“Daliya”, Stories by Rabindranath Tagore - Tani Basu (2015)

Rabindranath Tagore’s short story “Dalia” (1892), aka “Daliya” or “Daalia”, concerns the innocence of love in a social climate dominated by family duty, honor, and revenge.  This story served as the basis for the 26th and final episode, “Daliya”, of the anthology television series Stories by Rabindranath Tagore (2015), which was under the general directorship of Anurag Basu, with this episode scripted by Anurag Basu and directed by Tani Basu.

Tagore’s story, as well as this episode, is set in 17th century Mughal India and concerns real historical personages, which is a departure from most of the episodes of this series that are set sometime in the 1930s.  The themes here, though, should be familiar to readers of other, more contemporary, Tagore stories – the contrast between love (understood to be an intuitive feeling of the heart) and tradition-bound social demands devoted to duty, honor, and revenge.

The historical background elements are concerned with the family of Shah Suja, who was the second son of the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, known for, among other things, commissioning the construction of the Taj Mahal.  Shah Suja was serving as the appointed governor of Bengal, when his father, the emperor, came down with a serious illness.  This led to a ruthless war of succession, which resulted in the brother of Shah Suja, Aurangzeb, acceding to the Mughal throne and Shah Suja’s desperate flight to the Arakan (Rakhine) state in what is now Myanmar.  There the Arakani king supposedly offered refuge to Shah Suja and his family.

We can break the story of “Daliya” into four sections, or “acts”, parts of which are dramatized flashbacks.  Note that since this story has a surprise ending, you may want to avoid reading my account of the final act, as well as that of another review [1], before you see it for the first time.

1.  A Forest Caravan
At the outset a caravan transporting a litter (hand-carried sedan) is shown traveling through the forest.  We will soon learn that the principal figures of this caravan are: 

• a well-dressed young woman, Zulekha (played by Preeti Sharma)
• Zulekha’s attendant, “Uncle” Rehmat Khan (Dadhi Raj)
• Zulekha’s younger sister Amina (Shriya Sharma)
• a fisherman friend of Amina’s named Daliya (Kirin Srinivas)
• Amina’s fisherman stepfather, Budha (Niraj Sah). 

During a rest stop, Rehmat tells Budha that his adopted daughter is about to marry a king.  In order to explain why, Rehmat has to give Budha some background information.  Although later important background information will be presented in dramatized flashbacks, this background is told verbally.  Rehmat tells him that

1. Amina’s real father was Shah Suja, the brother of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb who had taken refuge in Arakan.
2. Years ago the Arakani king Sudamma had wanted his three sons to be married to Shah Suja’s three daughters, but Shah Suja rejected the offer/demand.  King Sudamma was so angered by this rejection that he decided to have Shah Suja killed.  So the King of Arakan ordered them all (Shah Suja and his three daughters) to be taken out in a boat and drowned.
3. In the event, Shah Suja and one of the daughters died, but the other two daughters, Zulekha and Amina, as well as Rehmat, somehow managed to escape immediate death. 
4. Although Rehmat and Zulekha had escaped, Amina, who was then a just small child, had been swept away in the water.  It turned out, though, that the fisherman Budha had found Amina in the water and rescued her.
5. One day not long ago, Rehmat had heard from one of his informers (played by Samrat Chakraborty, who also wrote the dialogue for this episode) that King Sudamma had passed away and that his son Budh Dutt (not to be confused with fisherman Budha) had become king of Arakan.  
6. The informer also told Rehmat that the new king Budh Dutt Sudamma had recently gone hunting and had seen Amina, now a young woman, in the distance walking in the forest.  He was immediately smitten by her beauty, and it was now his intention to marry the girl.
7. Hearing this and guessing that this girl must be sister Amina, Zulekha and Rehmat, who obtained from the informer the approximate location of the girl, had decided to go find her before King Budh Dutt did.

Thus the caravan’s participants that we see indicate that Zulekha and Rehmat had found Amina.

2.  Flashback – Zulekha Meets Amina
The story now moves to a flashback sequence depicting when Zulekha, riding in her litter through the forest, spotted Amina running nearby.  After they meet and embrace, Amina takes her sister to meet her “father”, the humble fisherman Budha.  Zulekha wanted to find her younger sister before the Arakan king did so that she could convey to her the necessity of doing her duty – commit a murder.  In order to avenge the brutal killing of their father and their older sister, it was necessary, she told Amina, for her to kill the king when she had the chance.  Even though this act of revenge would probably cost the girl her own life, it was absolutely necessary for Amina to fulfil her familial duty.  For her part, Amina expresses the (correct) opinion that revenge is pointless, and she is undecided about accepting her sister’s command to take revenge.

But we also see in other flashbacks that Amina has a very friendly relationship with another local boy, Daliya, who is another humble fisherman.  Indeed, Zulekha can readily see that the insouciant and flirtatious way that Daliya acts toward Amina suggests to her that the two of them are in love.

3.  A   Marriage Proposal is Received

Budha now receives an official marriage proposal from King Budh Dutt Sudamma for his stepdaughter, and the king also wants to have a meeting with the girl before the marriage.  Zulekha is excited, because she feels that this meeting will offer her sister the best opportunity to kill the king.  Again, she insistently calls on Amina to fulfil her duty to enact revenge.  And Amina reluctantly accepts.

But as Amina thinks things over, she realizes to her regret that the man she really cares about, Daliya, doesn’t seem unhappy that she is about to marry the Arakani king.  She realizes that she really loves Daliya.  This is the most beautiful part of the story, because it portrays Amina’s inner struggle between her heart and her sense of duty.  Even Zulekha, seeing her sister’s ardor for Daliya, begins to question whether her own obsession for revenge justifies sacrificing her dear sister’s life.

As the time approaches to go to the meeting with the king, Amina desperately tells Daliya that she loves him and that she wants to elope with him.  But Daliya just laughs her off and tells her he is too carefree for marriage.

4.  Meeting the King

Zulekha and Amina go to the arranged prenuptial meeting place, and just before Amina is about to go alone into the king’s chamber, Zulekha hands her sister their father’s bejeweled dagger.  She has been saving it for years for the right moment, and now the time has come. 

Amina enters the room and approaches the royally robed king from behind.  Trembling, she raises the unsheathed dagger to strike.  But at that moment, the king turns to face her and reveals himself to be her dear Daliya!  Seeing his face, Amina faints, and the king/Daliya carries the unconscious girl to the bed. 

Zulekha, who had been waiting outside, rushes into the room.  Daliya explains to her that he knew all along who Amina really was, and that he figured that the only way he could ever get her to accept him was to approach her first as a commoner.  He wanted her to see him without thinking of all the treachery associated with her father’s murder, which he admitted was a terrible wrong.  He tells Zulekha that he truly loves Amina.  When Amina awakens, she is thrilled to see her beloved Daliya tending to her.  And Zulekha is finally won over, too.

This is another moving story about love triumphing over all obstacles.  But a key feature here is that in this story, it is a man’s, not a woman’s, faith in love that turns the tide and wins the heart.  And Daliya accomplished this not by relying on his earthly powers, but by following the dictates of his compassionate heart.

★★★★

Notes:

1. Durga S, “The Happy Endings – Stories by Rabindranath Tagore (10)”, Writersbrew, (27 March 2016).   

“The Story of a Muslim Girl”, Stories by Rabindranath Tagore - Tani Basu (2015)

Rabindranath Tagore’s short story draft “Musalmanir Golpo” (“The Story of a Muslim Girl”, aka “The Story of a Mussalmani”, 1941 [1]) portrays how the universality of love transcends traditional sectarian restrictions.  This story served as the basis for the 22nd episode, “The Story of a Muslim Girl” [2], of the anthology television series Stories by Rabindranath Tagore (2015), which was under the general directorship of Anurag Basu, with this episode scripted by Anurag Basu and directed by Tani Basu.

“Musalmanir Golpo” was Tagore’s last story, and it was composed about two months before his death in 1941.  Although the story was relatively brief and schematic, it still embraced Tagore’s lifelong themes of humanism and love.  Anurag and Tani Basu expanded on this story draft to craft a moving and soulful drama that captures what I think was Tagore’s emotive intent.  This telling was significantly enhanced by the lyrical cinematography of Abhishek Basu, Anurag’s brother.   Indeed this cinematography is a highlight and deserves special attention because of the recurring way it uses fluid slow-motion and rack-focusing camera shots to quietly evoke an emotional atmosphere. 

The narrative of “The Story of a Muslim Girl” is about a young woman’s experiences navigating across the social boundaries of a conservative society, and it has five sections, or phases, to it.

1.  Kamala is Rescued

The story is set sometime in 19th century Bengal, which distinguishes this episode from most of the others in this Stories by Rabindranath Tagore series that are mostly set sometime in the 1930s.  The viewer here is told at the outset that these were turbulent times in Bengal, and the common people were subjected to several oppressive elements:

• exploitative British government overlords,
• dishonest local landlords, 
• ruthless dacoits (brigands) that overran the countryside,
• caste and religious prejudices.

There was one notorious dacoit, however, who was different and was something of a “social bandit” [3], i.e. a Robin-Hood-like figure who “robbed from the rich and gave to the poor”.  This was Habir Khan (played by Sunil Sinha), a devout Muslim who had his own sense of justice.  In Tagore’s story Habir Khan was not a dacoit and was simply a revered senior figure in the Muslim community.  I am not sure why Anurag Basu made this alteration, and I don’t think it contributes to the story.  Anyway, Habir Khan’s dacoity doesn’t really figure into the rest of the story.

The focus then shifts to a Hindu Brahmin household, where Kamala (Shubhangi Atre Poorey), an orphaned girl, has been raised by her aunt and uncle.  Kamala has grown up to be a beautiful young woman, and she dotes on her two younger cousins, the boy Laltu and the girl Bimla. 

But Kamala’s aunt only sees Kamala as a burden, and in these troubled times even Kamala’s beauty is seen by the woman to be a detrimental feature likely to attract unwanted attention.  She wants to have her niece married off as soon as possible.  When Kamala’s uncle receives a marriage proposal for the girl from the already-married and irresponsible son of a wealthy landlord, he readily accepts, despite Kamala’s objections. 

A formal wedding ceremony is immediately arranged.  Afterwards, though, the evening wedding procession through the countryside is attacked and plundered by a different dacoit’s gang, that of the dacoit Raghu.  However, Habir Khan’s own gang, which includes his son Nawaz (Kirin Srinivas), arrives to break up the attack, and they manage to rescue Kamala.  Kamala is then taken back to the safety of Habir Khan’s compound.

2.  Kamala’s Refuge in an Ecumenical Household
The next morning from the safety of the room provided to her, Kamala looks out her window and watches in wonder the act of Habir Khan and Nawaz devoutly praying.  But Habir Khan comes to comfort the fearful girl by telling her not to worry,

“True Muslims consider it their duty to protect other religions.”

This should serve as a reminder to viewers, that, like virtually all religions, there are compassionate versions of Islam, such as Sufism, that embrace universal love and do not endorse the fanatic intolerance and resentment that underlie some hateful sects so frequently presented in the media.

Then Habir Khan goes on to warn Kamala that her own family will now consider her to be unclean and will absolutely reject her.  They won’t take her back.  He then shows her that his compound can be a home for her – it contains a special mahal devoted to rescued Hindus, and it even has a small Hindu temple.  But Kamala insists on being escorted back to her family anyway, and Habir Khan assents to her request.

When Habir Khan takes Kamala back to her aunt and uncle’s house, though, she is devastated by their response.  They tell her that caste rules consider her defiled and render her dead to them.  This encounter is accompanied by a lyrical song on the soundtrack:

“Cast Away Your Caste”
"What a weird system this is
Nobody is interested in doing the right thing.
I see it all . . .
What was your caste in the past?
What caste did you become since?
What caste will you be when you leave?
Think it over and tell me.”

Kamala returns to Habir Khan’s compound and takes up residence there.  She starts praying at the Hindu temple, where a compound-resident priest informs her that Habir Khan’s deceased mother had been a Hindu and had been allowed to retain her religion.

3.  Kamala and Nawaz

Now the film moves into its most lyrical phase, as it portrays the gradual and tentative attraction that Kamala and Nawaz begin to feel for each other.  This is conveyed by emotive rack-focus shots of their brief encounters that focus on their subtly evolving appreciative facial expressions.  Because of their contrasting religions and backgrounds, their opportunities to even see each other from a distance are few and only momentary.  Some of these moments are

• Nawaz showing Kamala where she can find some ceremonial Bermuda grass in the yard;
• Kamala singing a Sanskrit hymn, which charms the surreptitiously overhearing Nawaz and Habir Khan;
• Kamala, in turn, being charmed when she overhears music being played by musicians before Nawaz and Habir Khan;
• Nawaz coming to take holy alms being given out on the street by Kamala;
• Nawaz showing Kamala how to ride on a horse;
• Nawaz showing Kamala how to fly a kite.

All of this represents an expansion on Tagore’s original story, which only briefly mentioned their growing mutual fondness for each other.

In the midst of all this, Kamala learns from a resident Hindu woman that her cousin Laltu is gravely ill and has been calling for her.  She rushes back to her home village to get a glimpse of Laltu, but again her aunt and uncle reject her for defiling their caste and turn her away.

4.  Nawaz Makes a Proposal
Finally Nawaz goes to his father and tells him about his love for Kamala.  Although Habir Khan has been kind and sympathetic to Kamala, he rejects her union with Nawaz as unthinkable.  But then Nawaz reminds him that his own grandmother, Habir Khan’s mother, was a Hindu.  Then Kamala, who has been overhearing this encounter, intervenes and expresses her own willingness to marry the Muslim man who loves her:

“For the first time I got respect and honor in your shelter.
Father, devotion and faith comes from respect and honor, right?
. . .
I worship the God who has given me shelter.
Now he is my god. 
His religion is my religion.
. . .
I will follow both the religions.”

Since this is such a key moment in the story, I will quote to you Tagore’s original words from the translated version of the story [1]:

"Father, I've no religion of my own. The man I love is my religion. I could not find the grace of God in the religion which deprived me of all love and dumped me to the garbage heap of neglect. The deity there humiliated me every day. I can't forget such insults. Father, I discovered love for the first time in your house. I realized that the life of a destitute like me has some value. I worship the deity which has sheltered me through the respect of such love. He's my God—he's neither Hindu nor Muslim. . . . You can convert me to Islam, I've no objection—maybe, I belong to two faiths."

Here is Tagore, at the end of his life, affirming his divine faith in a humanistic notion of compassion that should be an underlying theme of all religions.

Moved by their fervent expressions of love, Habir Khan accepts these pleas and embraces them both as a new coupling in his family.

5.  Another Wedding Procession Raided
The scene now shifts forward sometime later, and there is another ceremonial wedding procession in progress moving through the forest.  Again the dacoit Raghu’s gang of thugs makes an attack for plunder, and once again Habir Khan’s gang comes to the rescue.  This time, though, we see Kamala on horseback and an active participant of the rescue operation.  When Kamala goes over to the litter (sedan) carrying the bride and opens the door, she is shocked to discover that the rescued bride is none other than her very own cousin Bimla.

The final scene shows Kamala returning Bimla to her parent’s home and assuring them that her chastity and purity have not been compromised.  Before returning to her own home, Kamala tells Bimla that should she ever be in need, her Muslim sister will always be there for her.


This is one of the most heartwarming episodes of the Stories by Rabindranath Tagore series, thanks to its uplifting message and the nuanced way in which it is told.  The music, camera work, editing, and acting are all excellent and are knitted together in a satisfying fashion that work together harmoniously.

★★★★

Notes:

1. Rabindranath Tagore, “The Story of a Muslim Woman”, (a draft translated from the original Bengali by Swapan Kumar Banerjee), Parabas, (2010).   
2. Durga S, “The Happy Endings – Stories by Rabindranath Tagore (10)”, Writersbrew, (27 March 2016).    
3. “Social bandit”, Wikipedia, (7 February 2019).   

“Samapti”, Stories by Rabindranath Tagore - Tani Basu (2015)

Rabindranath Tagore’s short story “Samapti” (“The Conclusion”, 1893) is about an independent-minded girl’s resistance to an arranged marriage and her ensuing gradual coming to terms with connubial love.  This story served as the basis for “Samapti”, the 12th and 13th episodes of the anthology television series Stories by Rabindranath Tagore (2015), which was under the general directorship of Anurag Basu, with these two episodes having been directed by Tani Basu.  

Tagore’s stories are often about how love struggles within the constraints of a tradition-bound society, and “Samapti” is a good example.  This story was filmed years ago by Satyajit Ray as a substantial segment, “Samapti (The Conclusion)”, of his Teen Kanya (Three Daughters, 1961), which was made to celebrate the centenary of Tagore’s birth.  Ray’s version, which is similar in length to the Basu version under review here and which I have earlier reviewed [1], is certainly an excellent rendition of this story, and I would think it would be very hard to match.  But the Basus’ version, which was scripted by Bijesh Jayarajan, has its own distinctive perspective and is very good, too.

One of the things I like about this version is the dreamlike rendering of the story that is evoked by cinematographer Bappa Mir’s extensive use of slow-motion photography.  This is aptly supplemented by the expressive soundtrack music from Anurag Saikia and Rana Mazumdar.  It is often the case that Film narratives have the character of dreams and vivid memories of the past that have a narrative structure with an emotional tone.  This film’s recurrent use of remembered images and slow-motion sequences emphasizes that emotive quality.

The story of “Samapti” proceeds through four approximate acts.

1.  Apoorva connects with Mrinmayi

The opening sequence of the story is actually shown at the tail end of Episode 11 of this series and shows a young man, Apoorva Chandrat Rai (played by Abhishek Tewari), returning from completing his college studies in Kolkata to his home village.  While walking near a river, he slips and falls down in the mud, heavily soiling his clothes.  His awkward mishap is observed with much mirthful delight by some young onlooking teenagers, the most mockingly derisive of whom is the only girl among them, Mrinmayi (Chitrangada Chakraborty).

When Apoorva arrives at his sumptuous family home, his widowed mother (Savita Prabhune) is overjoyed to see him, and she tells him it is now time for him to get married and that she has already arranged a perfect marriage match for him.  Knowing that her son has to return to Kolkata in a few weeks to take up law school studies,, she has already chosen an imminent “auspicious” day for his wedding.  Being a dutiful son, Apoorva, suppresses his misgivings over such rushed arrangements and agrees to meet the proposed bride, Krishna Ganguly, and her family the next day.

However, when he goes to visit the Ganguly family, he is dismayed to see how reticent and uninteresting the very young Krishna is.  Her passivity is further accentuated when the obstreperous mango thief, Mrinmayi, barges in demanding to play outside (i.e. steal more mangoes) with Krishna’s younger brother.  The contrast between the super-shy Krishna, and the exuberant tomboy, Mrinmayi, couldn’t be greater.  Then when Apoorva wants to return home, he finds that his shoes have been stolen.  Walking home in borrowed slippers, Apoorva is approached by the naughty Mrinmayi, who silently returns the shoes that she had stolen from him.  Before she can run away, though, he grabs her by the wrist, and they exchange a silent eye-to-eye interaction for several seconds.  This is one of those extended slow-motion elements that apparently signify a remembered moment in Apoorva’s life, and it comes up as one of the flash memory images when he is thinking about things later.

When Apoorva returns home, he informs his mother that he rejects Krishna as a marriage partner and instead wants to marry Mrinmayi (whose nickname we soon learn is “Meenu”).  His mother is disappointed that he has chosen such a roughhewn tomboy from a lower-level family, but she goes ahead and makes marriage arrangements with Meenu’s mother.  Meenu has always treasured her freedom and doesn’t want to get shackled into marital servility, but she is forced into accepting it.

2.  The Newlyweds

Meenu glumly submits to the ensuing traditional and sumptuous wedding, but as soon as it is over and she enters her new home, she tears off her wedding jewelry and runs away.  Apoorva finds her in the wild and coaxes her to return home.  But Meenu refuses to join him in the conjugal bed.   Apoorva is all accommodating and asserts to her that he married her because he liked her for who she is.  Meenu tartly responds by asking why it was that nobody asked her whom she likes?  And she coldly adds that she doesn’t like her new husband – “not even one bit”.

Meenu is now a sulking prisoner in Apoorva’s quarters, even though she still refuses to sleep with  him.  However, when Apoorva sees Meenu eagerly reading a warm letter from her father, who works in a remote city and who had been unable to get leave to attend his daughter’s wedding, he offers to take Meenu on a trip to visit  her father.  For the first time since her wedding, Meenu shows delight and smiles at her husband.

As we move to Episode 13 of the series, the two of them go to visit Meenu’s father for three days, where they sleep on the floor in the father’s tiny one-room apartment during their visit.  While there, Meenu for the first time has some cordial domestic interactions with her husband.

3.  A Separation
They return home, but Meenu still rejects the conjugal bed, and she won’t even let the gentle Apoorva kiss her.  So Apoorva, with the deadline approaching for the commencement of his legal studies in Kolkata, consents to leaving Meenu at her mother’s home.  When Meenu asks when she will see him again, he says he will come back to her when she writes to him and summons him. 

With Apoorva away, Meenu starts thinking of him more and missing his gentle ways.  When she hears that Apoorva’s mother is ill, she goes to attend to her.  Little by little, Meenu starts learning what it means to lovingly care for others, and she even starts learning how to cook from Apoorva’s mom.

Finally, Meenu writes a letter to her husband asking him to return to her.  But since she doesn’t know how to address the envelope (she just writes his name and “Kolkata” on it), we can assume he will never get the letter. 

Five months pass, and Meenu doesn’t hear anything from Apoorva.

4.  A Coming Together

Finally, after the five months of stasis, Apoorva’s mother decides to go visit her son in Kolkata, and with a knowing smile she offers to take Meenu along with her.  Meenu jumps at the chance.

When Meenu and Apoorva finally meet up, in Apoorva’s sister’s guest bedroom, there are two wounded egos waiting for the other’s explanation as to why they didn’t write.  Apoorva says he never received Meenu’s letter, and Meenu responds defensively by telling him that he is lying.  Apoorva then tells her that he has always loved her.  But Meenu, still clinging to her adolescent pride and sense of independence, insists again that she doesn’t love him.

But at this point Apoorva has come to know something that we viewers have also been starting to suspect.  He tells her calmly that she is the one who is lying, and he gently kisses her.  And Meenu ultimately accepts his embrace, and with it she comes to her final admission to herself of true love.

This Tagore story, as seen in both its cinematic realizations, reminds me, curiously, of My Fair Lady (1964).  The connection is that in both tales we see an autonomy-loving young woman struggling in the face of a well-meaning man who wants to reshape her in accordance with prevailing social customs.  And in both cases we have some sympathy for each of the contrasting perspectives and hope all along that a harmonious and romantic compromise can be achieved.  Which, of course, is what happens.

Note, however, that this version of Tagore’s “Samapti” has a slightly different feel from Ray’s.  In this instance, Meenu’s shift is not so radical as it is in Ray’s version and is very gradual.  This coloration of gradual acceptance and maturation has a subtlety to it that pulls the viewer in and makes this rendition of the story particularly appealing.
★★★★

Notes:

1. The Film Sufi, “‘Teen Kanya’ - Satyajit Ray (1961)”, The Film Sufi, (8 November 2017).   

“Mrinal ki Chitthi”, Stories by Rabindranath Tagore - Tani Basu (2015)

Rabindranath Tagore’s short story “Streer Potro” (“Strir Patra”, “Wife’s Letter” (1914) [1,2])  concerns an age-old problem in traditional societies – the customary suppression within the family household of a woman’s personhood.  This story served as the basis for the 19th  episode, “Mrinal ki Chitthi”, of the anthology television series Stories by Rabindranath Tagore (2015), which was under the general directorship of Anurag Basu, with this episode having been directed by Tani Basu. 

Tagore’s story is about the stifling climate for women in religiously conservative Indian households and how this climate suppresses the most elemental aspects of her existence.  The story is actually in the form of a long letter written by a young woman, Mrinal (played by Amrita Bagchi), to her husband while she is away from Kolkata visiting the Lord Jagannatha temple in Puri.   Since this is the first time she has been separated from her husband in the fifteen years of their marriage, this is the first letter she has written to him.  This filmed version of the story  adopts the same format, beginning with the commencement of the Mrinal’s letter-writing and shifting from time to time into flashbacks concerning past events she is describing.

Early on we see that Mrinal’s married life is relatively arid.  Her husband seems cold and aloof, and he is only interested in her when he needs her to attend to him for things like sewing some buttons on his trousers.  She was married as a child-bride not for her dowry or social status, but for her good looks.  Her mother-in-law had selected Mrinal, who was from a poor family in a remote village, for her son in order to have a pretty ornament in their family and thereby offset the plain appearance of Mrinal’s older sister-in-law.  Any further attributes of Mrinal were of no interest.  When she was first married, she had noone to talk to, and so her only companions turned out to be two cows that were owned by her husband’s family.

But Mrinal was actually very articulate and intelligent.  In order to find a private way to express herself, she took to writing poetry.  However, when her husband came across one of her poetry-filled notebooks, he scolded her and told her that her poetry was rubbish.  He wanted her to only concern herself with her wifely chores.  But Mrinal continued to write poetry in secret anyway.

On another occasion Mrinal’s husband discovered that she had corrected some arithmetical mistakes in the family’s accounting log.  Mrinal smiled and said that since she was skilled in these things, she could offer him some assistance.  But this offer only made her husband angry, and again he insisted that activities in this area were forbidden to women.

When Mrinal became pregnant, she found herself subjected to the traditional prejudice that late-pregnancy women in India are considered “unclean” and are not fit to live with the rest of the household.  So she wound up having to undergo her birthing labor in a shed that was so filthy it probably contributed to the baby’s dying as soon as it was born.  Thus Mrinal was denied the chance of having the one person around her with whom she had a chance to have meaningful interactions and on whom she could bestow her maternal love – her own child.

Finally Mrinal described the time when her older sister-in-law’s niece, Bindu (Jannat Zubair Rahmani) first came to their home one night in the pouring rain.  Bindu, who was an orphan of about thirteen years of age and has been working as a servant for another household, had been severely beaten and scarred by her masters for breaking a vase she had been assigned to clean, and so she had run away.  Despite her sister-in-law’s hesitancy, Mrinal said they would offer Bindu refuge in their home.

Mrinal’s family was not happy with their new resident, though, and they gave Bindu every menial chore they could think of.  They scorned her for her poverty-stricken background and even for having a dark complexion, which was considered lower-class.  And when anything in the household was mislaid for a few minutes, they immediately wrongly presumed that Bindu had stolen it. 

But meanwhile Mrinal was looking after Bindu with maternal affection, and when she saw that Bindu was forced to sleep in the outdoor kitchen shed, she invited the girl to come sleep on a mat in her own bedroom.  Bindu had never been given kindly attention like this before, and she became infatuated with Mrinal’s beauty and tenderness.  In fact the two neglected young women fell into a platonic love for each other, with, for example, Bindu begging for the opportunity to dress and comb Mrinal’s luxurious hair.  Now for a time these women could have meaningful interactions with another person.

But this happiness would not last.  The family was eager to get rid of Bindu without losing face, and they setup an arranged marriage for the girl with a groom they never even took the trouble to meet.  For the family, the only factor of importance was that the impending groom’s family didn’t even require a dowry.  Bindu didn’t want the marriage, because she didn’t want to part from Mrinal.  But Mrinal, much to her later regret, talks Bindu into accepting the marriage proposal, arguing that this may be the best for Bindu’s long-term future.  After all, she points out to Bindu, women don’t have much choice, and the proposing family couldn’t be worse for her than Mrinal’s family, could it?  So Bindu accepts the wedding proposal and goes off to live with the new family.  With the departure of her only companion, Mrinal has to resign herself to renewed loneliness.

However, after a short time, Bindu, looking bloodied and disheveled, reappears before Mrinal and reports that her new husband is insane.  She begs for refuge once again.  Mrinal assures Bindu that she will help her, but Mrinal’s larger family rejects the idea of helping Bindu.  The mother-in-law, brother-in-law, Mrinal’s husband and even the sister-in-law who is Bindu’s own aunt insist that Bindu is now the “property” of her new husband and must be returned to him immediately.  While Mrinal is engaged with vehemently arguing with all of them on Bindu’s behalf, the frightened Bindu sees the handwriting on the wall and runs off again.  Presumably Bindu will be recaptured by her new husband’s family.

Now the story approaches the very recent past, as Mrinal arranges for her pilgrimage to Puri. She convinces her conservative, religious-ritual-minded  husband to let her go to Puri with her brother by arguing that her attendance at the temple will be in order to prey to the gods to let her give birth to another child.  But actually her intent is to run away with Bindu, and for the two of them to flee their oppressive conditions.  She arranges for her resourceful brother to somehow convince Bindu to consent to being spirited away from her new husband and brought to the train station, where she and Bindu will join up and travel together to Puri. 

Mrinal is then shown leaving her home and waiting anxiously in the train station for her brother to bring Bindu.  But when her brother shows up, he brings the agonizing news that Bindu had already committed suicide by setting her clothes on fire.  The only thing that her brother can bring her is the burned fragment of a message that Bindu had written to Mrinal.  Mrinal is shattered by this tragic news. It seemed that the light of her life had been extinguished.  But she goes on alone to Puri and writes the letter to her husband.  Not only is this the first letter she has ever written to him, it will also be the last, she informs him. 

Now, she says, she wants to leave the narrow confines of his home and family and embrace the vast richness of life.  This is something that Bindu had opened up for her, and she feels Bindu’s life had ultimately acquired some meaning by her desperate act of liberation.  To provide further illumination on these thoughts, let me quote Tagore’s own words concerning Mrinal’s thoughts expressed in her letter to her husband about Bindu [2]:

“And I’ve seen also that even though she was a girl, God didn’t abandon her. No matter how much power you might have had over her, there was an end to that power. There’s something larger than this wretched human life. You thought that, by your turn of whim and your custom engraved in stone, you could keep her life crushed under your feet forever, but your feet weren’t powerful enough. Death was stronger. In her death Bindu has become great; she’s not a mere Bengali girl anymore, no more just a female cousin of her father’s nephews, no longer only a lunatic stranger’s deceived wife. Now she is without limits, without end.

 . . .

The day that death’s flute wailed through this girl’s soul and I heard those notes float across the river, I could feel its touch within my chest.

 . . .

The dark veil of your custom had cloaked me completely, but for an instant Bindu came and touched me through a gap in the veil; and by her own death she tore that awful veil to shreds. Today I see there is no longer any need to maintain your family’s dignity or self-pride."

For Mrinal, her relationship with Bindu opened up the opportunity for her to discover life’s richness and her own authentic personhood.

This is a poignant tale that is beautifully told.  Unfortunately, the English subtitling is not up to top standard; but the production is otherwise excellent, with Bappa Mir’s cinematography standing out, as usual.  And the film is further graced by the sensitive performances of Amrita Bagchi and Jannat Zubair Rahmani in the roles of the two leading characters, Mrinal and Bindu, respectively.
★★★½

Notes:

1. Rabindranath Tagore, “A Wife’s Letter”, Part 1 (Prasenjit Gupta, trans.), Translation, Parabaas, (1914/2009).  
2. Rabindranath Tagore, “A Wife’s Letter”, Part 2 (Prasenjit Gupta, trans.), Translation, Parabaas, (1914/2009).           

“The Broken Nest”, Stories by Rabindranath Tagore - Tani Basu (2015)

Rabindranath Tagore’s famous novella Nastanirh (The Broken Nest, 1901 [1])  was the basis for the 9th and 10th episodes of the recent anthology television series Stories by Rabindranath Tagore (2015). This series was created by and under the general directorship of Anurag Basu, and these two episodes covering Tagore’s story were directed by Anurag Basu’s wife, Tani Basu. 

Tagore’s Nastanirh concerns what happens in an upper-class Bengali household when the neglected young wife of a workaholic newspaper editor develops an unsettlingly close relationship with her husband’s younger male cousin. Tagore’s subtle portrayal shows a cultured family trying to come to grips with a potentially disruptive situation.  A related aspect that has always fascinated Tagore followers is that this kind of familial situation seems to have mirrored Tagore’s own personal experiences.  When he was growing up, Rabindranath Tagore was friendly with his older brother Jyotirindranath’s young wife, Kadambari Devi.  Similar to the age distribution of the principal characters in Nastanirh, Rabindranath was twelve years younger than Jyotirindranath but almost the same age as his sister-in-law.  With more free time available to them, Rabindranath and Kadambari Devi spent a lot of time together and became close companions, with common interests in poetry and art. However, shortly after Rabindranath had an arranged marriage at the age of 23, Kadambari Devi committed suicide, and it has always been assumed that her close relationship with Rabindranath may have figured into this tragic event.  I will not comment further about this other than to suggest that the feelings evoked in Tagore’s Nastanirh were probably very close to his heart.

It is not surprising then that Tagore’s delicate story about this situation has been filmed on several earlier occasions – the most notable of these being Satyajit Ray’s masterful rendition, Charulata (The Lonely Wife, 1964).  All things considered, both Ray’s film and Tani Basu’s TV production are relatively faithful presentations of Tagore’s Nastanirh, and both are excellent.  But they differ somewhat with respect to what they emphasize, and so I will make some comparisons between the two productions in what follows.  In this connection I invite the reader to consult my review of Ray’s Charulata, which I will occasionally refer to below [2].

Note that there is an idiosyncratic aspect of the Stories by Rabindranath Tagore that must be brought to your attention in case you just want to see this story in the series.  The individual Tagore stories were written over a fifty-year period, but they are linked together in this series, which is set sometime in the 1930s, so that at the tail end of one story, there is a lead-in to the next story.  In many cases this lead-in material offers significant information for the succeeding story that should not be missed.  This happens to be the case with the story of The Broken Nest, where important lead-in material is provided in the last eight minutes of the preceding story, “Punishment”, Episode 8 of the series.

The story of The Broken Nest concerns only five characters:

• Bhupati Babu (played by Kranti Prakash Jha) is a thirty-something upper-class Bengali and is the editor/publisher of a new progressive newspaper.  He is obsessively concerned about the success of his new newspaper, into which he has poured all the resources of his family estate.
   
• Charulata (Amrita Puri) is Bhupati’s beautiful and culturally aspiring young wife.
   
• Amol is Bhupati’s younger brother in this version of Tagore’s tale.  In Tagore’s original story and in Ray’s film, Amol was Bhupati’s cousin.  However, this distinction between brother and cousin seems not to be significant in these circumstances, since in accordance with Bengali family practice, cousins were often treated like brothers, and they called each other “brother”.  Amol is about a decade younger than Bhupati and comes to visit his “brother’s” household after finishing his undergraduate studies.
   
• Umapada is Charulata’s older brother.  Although he is thus Bhupati’s brother-in-law, again family custom leads Bhupati and Umapada to call each other “brother”. 
   
• Manda is Umapada’s young and relatively banal wife.

Because Bhupati is continually preoccupied with his work, Charulata is left unattended and is bored with her life.  In an effort to provide his wife with some companionship that might make things more interesting for her, he has invited his brother-in-law, Umapada, and his wife, Manda to come live with them at their family estate. 

At the outset of the story, shown in the last eight minutes of Episode 8 of this series, Charulata (aka Charu) is shown to be neglected and lonely in her sumptuous family estate.  Her husband Bhupati is busy at work all the time preparing for the inaugural issue of his new newspaper.  Although he has invited her brother Umapada and his wife Manda to come live with them, their presence hasn’t provided any stimulating company for Charu.  In hopes of finding something interesting to do with her time, Charu tells her husband that she wants to learn singing.

At the beginning of Episode 9, Amol comes to stay in the Babu household.  We immediately see the contrast between the two “brothers”, Amol and Bhupati.  While Bhupati is a gentle and thoughtful introvert, Amol is a loud and self-absorbed extrovert who wants to attract all attention to himself.  Though Amol is ostensibly engaged in the study of law, his real passion is for singing.  Upon seeing this, Bhupati asks Amol to teach singing to Charu.  Soon Charu and the viewer are regaled by songs sung by Amol.  And their growing affinity gradually becomes evident.  When Bhupati receives an attractive marriage offer for Amol (from a good family with a generous offer to finance his future legal studies), Amol flatly rejects the offer.  He can’t bear to abandon the carefree life he is now leading.

Meanwhile we see that Bhupati has engaged “brother” Umapada to look after the business side of his fledgling newspaper so that he can concentrate his time on editorial matters. 

Much of this 9th episode, though, is devoted to presenting Amol’s singing, and this lends a decidedly lyrical feeling to this first-half of the story.  This musical tone of the story is in fact a key feature of this telling of Tagore’s story.  Note that in Tagore’s original story, as well as in Ray’s film, The Lonely Wife, Amol and Charulata engage each other by composing and reciting poetry.  So there is a resulting contrast between the logical and analytical world of Bhupati’s prose and the more free-flowing and emotive poetic world of Amol and Charulata.  But it is still bounded by the limitations of text.   Here in The Broken Nest, by contrast, the distinction between Bhupati and Amol is more profound – it is that between the mechanical formulations of text and the visceral feelings of music.  And in my view that is a significant virtue and advantage of this work.  A further advantage here is the way these songs are presented visually, with evocative and well-edited closeups giving expressive color to the songs that are sung.

As their singing sessions continue, Charu unconsciously becomes more and more attracted to the brash and handsome Amol.  One day she hears Amol singing one of their songs on national radio.  For Amol, this is a proud moment, but Charu takes offence that a song she had taken to be composed for her, alone, had been made into a public commodity.  So she goes ahead and composes her own song.  But when she sits down at the piano and plays it for Bhupati, she is perturbed to see that her over-worked husband has fallen asleep.

In the 10th episode the ramifications of the previous developments come to a head.  First Charu sings her own composition to Amol, and he is impressed with and charmed by her own musical abilities.  But then a disaster strikes the household.  They learn that Umapada has all along failed to pay Bhupati’s business creditors and has now made off with all of the money that Bhupati had entrusted to him.  Bhupati is financially ruined, and his newspaper must be shut down.  All his hard work has come to nothing. However, Bhupati confides to Amol that the biggest hurt came from being betrayed by someone close to him and whom he had trusted. But he says he can keep going as long as he has Charu by his side.  Amol listens to this lament and realizes that his growing relationship with Charu represents a potentially even greater betrayal of Bhupati’s trust.

So when Bhupati receives another marriage proposal for Amol, the now silently self-reproving young man quickly accepts the offer.  Charu is immediately distraught at the prospect of losing her cherished friend.  When they have a chance to be alone, she begs Amol to decline the proposal, and she tearfully embraces him in desperation.  But Amol is adamant.  Honor ultimately triumphs over love in this situation, and he departs.

The scene now shifts to two months later, and Bhupati has been hesitantly sharing with Charu his nascent attempts at writing poetry.  But Charu is still obsessed with the absent Amol and is trying to exchange telegrams with him.  In the closing scene, when Bhupati finally realizes that Charu has a hitherto concealed passion for Amol, he breaks down in tears and disconsolately burns all the poetry he had written for Charu.  Then he departs from his broken nest.


There is an underlying philosophical theme of this story that was well articulated in Soren Kierkegaard’s philosophical treatise Either/Or (1843) concerning the tension between the ethical and the aesthetic modes of human existence. Accordingly, the uppermost levels of the aesthetic side are driven by love and aesthetic appreciation, while the top levels of the ethical side are driven by humanistic principles governed by human reason.  In this regard the ethical  side in this story is represented by Bhupati, and the aesthetic side is represented by Amol and Charulata.  As I mentioned in my review of Satyajit Ray’s Charulata,

“. . . Bhupati is a decent, ethical man.  He tries to follow the rules.  He means well, and he strives for a world in which justice prevails and the common good thrives.  His concerns center around how practically to build a world that achieves these aims.  By deliberately and rigorously following such a path, he believes that a progression towards a better world can be achieved.” [2]

whereas

“Though they would not deny Bhupati’s aims, Charulata and Amal seek something beyond Bhupati’s just world. This is a world where human creativity rises above the mechanics of ethical rules. The world they seek is a mystical union – one of love . . .” [2]

This tension between the aesthetic and ethical modes of existence is more clearly articulated and balanced in Ray’s Charulata than it is in Basu’s The Broken Nest.  Here in The Broken Nest the emphasis is very much tilted toward the aesthetic side.  Indeed in this version of Tagore’s story, Bhupati’s Brahmo-Samaj-inspired political progressivism (i.e. his external ethical concern) is downplayed, and he is shown to have his own aesthetic sensibilities (his poetry), too.  So the ethical vs. aesthetic divide is less clear-cut in this treatment as compared to Ray’s Charulata.  Thus with respect to this underlying philosophical theme of the aesthetic vs. the ethical, I would say that Ray’s film is the more successful presentation.

Nevertheless, Basu’s The Broken Nest has its undeniable virtues.  The episodes encompassing this story are permeated with a melodic quality that enhances the feelings about what this tale is about.  Besides the many songs that are explicitly sung, the background music is, despite its often intrusive character, a further instrument supporting this story’s overall musical temper.
             

Note also that given the blurring of the aesthetic vs. the ethical opposition here in The Broken Nest, we might say that the duality under concern here is not so much the ethical vs. the aesthetic as it is the related pair of the textual vs. the musical.  Bhupati here in this presentation is a man of text.  He supervises rationally-based textual discourse for his newspaper; and when he is away from the paper, he writes poetry.  In contrast, Amol is a man of soulful music.  He  sings what is in his heart.  Moreover, in this version as compared to Ray’s film, the Bhupati character is more sympathetically portrayed, while the Amol character is more self-centered and egotistical – he is less Charu’s soul-mate here.  That slight shift in character portrayal in this version renders the musical/passion side of the presented duality more mindless and instinctive – which makes Charu’s ambivalent feelings more profound to her innermost being and therefore more tragic.

Overall and despite some occasional uneven elements, I think Basu’s The Broken Nest is an excellent work.  It is particularly buoyed by the well-crafted and lyrical songs that are presentedd, along with the moving performances by Kranti Prakash Jha (as Bhupati Babu) and Amrita Puri (Charulata).
★★★★

Notes:

1. Rabindranath Tagore, Broken Nest and Other Stories, (Sharmistha Mohanty, trans.), Westland Limited, (1901/2009).
2. The Film Sufi, “‘Charulata’ - Satyajit Ray (1964)”, The Film Sufi, (30 November 2013).     

Tani Basu

Films of Tani Basu:

• "Kabuliwala", Stories by Rabindranath Tagore, Episode 7 – Tani Basu (2015)
• "The Broken Nest", Stories by Rabindranath Tagore, Episodes 9 & 10 – Tani Basu (2015)
• "Samapti", Stories by Rabindranath Tagore, Episodes 12 & 13 – Tani Basu (2015)
• “Mrinal ki Chitthi”, Stories by Rabindranath Tagore, Episode 19 – Tani Basu (2015)
• "The Story of a Muslim Girl", Stories by Rabindranath Tagore, Episode 22 – Tani Basu (2015)
• "Daliya", Stories by Rabindranath Tagore, Episode 26 – Tani Basu (2015)

“Kabuliwala”, Stories by Rabindranath Tagore - Tani Basu (2015)

One of Rabindranath Tagore’s more popular short stories, “Kabuliwala” (1892), formed the content of  the seventh episode of the recent anthology television series Stories by Rabindranath Tagore (2015) under the general directorship of Anurag Basu.  One measure of this story’s popularity is that it has previously been the basis of two successful feature films, the Bengali movie Kabuliwala (1957) and the Hindi movie Kabuliwala (1961).  This TV episode, which was directed by Anurag Basu’s wife, Tani Basu, follows Tagore’s story quite closely; however, it features a flashback temporal construction that was not part of the original story [1].

The “Kabuliwala” story is about a poor Afghani Pashtun street trader (known in India as a “Kabuliwala”) in Calcutta who fortuitously strikes up an unusual relationship with a very young girl from an upper-middle class Bengali family.  The young girl in Tagore’s story, Mini, is only five years old and described as a relentlessly energetic chatterbox.  Actress Amrita Mukherjee, who plays the role of Mini in this episode, is about eight years old and perhaps less exuberant, but she still presents a compellingly cherubic figure.

At the outset of the story, a successful Bengali novelist (played by Bobby Parvez) is making extensive preparations for his daughter Mini’s imminent marriage ceremony and celebration. In the midst of these concerns, a somewhat disheveled man off the street, Rahamat (Mushtaq Kak), comes to their home hoping to see Mini.  The father does recognize Rahamat, but he has not seen him for the past eight years, because the man has been in prison.  The story then shifts into an extended flashback concerning events that took place eight years earlier.  Unfortunately this movement into flashback is not well signaled cinematically, and some viewers may be temporarily confused by the changed context.

In the flashback, the little girl Mini is seem prattling away to her loving father, who dotingly allows her to interrupt his work on his novel to allow her to proclaim her childish opinions about the world around her.  One day, though, Mini notices a Kabuliwala peddling his dried fruit on the urban street in front of her home, and she gleefully calls out to him, “Oh, Kabuliwala!”.  When the bearded street peddler, who we see is Rahamat, turns towards her house, Mini runs inside in terror.  Seeing this, Mini’s father chides his daughter for being a scaredy-cat, and he politely buys some fruit from the man.

Soon, though, Mini’s father observes that the Kabuliwala has overcome Mini’s skittishness and has become her friend.  He regularly stops by their house, offering the girl some of his fruit and engaging in children’s games that they mutually concoct.  This is the beautiful part of the story – the way Rahamat can lovingly relate to Mini and engage her on her childish terms.  We see a series of incidents showing Rahamat on his knees before the child and enthusiastically participating and wrapped up in one of their playfully dreamed-up narratives.  One of the pet phrases the Kabuliwala uses is when he naughtily warns Mini about going to the home of her in-laws, a playful reference to something far beyond the little girl’s existing comprehension.  She would respond by asking her Kabuliwala whether he would go to his in-laws.

These sequences remind us that when we interact with anyone – and with a child, in particular – in order to be effective, we need to relate to a shared narrative that we both embrace and commit to.  To a certain extent Mini’s father does this with Mini; but Rahamat does it more fully.  He is her best friend.

Mini’s mother was alarmed over her daughter’s close friendship with a shabby, perhaps unsavory, older foreign man off the street.  She wanted to forbid it, but her husband gave her assurances that the Kabuliwala-Mini relationship was entirely innocent.

One day Mini’s father hears a disturbance out on the street in front of his house, and he goes out to see Rahamat being led away in handcuffs. He learns that Rahamat has been arrested for stabbing a customer who had refused to pay his overdue bill.  When Mini comes outside and sees her Kabuliwala being led away, she asks him where he is going.  He responds by ironically telling her that he is going to the home of his “in-laws”, which is another slang meaning for “going to the in-laws”, i.e. going to jail, that is beyond the girl’s comprehension [2].

That concludes the extended flashback, and we return to the “present”, eight years later.  Rahamat wants to once again see his dear little friend.  Mini’s father is disturbed to bring his about-to-be-married daughter before the ex-convict Rahamat on this portentous day, but when he once again perceives the sincerity of the man, he relents. 

When Rahamat finally sees Mini, he is struck by the realization that his dear friend has grown up into a young woman and has all but forgotten him.  He realizes that his own only daughter, of the same age as Mini, back in Afghanistan has similarly grown up and now may barely remember her own father.  He breaks down in tears.  At this point it is revealed that Rahamat’s love for Mini was a surrogate expression of his parental love for his own daughter back in Afghanistan.  When Mini’s father sees this, he realizes that he shares a deep bond and sympathy with the man.  The universal feeling of parental love for one’s innocent child transcends all the class, cultural, and national differences that might be presumed to separate the two men.  Even a man capable of a violent, homicidal act can share this with an educated compassionate humanist.  Both men are going through the shared and inevitable pain of seeing their daughters fly off to their new in-laws.

As a partial expression for his sympathy, Mini’s father immediately gives Rahamat a considerable sum of money that will enable the Kabuliwala to return home and see his own daughter.  And so at the end of this story, we are left to ponder how that reunion may turn out.

This poignant expression of the universality of parental love is the charming theme of this story.
★★★½

Notes:

1. Here are two English translations of Tagore’s “Kabuliwala”:
• Rabindranath Tagore, “Kabuliwala”, (1892). (trans. by Mohammad A. Quayum, Flinders Open Access Research, Volume 1, Issue 2, May 2009, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia).    
• Rabindranath Tagore, “Kabuliwala”,  (1892).   
2. Durga S, “Kabuliwala – Stories by Rabindranath Tagore (3)”, Writersbrew, (3 August 2015).