This book is based on the film of the same name, which in turn is based on the original Bengali story Jatugriha by Subodh Ghosh, was in that era rather refreshing in not giving in to the then current trends of men that beat up other men and women that were more decorative than anything unlike Indian films of an earlier era. This change was hardly limited to India, and corporate diktat of film and television in US has not gone unnoticed or unremarked either, with earlier roles of substance giving way to demeaning or death options for women there, but this is about this film and story and the book based on the film.
This one is about a couple that are supposed to be matched by their parents but have their own lives before circumstances make them marry anyway - he has a live in girlfriend who is very very sensitive and poetic, and desperately afraid of marriage after witnessing the disaster her parents' marriage was. The fiancee suggests he take the girlfriend to his father and follow his advice, but the girlfriend has vanished without a trace to teach him a lesson for having gone to attend to his father without informing her, and he ends up marrying the fiancee for sake of health of the old parents of the two who have been neighbours and more like a family together since the now married couple were small children.
Only, the girlfriend is back in town, and is now devastated afresh, and needs him, and he is caught in not wishing to cheat on his wife even emotionally while being affected by the emotional state of his ex girlfriend, and it all speeds to where the needs of the latter result in the wife leaving without an address and later seeking a divorce, which in turn results in disaster afresh for the ex-husband and the girlfriend who insists she will bring his wife back to him.
The film is shot with flashbacks from a chance meeting of the two at a railway station waiting room where they spend a night of rain while waiting to connect to further trains, and discover the missing pieces about each other.
Tuesday, April 1, 2014.
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