When the Red Flag Fades

Srijit Mukherji is arguably the most prolific filmmaker in Bengali cinema. His prodigious output inevitably raises questions about his versatility and creative consistency, just as his impressive tally of awards invites scrutiny of his artistic credentials. Yet his recent films, Shotti Bole Shotti Kichu Nei and Padatik, a bio-fiction on filmmaker Mrinal Sen, demonstrate his creative range and assured choice of subjects. With Winkle Twinkle, Mukherji reinforces his standing as one of the more...

min read

Srijit Mukherji is arguably the most prolific filmmaker in Bengali cinema. His prodigious output inevitably raises questions about his versatility and creative consistency, just as his impressive tally of awards invites scrutiny of his artistic credentials. Yet his recent films, Shotti Bole Shotti Kichu Nei and Padatik, a bio-fiction on filmmaker Mrinal Sen, demonstrate his creative range and assured choice of subjects. With Winkle Twinkle, Mukherji reinforces his standing as one of the more distinctive and enduring filmmakers in Indian cinema. Sixteen years after his directorial debut, Autograph, a personal take on Satyajit Ray’s Nayak, he continues to experiment with form and subject. Like several of Mukherji’s films, Winkle Twinkle draws inspiration from a celebrated Bengali play of the same name, written by Bratya Basu and staged in 2002. Basu, a formidable figure in Bengali theatre before turning to full-time politics, had drawn on Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle, first published in 1819. Irving’s protagonist falls asleep and wakes up years later to discover that the world has changed beyond recognition while he remains essentially the same. Mukherji and screenwriter Padmanabha Dasgupta transpose this premise to contemporary Kolkata, turning it into a sharp political allegory. Sabyasachi Sen, a committed Communist activist, is presumed killed in police firing during the Emergency in 1976. His body is never found. In reality, he falls asleep and awakens in 2002, physically unchanged but confronted by a world that has moved on without him. The shock begins at home. His wife has aged, and his children have grown up. His son, Indro, who idolised Che Guevara alongside his father as a child, has become an active supporter of the Trinamool Congress. He has little patience for his father’s unwavering allegiance to the CPI(M), a party whose ideological universe has been shaken by the collapse of the Soviet Union. His daughter, born after his disappearance, studies at Indira Gandhi University, a name that evokes for Sabyasachi only the prime minister associated with the Emergency. Posters announcing Mamata Banerjee’s rise confront him on Kolkata’s streets. The political landscape has changed beyond recognition, but Sabyasachi cannot accept that the movement to which he devoted his life has lost its former certainty. Technology bewilders him. More distressing, however, is the discovery that an old party comrade has become a leader of a new political formation and amassed wealth through dubious means. The revolutionary’s world has not merely changed; its moral foundations appear to have crumbled. His wife, once his comrade and fellow traveller, offers him refuge, welcoming his return with affection. Their son, however, refuses to accept him readily. The father-son conflict becomes a confrontation between two political generations: one shaped by ideological conviction and sacrifice, the other by a more pragmatic politics of power. The film moves back and forth through time, mirroring Sabyasachi’s bewilderment and drawing the audience into his confusion. Politics, technology, education and popular culture have all changed, often in ways he cannot comprehend. Some of the sharpest moments are also the most humorous. Sabyasachi recalls filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak marching in a Marxist procession, unaware of how cinema has changed and that another Hrithik — Roshan — is now the more familiar name. When a man at a tea stall expresses astonishment that he has never heard of Sachin Tendulkar, Sabyasachi walks away, explaining that the only Sachin he knows is Sachin Dev Burman. A particularly telling image captures the film’s political imagination: a street magician’s scarf changes from red to green. The symbolism is unmistakable. The red of the Left, once dominant in Bengal, gives way to the green associated with the Trinamool Congress. The cinematography is equally impressive, particularly the transition from colour to black-and-white when the narrative revisits the past. Ritwik Chakraborty is outstanding as Sabyasachi, convincingly conveying the bewilderment and stubbornness of a man unable to reconcile his convictions with reality. Anasuya Majumdar as his middle-aged wife and Sohini Sarkar as her younger self provide strong support. The sudden violence in the father-son confrontation is perhaps the film’s principal weakness, disrupting an otherwise nuanced exploration of ideological estrangement. Yet, Winkle Twinkle remains one of Mukherji’s finest films. Its central insight is both poignant and political: Sabyasachi’s tragedy lies not simply in having lost years of his life, but in discovering that history has moved on without him and that the revolution he believed would change the world has itself become a relic of the past. (The writer is an National Award-winning film scholar.)

Dynastic Illusion

Correspondent

28 minutes ago

2 min read

The digital theater of Indian politics has just witnessed another carefully choreographed performance. Congress leader Sonia Gandhi’s debut on Instagram, staged alongside the reveal of her memoir Belonging, is being treated by her handlers and partymen as a historic milestone. Yet, this curated descent into the algorithmic playground of the youth cannot mask the profound decay of a political party that remains stubbornly tethered to the principle of hereditary entitlement.

For decades, the Congress, dominated by the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, has operated under the assumption that India’s vast, diverse democracy is a family heirloom, passed down through generations like a piece of ancestral real estate. Sonia Gandhi’s latest social media manoeuvre is not an exercise in democratic accessibility but a superficial attempt to rebrand a ruling lineage for a digital age. By packaging complex political legacies into digestible, aesthetically pleasing squares, the Congress machinery seeks to rewrite history by transforming years of centralizing authority and systemic patronage into a romanticized narrative of sacrifice and love.

The glossy facade of the digital matrix rapidly fractures when confronted by harsher realities. While the Congress dynasty attempts to charm the youth online, several commentators have suggested a far more manipulative strategy at play offline. Critics allege that beneath the surface of these modern public relations campaigns lies an active attempt by the opposition leadership to weaponize youth anxieties and fuel so-called ‘Gen Z’ rebellions within the country. Rather than channelling the energy of the younger generation into constructive democratic participation, the Congress’ old guard stands accused of exploiting domestic grievances to spark street disruption, tactics that mirror the volatile unrest recently witnessed across neighbouring countries like Nepal and Bangladesh.

The tragic irony of this dynastic survival strategy is its deep condescension toward the very demographic it seeks to court. India’s youth do not need an aristocratic saviour like the Gandhi dynasty on social media, nor do they deserve to be used as disposable proxies for political destabilization. They require genuine economic opportunity, systemic reform, and institutional integrity. They seek solutions that a political culture rooted entirely in nepotism is fundamentally unequipped to provide.

Ultimately, Sonia Gandhi’s Instagram hullabaloo reveals a desperate truth, which is that the dynasty has run out of ideas. When a political movement is reduced to selling nostalgia and curated rebellion to a generation that looks toward the future, its moral authority is entirely spent. The reliance on family branding and external validation underscores a refusal to let the democratic process move beyond a single family. India’s democracy has outgrown the need for imperial guardians. And no amount of digital engineering or historical romanticism can obscure the fact that an empire built on birthright is an anachronism that the modern republic must firmly leave behind.

When the Red Flag Fades

Dynastic Illusion

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