For the sake of women

October 03, 2016 04:59 pm | Updated November 01, 2016 10:53 pm IST

A day after Tapan Sinha's birth anniversary, a look at two of his films that dealt with sexual assault

There is a pleasant Bengali-ness to the way the much-acclaimed Pink unfolds. Even while dealing with a sensitive issue like sexual assault, there is a civility in the discourse that elevates it to a higher intellectual plane, something perhaps only a Bengali director could have done. The name of the judge, Satyajit, gives the impression that, like most others making cinema in this wonderful language, Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury’s would also be inspired by of that master auteur, Ray. That he cast Mamata Shankar, a regular in Satyajit Ray’s latter-day movies, in the film made this assumption stronger. However, after some contemplation and a look at a couple of other movies with themes similar to that of Pink , I feel that if there is one film-maker whose style is reflected on screen, it is Tapan Sinha.

Many of Sinha’s films, like Pink , were about a tormented genius, with a traumatic past, trying to bring about change in his own sphere of activity, helping the victimised ones in the process. And at least two of his films, Adalat O’ Ekti Meye (1982) and Wheel Chair (1994), dealt with the topic of sexual assault.

The detailing of Adalat O’Ekti Meye (Justice and the Maiden) looks similar to that of Pink . Urmila Chatterjee (Tanuja), a Kolkata-based school-teacher, while on a trip to Gopalpur, is brutally gang raped by four college students and left to die on a beach. As she fights, first for her life in a hospital, and later for survival and dignity amid the stigma imposed on her, she realises that the system is loaded against her.

The saviour here, the equivalent of Amitabh Bachchan’s Deepak Sehgal in Pink , is Govind (Nirmal Kumar), an investigating officer determined to help Urmila fight the case. However, the story differs—and in that regard, becomes more nuanced—in the way it sees the episode being played out both through the eyes of the lady and that of the officer. It is not fully about the officer getting the victim justice; it is also about Urmila taking it upon herself to regain her individuality.

A still from Adalat O’Ekti Meye

Being abandoned in a state of near-death, Urmila comes back to life through willpower; her desire to live transcends the vicious motives of the wastrels who brutalised her. The rapists, one of them from a political family, are sentenced but likely to get bail on appeal to a higher court. Govind is accused of police brutality and suspended. Given the darkness—cinematographically and texturally—Sinha could have chosen to end the film on a cynical note. However, he intends the story to be more about the victory of Urmila’s positive spirit, and hence, bookends it by showing her getting her job back. The war for justice will continue, but the battle for dignity is won.

Urmila’s fight is not just against the assaulters. As the court proceedings progress, she is also ranged against the voyeurs in the room, including media persons, who seem to derive pleasure out of her victimhood. Her battle is also against her family members, against the social sphere she was once a proud part of, which is bent on deeming her an outcast. Her relatives, neighbours, even the colleagues of her father, hold her responsible for the incident. Her fiance Sujit, who claims to be an intellectual, deserts her when she needs his help.

The burden of many questions is placed on her: Why did her father not get her married earlier? Why was she allowed to travel for a vacation with her lady friends? Is she in the right mental state after the brutal incident while fighting the case? About 33 years after the movie, we still have not stopped asking these questions. Though the word adalat in the title directly translates to ‘court of law’, the fight in a generic sense is more for justice in a system ranged against the woman victim.

About a decade after Adalat O’Ekti Meye , Sinha made another movie about a rape victim’s fight to regain her self-esteem, the battle here being more internal than external. In Wheel Chair (1994), Sushmita (Laboni Sarkar) gets paralysed below her neck and is admitted to a care centre started by Dr. Mitra (Soumitra Chatterjee), himself a paraplegic. Though the movie plays out more in the Pink -mould, showing the doctor and his assistant, Santu (Arjun Chakraborty) helping Sushmita regain her motor skills, it is also about how, en route , she never loses her agency. Among her first words after she regains consciousness in the hospital, after the incident, are, “I will recover.”

Both Adalat O’ Ekti Meye and Wheel Chair give a glimpse of the insecurity, in the 1980s and 90s, in the minds of many educated urban men on seeing his female counterpart being well-employed and independent. In the first movie, Urmila (Tanuja)’s fiance Sujit remarks that she got a job ahead of many men only because of her gender. A wayward Sujit, after college, has become more involved in politics (the details are not clearly spelled out) while Urmila, having scored well academically, helps herself to a good job. As the narrative progresses, the unwritten codes of patriarchy—among them being that an educated woman must be in a profession and position inferior to her male counterpart—is writ large in the minds of many characters on screen. Hence the climax, which shows Urmila gaining acceptance among her students even as school authorities are hesitant to keep in their payroll a ‘rape victim’, is all the more inspiring in its symbolism. Urmila feels dejected by the previous generation and is given some assistance by her colleagues, the present generation. However, the future generation—the school-children—willingly embrace her. The subtext of the woman being unfairly victimised because she is employed is present in Wheel Chair too.

Having attacked Sushmita at her place of work, the molesters don’t just seek to assault her body; they seek to attack her independence and try to make her almost inert. As a recovering Sushmita narrates with pride that as a steno-typist, she could type 45 words per minute and produce an error-free report, we realise that it is this independence she cherished the most; it is this autonomy that she wants back.

A still from Wheel Chair

Wheel Chair would have looked as important from a feminist point of view as Adalat O’Ekti Meye had Tapan Sinha chosen to focus more on this aspect; on Sushmita getting back her sense of pride. However, Sinha is shown falling into the middle class trap—he is content showing her getting married to Santu, her physiotherapist. The film, which begins by showing a cheerful Sushmita driving to work, would have stood out as much for the story as for her character had Sinha shown her starting a care home of her own, along the lines of Dr. Mitra. It would have become as big a milestone as Adalat O’Ekti Meye had the wheelchair in its title not just to the instrument that fuels Dr. Mitra’s mobility but also to the equipment that provides some empowerment to Sushmita, one using which she could act as the caregiver for other patients.

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