Aparna's 'Paromitar Ekdin' - 1996

Only women understand women. Or, do they? Aparna Sen’s Paromitar Ekdin (1996) opens with such a question, although implied. The story can’t be simpler. Paramita (played by Rituparna Sengupta), an ambitious, sensitive young girl from South Calcutta, comes to a North Calcutta business family, after marriage. People who know Calcutta, its culture, its history through partition, can easily understand what happens next. Incompatibility everywhere — value systems, relations, even her husband’s approach in bed — all lead to a final disaster. From the beginning of the story (told in flashback), we know this is a doomed marriage, and we expect either of the two possible outcomes — a break-up, or a complete submission. The latter would have been plausible in mainstream Bengali cinema of two decades ago (few films such as Ajoy Kar’s Saat Paake Bandha being brilliant exceptions). But, here we know the former is inevitable, because the director is Aparna Sen, who always takes a feminist stand. Feminism, a very misused and misunderstood term. People who use the terms forget that the term has a recorded history. Feminism went through diverse movements, even counteracting to one another. The mainstream Anglo-American feminism is always described by three generations, or as they prefer the coinage, three waves. The first gen feminists created history by taking an active female-chauvinist stance. Although they can’t be put in the same compartment, all major movements from women’s right to vote to 60s bra-burning — all categorically belong to this first generation feminism. With such movements, new courses in literature and sociology began too. And from such academic-activist dialectics came out the second wave of feminism. In an eighties world, motherhood, femininity became things for celebration. Apparently, the movement returned to exactly from where the first feminists started. These new gen second wave feminists wanted special care from society for their femininity and motherhood. Patriarchs breathed a relief, because the pattern was restored, although it meant a few extra perks to the woman at home. At this point, the core academicians came. Women’s Studies and Gender Studies started as part of Culture Studies and Sociology, in universities across the world. Philosophies and their receptions by common man have been attacked by this time by Derrida and his followers. All cultural codes and societies themselves were read in different ways. Psychoanalysts of female sexuality came to the market to sell their own theories. All such things influenced the third wave. All variations, differences in sex, sexuality and gender were to be recognized and given a equal right in every social phenomenon, in this third wave. Differences are to be celebrated — this is why all serious third wave feminists are so much concerned about the gay and lesbian rights. They do not want to see the gender bias as an isolated event. In Aparna Sen’s cinema, we see all three feminist waves reflected. While finding the self through a celebration of female sexuality was the major issue in Parama, equality as a human being and faith in love becomes the cornerstone of Yuganta. Paramitar Ekdin is next on this row. It is very significant (and much talked about) that this film starts with a death (of Sanaka, Paramita’s mother-in-Law), and ends with a birth (Paramita’s own child in womb). It is as if the creation cycle rotates through the woman — physically, in the most concrete sense. Paramita and Sanaka, the traditional rival duo in a Bengali family space (more so, when it happens between a South Calcuttan and a Northie) — the necessary hiatus between a mother-son relationship, lose their traditional hierarchical positions by three common factors between them.

Lack of love and understanding in the family space, being mothers of abnormal children, and an almost common sensitivity to these issues — these are the factors that bonded Paramita and Sanaka (played by Aparna Sen herself) for the first time. As an idle spectator, I ask myself, “Was it necessary that Paramita had to give birth to a spastic son so that she could be equated to her mother-in-law, put on the same footing?” Was it really necessary just because Sanaka has a schizophrenic daughter that Paramita too has to bear an abnormal child? Is it not too forced? Maybe. But, this is what started the bonding between the arch-rivals, mom-in-law and daughter-in-law. They start sharing, and this bond becomes stronger when Sanaka’s husband dies in an accident, also when her failed romance to a Manida (her childhood friend, played by Soumitra Chatterjee) becomes clear to Paramita. Woman understands woman.