#siddeshwari

[womeninthewindow]

Siddeshwari (Mani Kaul, 1990)

[marzipandildo]

Siddeshwari [Mani Kaul, 1990]

[marzipandildo]

Siddeshwari [Mani Kaul, 1990]

[afternoonbreezes]

Siddeshwari (Mani Kaul, 1989)

Viaje (Paz Fábrega, 2015)

[psheard]

Siddeshwari (Mani Kaul, 1990)

[dhrupad]

Siddeshwari (1990)

[dhrupad]

Personally for me, Kaul’s Siddheshwari (1989) is quite an emblematic film of दुःख का प्रकार ! And when I first saw it immediately after it was made, I felt peculiar layers of pain embedded within its state of being. As an artist, Kaul stuck to his own nature, own स्वभाव in his cinematography, its practice. He risked for expressing himself, for अमिथ्या अभिव्यक्ति  || दुःख ||

Muktibodh wrote, “Now, all the risks of expression will have to be undertaken…”

—

The following day, I was at Chitrakoot talking to Kaul about Siddheshwari and how deep down in my heart I was feeling pain in its various forms, perhaps my own middle-class pain of being. Barely any other film had touched me with such earthly, unearthly feeling. And the feeling I thought had emerged from the way Kaul had filled the ‘movement’ with ‘time’, e.g. the mental and physical agony experienced by young Siddheshwari and the feeling of pain being evoked through fleeting moments while she was washing kitchen utensils, creating peculiar metal sounds. Such abstract (and yet palpable) feeling perhaps only music could invoke though it is very different for cinematography to attain the temporality of music (संगीत). “But, as I know through your cinematography, you have been striving to offer it a certain musical experience,” I told Kaul that afternoon. || दुःख ||

And I thought my words had made him happy and joyous. However, after listening to my दुःख का प्रकार thoughts with regard to the film Siddheshwari, Kaul had kept quietly staring at me for a few seconds. Those were amazing moments at Chitrakoot as the Sun threw its softened oblique evening rays from a window. But much later someone gave me a copy of Udayan Vajpeyi’s Hindi book, Abhed Akash: Mani Kaul se Udayan Vajpeyi ki Baatcheet (Undivided Space: Udayan Vajpeyi’s Conversation with Mani Kaul, Madhya Pradesh Film Development Corporation, Bhopal, 1994), and I was sweetly surprised to see Mani Kaul referring to my दुःख का प्रकार response to Siddheshwari in this book. Vajpeyi’s question had referred to Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) and the sense of polyphony that we find in his literary works, and the polyphony that we see in Kaul’s cinematography. || दुःख ||

Mani Kaul: “The question is about how you experience polyphony. Once my friend Amrit Gangar told me about Siddheshwari and the presence of various forms of pain, in it दुःख का प्रकार, दुःख का प्रकार !, like the forms of the (raga) Sarang in our music.” There are several संसार in a single संसार, Kaul told Vajpeyi among several other interesting things. The poet Muktibodh also refers to the system of created things, the world or the संसार . || दुःख ||

—AMRIT GANGAR, Mani Kaul: DU: KH ke Prakar

दुःख का प्रकार - types of pain/sorrow

स्वभाव - nature

|| दुःख || - pain/sorrow

अमिथ्या अभिव्यक्ति  - not untrue expression of self ?

संसार - world

[dhrupad]

Siddeshwari (1990)