Parineeta

'Parineeta' is another celebrated film of Bimal Roy. But honestly, I didn't like it at all. The characters did not invoke any sympathy in me and I felt quite disapproving of the way things turned out.

The film is about a young woman, Lalita, who gets accidentally married to her childhood friend, Shekhar. They have always secretly loved each other but neither had expressed anything clearly, perhaps because of the looming class difference between their families. Lalita accepts their accidental marriage as real and considers herself a married woman (parineeta) thereafter. 

Meena Kumari plays Lalita with great sensitivity and I have no complaints from her portrayal. But the very character Lalita is deeply flawed, I feel. She is so devoted to Shekhar that she allows him to bully her passive aggressively all the time. It's almost like she's suffering from Stockholm syndrome.

 

Shekhar comes across as a spineless character whose life seems to be confined to his room, which he cannot clean himself. He needs Lalita to keep his room in order. One cannot help but wonder if ever descends from his ivory tower and sees what's happening in his house? How his father is mistreating Lalita's family? He has no voice in these matters but he lets no opportunity go by to taunt Lalita for not obeying him.

Why does Lalita obey him, I don't understand. Why does she let him dictate her choices?

Lalita has a great opportunity in another family friend, Girin. He is a kind hearted guy, completely smitten by Lalita. He even went to the extent of repaying Lalita’s family’s loan to Shekhar’s wicked father. This is something that Shekhar could have helped with, but he didn't even bother to ask!

Unlike Shekhar, Girin never imposed his authority on Lalita, even though Lalita owed him so much. Rather he respected her choices and freedom, sacrificed his love to keep Lalita's family's honour and he himself brought Lalita back to Shekhar when she so desires. But Lalita is blind to all this.

Is this love? I don’t know. All I can understand is that her character is the result of ages of social conditioning. A woman, especially a married woman, must be submissive to her husband - that's what Lalita actually believes in. She finds pleasure in being submissive to Shekhar. She even asks him to give her orders. 

I don't think Bimal Roy thought through her character very well. Maybe that's how it is in the book on which the movie is based. I don't know because I have not read the book. But this character is certainly not an ideal by any standards.

There are a couple of other things noteworthy in the film. 

One of Lalita's young cousins is shown as completely fascinated with the idea of marriage. She has a doll whom she considers her daughter and she talks about her marriage like an old woman would. She says things like, "ladki sayani ho gayi hai. ab to use ek din kya, ek ghadi bhi ghar mein nahi rakhna chahiye." (My daughter has grown up. She shouldn't be kept in the house even for a minute now)  In this, we see how deep the social conditioning goes, how women whole-heartedly accept these strange social norms in absence of an opposing voice.

The only saving grace for the film is the comment it tries to make on the idea of marriage. We hear many a characters say the phrase "shadi koi bachcho ka khel hai kya?" (marriage is no child's play). Society has made marriage into something very complicated. It's no longer about love, but social acceptability, caste and class, give and take, and all this has engendered so many social evils. 

Shekhar and Lalita marry only out of love, without any complications, simply by exchanging a garland, like children would, and they accept that marriage as real. Isn't that how it should be? That's perhaps the whole point of this story, and I really liked this aspect of the story.

When they remade Parineeta in 2005, they transformed the characters immensely. Lalita was not so submissive, rather headstrong and free-spirited. Shekhar was no longer a spineless and emotionally constipated guy, rather he was full of feelings, passion and vigour. It made sense when Lalita chose him over Girin. But not in the older version.

But I guess this is how social standards change. For the audiences of the '50s Lalita's submissiveness and Shekhar's inactiveness may not have seemed like a problem. But today, it just doesn't make sense.