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.

Naukari

While the film is entirely about a young man’s (Kishore Kumar) desperate search for employment, there is a small role for a woman too. It is that of the girl who lives across his window and with whom he falls in love. Her character is played by a lesser known actress, Sheila Ramani.

Although she is shown as a well-educated, city girl, yet she does not seem to have much of a voice, either in front of her father or her lover. This was the reality of the time (1950s) and it still is even today in many parts of India. 

But, her character eventually shows strength and free-thinking when she chooses to run away from home and not marry the man her father had chosen. She chooses to be with the man she loves. This one choice makes her character memorable because it must have required immense courage for an over-protected girl like her to leave everything and go after someone only for love.

She goes on to find out that Kishore Kumar has lost the one job that he had got. Whatever little hope there could be of him being acceptable to her father was also gone now. Yet, she decides to stick with him, yet again showing strength of her character. She eventually saves him from committing suicide and it is only her presence in his life that gives him a reason to live.

So, while her character is not in any way outstanding, yet it is not a weak character. Even in the small role that the girl had, Roy tried to show some strength of character, which is commendable.

Biraj Bahu

'Biraj Bahu' is a film about a woman named Biraj, who is the elder bahu (daughter-in-law) of a village household, her relationship with her husband, and an unfortunate turn of events in their life which shows the cruelty of social expectations from women.

In the beginning, Biraj’s life seems pretty good. She has a happy family life. She does not have a nasty mother-in-law giving her a hard time, as was the case in many stories of a bahu’s plight. Her husband, too, is a saintly man, who is completely in love with her, not a drunkard who beats her up or anything. These are not the tragedies of her life.

The tragedy of her life, and this becomes clear only at the very end, is that she is a woman. She is a woman in a society which professes to worship the Goddess but chains women to the unimaginably high standards of virtue and purity, and if there ever arises a situation where her purity is attacked, it is she who has to suffer, not the perpetrator. 

The sad thing is that such ideas are socially conditioned into women's belief systems and instead of opposing them, they accept them and live by them. Biraj, a deeply moralistic woman, believes strongly in the Brahmin idea of social order, where a woman's virtue lies in her chastity and her complete devotion to her husband. So much so, that her highest aspiration in life is to die at the feet of her husband. 

Her story brings out the extremely fragile position of a woman in society. The evil zamindar eyes her everyday when she goes to fill water from the river. The villagers do not take any action against him because he is rich and powerful. Eventually, Biraj herself has to ask him to leave. But this one conversation is misinterpreted and she is questioned for her purity. 

On one frightful, stormy night, her husband loses his mind and accuses her of unchaste behaviour. That is the end for her. She feels there is no reason left for her to live and she walks out in the storm to take her life. This is the deeply troubled state of her being.

Biraj’s story reminds one of Sita from Ramayana. Like Sita, Biraj is the epitome of all virtues, her greatest virtue being her complete devotion to her husband. Like Sita became victim to the evil Ravana, Biraj falls prey to the evil zamindar, and even though she manages to save her honour and escape, society accuses her for being unchaste. A woman like Biraj can bear everything but not this taint on her chastity and it ultimately proves fatal for her.

Bimal Roy brings out this parallel in the song 'Suno Sita ki kahani'

"Bol gayi dharti ki kaya kaanp gayo aakash
Bina dosh ke Sita ko jab Ram diyo vanvas

Suno Sita ki kahani 
Wo mahlo ki rani 
Chhod ghar baar gayi vanvas 
Kisi ne kadar na jani"

In a moment of extreme pathos, we see Biraj saying: 
"Mera koi ghar nahi... Mera koi nahi..." 
(I don't have any home..No one is mine..) 

The film thus brings out the extreme cruelty of social expectations from women, which have not really changed in five thousand years. They are the same today as they were in Sita’s time. Even today, a woman of Sita’s stature has to go through an agni pariksha and has to prove her chastity time and again. Even today, she has to meet Sita’s fate, a Rama-like noble husband notwithstanding.