Chaar Phool Hain Aur Duniya Hai: Portrait Of An Artist As An Old Man

IN ACHAL MISHRA’s Chaar Phool Hain Aur Duniya Hai, a leisurely portrait of Hindi writer Vinod Kumar Shukla, a lot is said about writing. The film is designed as a conversation between the author and actor Manav Kaul, also a writer, but everything about their interaction keeps circling back to the need for writing and the act itself. On paper, it makes sense given that the documentary is expressly about an author but it also fits in the larger context given how effectively Mishra’s new work unfolds as a clutter-breaking treatise that defies the prototypes about writer and writings in its brisk runtime.

At first glance, Chaar Phool Hain Aur Duniya Hai overwhelms with its simplicity. The outing entails a frail looking Shukla sitting before the camera — not always making eye contact — and talking about life, philosophies, and answering a specific existential query most authors are plagued with: should we seek permission from the people we write about? The question comes from Kaul and while Shukla listens to him with rapt attention, he is quick to dismiss it. “It is not possible,” he says.

And yet, much of the documentary unravels with the consensual presence of Shukla. Mishra’s camera seldom probes, remaining content with talking heads. It opens with the author pacing within the precincts of his house and then he vacates the screen only to reappear a little later. The gap is filled by his son, Shashwat Gopal, a shy middle-aged man who is revealed to be as profound as his father. In fact, in many ways he comes across as the younger version of Shukla. The thoughtful inclusion of Gopal lends precious insight into Shukla’s writing process (the son shares that he is always the first listener to the writing and that the 87-year-old still writes every day) as well as lightly underlines the dependency that writers forge even when the act of writing is a solitary one.

The concurrent presence of the two is what comprises the real gift of Chaar Phool Hain Aur Duniya Hai. The unadorned design sharpens the intent of the outing which touches upon the person and the act — the writer and writing. For instance, if we listen to Shukla musing about Mani Kaul adapting his novel Naukar Ki Kameez in 1999, his thoughts are accompanied by his observation that when a text is reimagined that it depends solely on the person doing it. Later, he expounds on his tendency to keep forgetting things. Life, as lived by him, does not come back to him in a linear fashion. But if he forgets with all this might, he also tries to remember with the same intent.

The 54-minute non-fiction came together across two afternoons. There is an unhurried pace to the proceedings which ties up well with Mishra’s previous works (Gamak Ghar in 2019 and Dhuin in 2022) but there is also an attentiveness which feels both novel and a reiteration. The filmmaker expresses genuine willingness to listen, and keeps the frame mostly spare. And yet his curiosity is not designed in broad strokes. It is attuned to the time he has with Shukla and is whittled to a softer interest, sidestepping controversies like the one in 2022 when he accused his publishers of paying him unfairly. Even the fact that Kaul is supplying the questions is divulged much later.

What comes together is an unadorned depiction of various facets of a writer and his vocation, touching upon the anonymity that comes it (there is a lovely moment where Shukla shares that he received a call from a reader who just wanted to check if he was alive) and the discipline that is required. But the most affecting bit arrives a little later. Shukla is asked about his inspiration for writing about women. It is a lovely scene where the old man is eating at the table and adjacent to him, his wife is cooking. Shukla shares that everything he knows about women, he knows through his wife and that tradition has bound them in a way where they are compelled to return to love after every conflict.

It is one of the most reassuring instances in Chaar Phool Hain Aur Duniya Hai which squashes away every liberal jargon about writing, including the hedonistic needs the act is purported to need. Shukla challenges them with a gentility that is less combative and more telling of the life he has led, putting in the process a radical proposition that the artist can co-exist with art if the former uses their ability to express and not shield themselves. 

Chaar Phool Hain Aur Duniya Hai premiered at the recently-concluded DIFF.