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Sumitra Bhave: A multi-talented creative being who had power to bring about change
It’s very difficult for me today to take my character out of the joint identity Sumitra Bhave and I shared
It’s very difficult for me today to take my character out of the joint identity Sumitra Bhave and I shared. She is not with us anymore, but she is with me in spirit. I think it is my responsibility to take her legacy forward through my life and film-making.
As a person, I remember her as through multiple personalities - an artiste on one hand and a social scientist on the other. She was also an entrepreneur, leader, manager, and a humble activist immersed in social movements.
She was also a free spirit going beyond any restrictions. One could find all the contradictions within her; a strong feminist who forever stood for women’s rights. At the same time, she was a simple human being and a compassionate woman caring for everyone. She would throw away all the ‘isms’ when it came to empathy and human values. She was an interesting, multi-faceted, multi-talented personality with layers of possibilities.
I always feel that she could have been many persons at the same time. Had she pursued her career as a newsreader in All India Radio (AIR) in Delhi, she would have become director general and possibly changed the face of television.
But then, she also wanted to become a painter and go to Paris. Possibly, she would have been a new age Amrita Shergil for us. She was a poet too and writers like Bhalchandra Nemade, Kavi Grace, loved her poetry in her college days. Perhaps we could have got a philosophical poet in her like Arun Kolhatkar.
When social activist Medha Patkar worked with Sumitra in the Mumbai slums and on the children’s family programme during her work at a non-profit, the later was a boss. Had she continued, Sumitra probably would have been another Medha Patkar.
She studied kathak dance under Rohini Bhate’s guidance. She could possibly have been a dancer or established a Kalagram like Protima Bedi, teaching various styles of dance to students.
She chose to become a filmmaker and brought all these elements in her work.
She was a social reformer and idolised persons like Gopal Ganesh Agarkar and Mahatma Phule and learnt how they fought to change the society and the mindset of people. The social reformer in her and all her ideas, converted into her filmmaking which was complex, where she wrote her own scripts. We directed films together to bring these ideas on screen.
Today, I look at myself as her humble disciple, a person who was fortunate to be with her right since the age of 17, till her last breadth, and possibly even after that.
I have learnt about conviction in filmmaking and her compassionate and humane attitude towards people and society helped me be what I am today.
I will not just cherish my memories with her, but would try and find her in my own self and take it forward; take her crusade forward.
Honestly, I would want to emulate her.
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Filmmaker Sunil Sukthankar, along with Sumitra Bhave, together made various landmark films, some of national award winners.
