For Indian actor Chapal Bhaduri, the last man known to play female roles in Bengali folk theater, getting into character was both practical and ritualistic. He would put his hands together as if in prayer before applying makeup, drawing on eyebrows, affixing eyelashes and donning a bra, blouse, wig and golden jewelry.
The application of a “third eye” on his forehead marked the completion of his transformation into Shitala, the Hindu goddess of ailments, including smallpox. An iconic photograph by the publisher and director Naveen Kishore — who brought Bhaduri’s story to the world through his celebrated 1999 documentary “Performing the Goddess: The Chapal Bhaduri Story” — captured this very moment, as the actor raises a performative arm and stares defiantly past the camera.
“Until then, he is (a) man becoming a woman. With the third eye, he becomes the goddess,” Kishore told CNN in a video interview, adding: “Then there’s no more banter, no humor, no cracking jokes or singing in a bad voice.”
Now retired and in his mid-80s, Bhaduri was considered the last female impersonator of “jatra,” a traveling musical theater tradition in Bengali-speaking parts of northeast India and Bangladesh. When he first joined a jatra troupe in the 1950s, men routinely performed in saris and makeup in lieu of women actors. Hailing from an acting family and using the stage name Chapal Rani, he became a prominent figure in the Calcutta (now Kolkata) theater scene.
But Bhaduri found it increasingly hard to secure work after more women began partaking in jatra productions in the 1960s and 1970s. By the time he met Kishore, who was running a theater publication at the time, the actor was in his 60s and only performing a handful of times a year for the equivalent of $1 a night. The publisher and photographer shot a series of black-and-white images of Bhaduri getting into costume that were picked up by a curator and subsequently sold. Kishore gave the proceeds to Bhaduri, who later came to him looking for work, offering to cook or even make coffee.
“I was in tears at my own inability…. because I saw him as a star, and I thought, ‘Why would I give him a job in a kitchen?’” Kishore recalled. “Then it struck me that all our friends in television and media wanted entertainment stories of this kind, but nobody was interested in sponsoring (them). So, I thought, ‘What if I spent money and made a talking-head documentary?’”
‘Erase me from your mind’
As a preparatory study for his film, Kishore arranged another photo shoot with Bhaduri at the actor’s home — this time in color. The publisher recounted taking an unobtrusive approach to help put his subject at ease.
“My entire practice is a shy one; I often lose a lot of good photographs because I feel I might be intruding,” Kishore said. “The shoot itself was just him and me, and so it was natural. There’s no artifact. There’s no touching-up or anything — that’s part of the way I photograph… There was conversation throughout.”
Speaking to CNN from his care home in Kolkata, Bhaduri also recalled a relaxed atmosphere.
“Naveen told me to forget that he was taking my pictures,” the retired actor said in an email interview via a translator (the author Sandip Roy, whose biography of Bhaduri, “Chapal Rani, the Last Queen of Bengal,” is due to be published in December). “He said, ‘Erase me from your mind. You just do your thing like you always do. Don’t look at the camera.’”
The resulting images — several of which are currently on display in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art’s new exhibition, “Body Transformed: Contemporary South Asian Photographs and Prints” — offer an intimate glimpse of the actor’s craft. His metamorphosis unfolds through the photos, which include shots taken via mirror reflections, as he applies bright red lipstick and a circular crimson “tilaka” on his forehead.
This ritual would later be repeated as the opening scenes of “Performing the Goddess,” the aforementioned 44-minute character study in which Bhaduri charismatically recounts stories from his life and career. Comprised mostly of interview footage, the film sees the actor breaking into character monologues and discussing his theater experiences, from almost being kidnapped by men who were convinced he was a woman to studying brothel madams’ mannerisms in Kolkata’s red-light district.
‘Act of vulnerability’
Kishore said his film could have been produced in a matter of days, but he instead shot it over six weeks in the hope of uncovering more material. His patience paid off: one day, as Kishore was about to start editing, Bhaduri came to his office and — completely unsolicited — spoke at length about a three-decade relationship he had embarked on with a married man.
Bhaduri agreed to share his account of the complex affair (and breakup) on camera, in what is perhaps the film’s most powerful scene. The actor’s unusually frank discussion of his sexuality in the conservative climate of 1990s India is, according to Kishore, one of the reasons why the documentary was so well received.
“It was seen as an act of extreme vulnerability, but also courage, the fact that he could speak about it — and speak about it in a manner that (wasn’t) sensational,” Kishore added.
This may also be why the documentary (and the accompanying photos) still resonate today. Shown at film festivals when it came out, it has since aired on Indian television, while the preparatory photos have been exhibited at various museums, sold at a Sotheby’s auction in 2007 and later acquired by the Cincinnati Art Museum.
The ongoing exposure led to what Kishore called a “strange resurrection” of Bhaduri’s career. Asked about the impact the project had on his life, the actor said he relished the chance to bring his art to new audiences, across India and overseas.
“People said, ‘You have taken the story of Goddess Shitala, which usually takes place in fields and street corners, to such unimaginable heights,’” the actor said. “That was my ultimate reward.”
