From experiencing the emotional rollercoaster of Kabuliwala to rejoicing in the tragic tale of Nastanirh, I grew up as a puzzling teenager, developing a passion for being a storyteller. Evolving the sense of stumbling on the link between feminine psychology and Tagore’s vantage point is one of my best actualisations. But how? Well, I was reintroduced to Tagore by Satyajit Roy.
When I was 16, Baba referred me to Charulata and Ghare Baire, the overwhelming creation of Roy. Then I found the mutiny of merging forms of women’s psychology with these cult classics. Satyajit Roy taught me to grasp how Tagore arranged the cubes of dejection, vigour, scrimmage, and conquest of feminine psychology. Rabindranath Tagore’s theory depicts that women’s personality is influenced by a different phenomenon – a sense of being the beloved one. This is the inward extension of conflict and contemplation that Satyajit Roy implemented in his Blackburne Trap to lead to a checkmate of three pieces: the king, queen and rook of the board.
Charu, Monimalika, and Bimala: queens of the board, captives of the castle
Are Charu, Monimalika, and Bimala the queens of the board or captives of the castle? ‘The Broken Nest’ or ‘The Lonely Wife’? Are these titles of Nastanirh or laments from the castle, where Charu was the yardbird of an emotionally neglected marriage? Only Rabindranath can portray such a circumstantial aesthetic of reciprocated emotional needs of married women with emotional isolation, love, longing, and betrayal. Roy’s Charulata sketches the distance between traditional and emotional frontiers that Rabindranath’s pen delivered almost a hundred and twenty-four years ago.
In my early days, I always recalled Monimala as a household character, obsessed with ornaments and the portrayal of a ghost with an atypical bestowal. But Moni from Roy’s reel opened my eyes to how Robi Thakur reaped the most quotidian yet untold depiction of Moni’s life. Monimalika’s obsession with ornaments is a metaphoric portrayal that shows how she picked these pieces of bric-a-brac to decorate her loneliness. Phanibhushan gave Moni all kinds of material possessions, but what about the love, priority, and attention that Monimala deserved as a woman? Monimala’s dejection and scrimmage created space for other forces that gratified greed, guilt, and grief. ‘The Lost Jewels’ portrays the duskfall of Phanibhushan’s mind when he asks the shadow, “Moni, you’ve come back?”
I adore Ghare Baire, the ambitious creation of Tagore, for being the witness to the mature transformation of my mind. The title of the adaptation of Satyajit was a notion for me. I always thought that, for Bimala, the world was in her home. But it is Tagore’s spike and was always about Bimala’s ‘Home and World’. The home – Bimala’s metaphoric representation of the personal and private sphere of domestic life, and the world – the tumultuous change in the violent political landscape of the time.
Gathering all pieces of the dejection, vigour, and scrimmage for the Last Checkmate!
Let’s gather all pieces of the dejection, vigour, and scrimmage for the Last Checkmate! It is still difficult for me to understand the aftermath of the agitation of the feminine psychology of Charu, Monimalika, and Bimala. I considered the queens of my boards as captives. But what about the role of the kings and rooks? For me, the actual checkmate is my confession.
Phanibhushan Saha, Nikhilesh Choudhury, and Bhupati Dutta are the kings of my board who terribly failed to save my queens. The castle of society was always inexpugnable for women. The rooks of the board, Amal and Sandip, also provided the path of needles to Charu and Bimala. Charu’s emotional awakening to the consequences of emotional neglect within a marriage shows the clash between personal happiness and societal expectations. The broken nest of Charu and Bhupati spotlights the emotional and relational disintegration of Charu.
The disillusioned state of Bimala with Sandip and the tension between the king and Rook, Nikhil and Sandip is the most censorious chunk of the plot. Among all of these characters, I applaud Nikhil so much. The moment when Nikhil shows the brave move of forgiving Bimala, it is discernible that it was not her fault but rather the result of her emotional turmoil and external influences. The bittersweet notes from Roy and Tagore both portray the superficial depiction of an eventual cognisance where feminine psychology and monogamous relationships are symmetric.
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Writer
Arpita Das
Intern, Content Writing Department
YSSE