forms part of the backdrop.

• When Hasari and family are being shown the courtyard of the house they think they are renting from the apparently helpful fellow Bihari, they are told that ‘holy water from the Ganges’ flows from the faucet.

• Hasari asks himself – are the gods testing me, as his Calcutta experience goes from bad to worse. Ironically, his son’s comment that they had come to Calcutta ‘to get rich’ may indeed have been part of Hasari’s plan.

• When Hasari gets his regular rickshaw fare, the schoolgirl, his friend remarks, ‘the gods have smiled’.

• When Max asks Hasari why he has to save up for his daughter’s dowry, Hasari replies that is a duty, an honor. Although the film never makes this explicit, Hasari can be seen as a very conscientious householder aware of his duties towards the gods and towards his family. He knows that upholding dharma is crucial, which is why he pledged loyalty to the Godfather who employed him as a rickshaw puller. Hasari obviously loves his daughter and touchingly buys her wedding sari from the same shop from which his passenger had bought hers. On that occasion, we hear the girl’s mother scolding her for telling Hasari to ‘remember the shop’, since how did she think he could afford to shop there!

• Look for cows, considered sacred, wondering about the busy and congested city streets.

• There are several scenes in the film into which caste and Karma (action – actions in earlier lives determine events, good or bad, of this life) can be read. It is my view that some understanding of Hindu belief enhances ability to decipher the narrative. For example, when the Godfather is explaining to Max the difference between Max’s and his, idea of ‘wealth’, he calls it a ‘wall’ between him and poverty, and says that he is ‘proud of it’. He continues, ‘and so are those on the other side’. Is this because those on either side believe that they are where they are due to karma, so both sides can accept the situation and live with it? Talking to Max about the difficulty of encouraging the colonists to be less passive, Joan refers to this as defying a thousand years of tradition. Yet the crippled leper seems able to challenge tradition; he looks to Max to confirm that their condition is a disease and not punishment for former sins. Kamla Pal, too (Hasari’s wife – who becomes Maz’s nurse) seems to challenge notions of ritual purity when, on entering the lepers house, she remarks that if your heart is good or clean, nothing can contaminate you.
• Talking to his daughter before her wedding, Hasari speaks of samsara; he tells her that the gods had only lent her to him and that it is now her turn to continue ‘the wheel of life’.
• At the wedding scene, towards the end of the film, we see the sacred fire, agni, and the couple sitting under the canopy and hear Sanskrit chants.

Discuss

Does some understanding of caste, karma, Indian religion, enhance your viewing of the film? Or, have I read too much into the script?

Are references to religious beliefs so minimal or implicit that they are not really all that necessary to the plot, or to analyses of the plot, of the film?

Evaluate Hasari’s character. He refers several times to ‘the gods’ and appears to honor his traditional duties as a householder (second ashrama, or stage of life). Do you think that religion is an important part of his life, or just habit?

Max loses his temper during his meeting with the godfther. We also hear him mimicking his landlady's accent. In these scenes, he shows his lack of sensitivity towards the culture in which he finds himself. Does this change during the film?

Reflect on the scene in which Hasari fights Ashoka. Note his son’s reaction. Does this take us to the heart of the film’s message – what is means to be human?

How do you react to the film's use of English dialogue? Calcutta’s poor do NOT speak fluent English. Does this detract from the film’s realism?

Is Kamla the stereotypical Hindu wife, or does she break the mould?

How useful a tool is the film for Religious Studies’ purposes? I chose it because it does present a realistic side of life in India’s cities that is not glamorous or romantic yet shows something of how age old customs still impact people’s lives. Note that scriptures do not feature (except in the wedding scene, where we hear chants). Is this problematic?

At one point, Max tells Joan that although he had come to India to find enlightenment, he had ‘not found a damn thing’. Is this still true at the end of the movie? If Max found some type of ‘enlightenment’, was this really the result of his being in India or incidental, accidental or unrelated to his Indian experience?

When Max treats the wound that Hasari sustained in his fight with Ashoka, he tells Max that he has a 'good heart'. What do you think he meant? Reflect on the relationship, as it develops in the film, between these two men, from such different social backgrounds. How does each benefit from their friendship? Is it between equals? Kipling said that East and West can never meet. Do they do so in this film?