Jatugriha and Ijaazat: Love in Fragments

Background

Back in the 1960s, matinee idol Uttam Kumar had floated his banner to produce meaningful films drawn from rich Bengali literary texts. Each of the films he produced was critically acclaimed and most of them also turned out to be box-office hits. This was still the golden era of Bengali cinema which witnessed some wonderful films under the banner of Uttam Kumar Films Pvt. Ltd. that gifted to us some classics like Saptapadi (1961) and Uttar Falguni (1963). Jatugriha, is a moving film directed by Tapan Sinha that ought to have gained more popularity then. Released on 20^thMarch, 1964, it was based on a novel by Subodh Ghosh (1909-1980) whose stories were very popular with top-ranked directors. Among the popular films based on Ghosh’s stories are Ritwik Ghatak’s Ajantrik (1958), Bimal Roy’s Sujata (1959), Mrinal Sen’s Ek Adhuri Kahani (1972), Basu Chatterjee’s Chitchor (1976), Nabyendu Chatterjee’s Parashuramer Kuthar (1989), Gulzar’s Ijaazat( (1987), a loose adaptation of Jatugriha, Prabhat Roy’s Sedin Chaitramas(1997) and Sooraj Barjatya’s Main Prem Ki Diwani Hoon (2003), an updated and more glamorized version of Chitchor.

Winner of the Sahitya Akademi Award, Subodh Ghosh also won Filmfare award for the Best Story twice—for Sujata in 1960 and posthumously, for Ijaazat in 1988.These films are a mere drop in the ocean of novels, novelettes and short stories penned by one of the more popular contemporary writers of fiction in Bengali literature.

Jatugriha

Jatugriha poster – 1964

Jatugriha is a fascinatingly subtle film on shifting emotions between a couple, Shatadal and his wife Madhuri, who married for love. But when the film begins, we find that the marriage has run into a silent storm. The film opens on the rain-washed streets of Kolkata showing Supriyo (Anil Chatterjee), a clerk in the office of the archaeological department of the government of India where Shatadal (Uttam Kumar) is a senior officer. Clad in a raincoat and cap, Supriyo is off to the market and always arrives late at his office.

Shatadal drives himself to an empty home where Ramu, the servant, serves him tea. On his way home, he visits a lawyer discussing his impending divorce with Madhuri (Arundhati Devi) and the message that everything is not right in this marriage comes across.

The subject of marital discord has rarely been treated with more finesse in Indian films than in Jatugriha where neither the husband nor the wife is a negative character in any sense. They married for love, lived it out for six years, and then decided to separate ways. The reason is strange—Madhuri cannot conceive and Shatadal loves kids. This comes across when he shows affection for the little son of a neighbourhood couple who are forever quarrelling in a marriage that hardly exists. Madhuri suffers from a deep sense of guilt at being unable to fulfil her husband’s love for children despite Shatadal’s insistence that not all couples have kids and they are just one among them.

Shatadal shows affection for the little son of a neighbourhood couple

Shatadal says he can live without children because he loves his wife. But she remains adamant and says that sometime in the future he will blame her for being childless. Shatadal finally gives up and, after a quiet argument where Madhuri suggests it is no use dragging a relationship that has run dry, goes to a lawyer. At one point, the lawyer suggests cooking up a case of adultery against his wife, but Shatadal, gentleman that he is, rejects the idea out of hand. The divorce proceedings are kept away and one fine day, Madhuri leaves home, leaving a small note behind.

Soon after the film opens, we also find Shatadal supervising the construction of a house he had planned with much love with Madhuri. It is an ideal home being built with great care with each partner having contributed to the planning—kitchen, balcony, study, garden—with a lot of love. The slow and steady disintegration of the marriage takes place, ironically, against the backdrop of a house being built by the husband for them to shift into from their rented apartment.

The slow and steady disintegration of the marriage takes place

When Supriyo asks Shatadal about the house, he says he will sell it off once it is complete. When it is ready, Shatadal, who by then has become rather fond of the low-brow, lower-middle-class Supriyo, offers the house to him as a gift. Supriyo refuses, explaining it away as his desire to make it on his own. Shatadal then sells the house and quits his job. Sinha stays away from detailing the sale, keeping his focus on the two characters and their conflicts and pain. They are taken to be an ideal couple by outsiders, so their split shocks those who know them closely. Both Uttam Kumar and Arundhati are extremely dignified, both in their love and in their split.

The film presents two subplots with two other married relationships to juxtapose against the marriage of Shatadal and Madhuri. One is that of Nikhilesh (Bikash Roy) and his screen wife (Binata Roy), who squabble without a break, disturbing the childhood of the sweet boy Shamik, who Shatadal is fond of. The other is a portrait of a happy, lower-middle-class family comprising Supriyo and his wife (Kajal Gupta) who live in a modest shanty with two growing children. The wife is pregnant with a third child. Shatadal observes closely, the sweet relationship between the husband and the wife though they are not well off. Shatadal had an impromptu meal with them once and was thrilled. It made him feel a warmth he perhaps misses in his own home.

Shatadal, Supriyo and Madhuri

The family of Supriyo sings a beautiful Tagore number that goes, “I know I have to give everything…all my wealth, all my words, I must give” which offers a slice of happiness the family enjoys and shares together. The song, composed by Rabindranath Tagore, spells out the ideology of relationships holding the film together.

The black-and-white cinematography with muted light effects, the flickering lights of a nightclub/bar disturbing the darkness in Shatadal’s flat as he sips his tea all by himself, the seamless editing that neither jars nor has jerks, the muted music with a theme tune playing in the backdrop all contribute to the film’s ambience. The nightclub right opposite the residence in which Shatadal and Madhuri live might seem a bit out of place because bars and night clubs are hardly ever located in residential neighbourhoods. So, this was perhaps a cinematic license Sinha took to highlight the emotional disturbance and loneliness Shatadal experiences when he comes home from work and finds Madhuri is not there. Even when Madhuri is around, the relationship is suffused with a strange silence which spells out its own sadness that percolates down to the lives of this strange couple, leading towards an emptiness that can perhaps, never be filled.

The long silences between the couple as they get on with their daily chores exchanging a minimum of words unfold the schism that was already there when the film began. There is a small insertion of a scene from Tapan Sinha’s Kabuliwala (1957), which Shatadal has gone to watch. But while the audience smiles at little Mini dancing to a Tagore song, Shatadal looks sad, perhaps reminded of his life without a child and its impact on his marriage. This is a beautiful touch.

Shatadal watching Mini in Kabuliwala

Nostalgia is rekindled when the couple meets in the waiting room of Rajgir station seven years after their divorce. The script is silent about where their paths have led them for seven long years. That is irrelevant. Now, they are waiting to board trains going in opposite directions. To kill time, they wander off together to a river nearby and share anecdotes from a happy past aboard a stationary steamer, smiling and laughing together for the first, and last, time in the film. The scene raises hopes of a possible reunion, but it is not to be, and they leave on their respective trains, leaning out of their windows, pain writ large on their faces, bringing the curtain down on which had appeared to be an ideally matched couple.

Shatadal and Madhuri spend time smiling and laughing together

Sinha’s specialty lay in the masterful use of symbolism. As the couple leave on separate trains, the camera cuts to the waiter in the kitchen hanging up the tea cups they had used on separate hooks, far away from each other but looking very much a pair. A remarkable closing shot that sums up the tragedy of marital discord. The film draws from everyday life, detailing what happens when two individuals meet, quite unexpectedly, in the waiting room of a railway station, seven years after their divorce during which they have neither seen each other nor been in touch. This last touch is also seen in the final scene of the Vijay Anand-directed Kora Kagaz (1974) starring Jaya Bachchan and Vijay Anand as husband and wife, and inspired from the Bengali novel Saat Pake Bandha authored by Asutosh Mukhopadhyay and its Bengali film version directed by Ajoy Kar in 1963.

Shatadal and Madhuri were once husband and wife. They are no more. Neither has remarried. Why? For Madhuri, it is because the obstacle that broke their marriage, infertility that leads to a childless marriage where Shatadal loves children, remains a thorn. For Shatadal, perhaps he was afraid he would not be able to love another woman after Madhuri. They have both aged with dignity and sobriety.

Lobby card of Jatugriha

Ijaazat

Gulzar just took a thread of the original story and made his own interpretation naming the film Ijaazat (1987). The difference between the two films—the inspiration and the source—comes across in the naming of the two films. Jatugriha means “the house on fire” while Ijaazat means “permission.” The former assumes the presence of a “house” which also means “family” composed of at least two members while Ijaazat presumes the presence of an interaction between two or more individuals though it does not necessarily imply the existence of “family.” The similarity between the two films lies in an estranged couple, once married to each other, meeting by chance in the waiting room of a railway station. Each of them is going to board a train that will move in opposite directions.

Naseeruddin Shah and Rekha in Ijaazat

The waiting room defines a framing device for the main story which has absolutely no similarity with the source story it has been inspired by—Jatugriha. The film also ends in the waiting room and then in the trains headed in opposite directions. The estranged pair lean out of the respective windows of their coupes and look at each other with pain in their eyes. The story that happens between this framing device has absolutely no similarity with the story of Jatugriha.

Ijaazat is a subtle, poetic and very lyrical love story that involves a triangle with the husband getting entangled in a strange extra-marital relationship with a strange, beautiful girl named Maya. There is no indication of a physical liaison between the two.The wife finds it disturbing their marriage. But she is dignified about her discomfort but expresses it with great restraint. Rekha perhaps gives one of the most outstanding performances of her career. Her name is Sudha which means “honey” which is perhaps a connotative name that suits the character she portrays.

There is a strange feeling of surrealism in the presence and characterisation of Maya, performed beautifully by Anuradha Patel in one of her brief appearances in cinema. Her name is Maya which means ‘illusion.’ Is she for real? Or is she a fantasy figure created and therefore, visible only to Mahender (Naseeruddin Shah)? Her sudden disappearance happens when it is already too late for Mahender and Sudha to mend their broken life together. Sudha is firm in her decision to walk away from the marriage when she is convinced that Mahender is unable to estrange himself from the spell Maya holds over him though Maya is not a gold-digger or a flirt. She is much like the poetry she writes herself. She is like a will-o-the-wisp. Sometimes, one begins to feel, is she for real? Or, is she is the creation of Mahender’s rich imagination of being in love with a lover who is as lyrical and as floating as a line from a poem, or a floating wave in the sea, or, a fairy one can only dream about? One never knows, really and these questions keep haunting you whenever you recall the film. Perhaps, her sudden and tragic death brings us back to solid earth, underscoring the reality that Maya was no illusion but was a reality.

Anuradha Patel in Mera kuch saaman

The mystery of Maya and the clearly defined characterisation of Sudha are fleshed out but Mahender’s profession as photographer is comparatively ambiguous. The songs and the beautiful lyrics set to melodious music are the outstanding feature of this film that makes it a classic film for the archives. Mera kuch saman is one of the most romantic odes one has heard in the history of Hindi cinema. All the songs are beautifully sung by Asha Bhosle, investing life to this film. Maya’s poems add to the intrigue of the character and her relationship with Mahender. The film has four songs composed by one of the most ideal music directors for Gulzar’s films, R D Burman. All the songs were sung by Asha Bhosle and are equally lyrical, poetic and romantic which carry a resonance of the ambiance of the film.

Ijaazat as a film would have well stood independent of its inspirational film Jatugriha because the only similarity is in the framing device. Both films close in on the canteen kitchen of the railway station where a boy washes the two cups Mahender and Sudha had tea from and hangs them on pegs distanced from each other.

Parts of the film have been shot on a hill station in the backdrop of a lot of greenery. The home in which Mahender and Sudha live and Maya’s studio are decorated as a reflection of their characters and lifestyles and all this add to the rich visual quality of the film, juxtaposed against the simplicity of the waiting room of the railway station. The closure builds up to a major anti-climax that shows that Sudha has moved on and has a life of her own when her husband (Shashi Kapoor) comes to pick her up. But she does something she did not do when she left Mahendar and their marriage—Sudha asks for Mahender’s permission to leave and touches his feet. The poetry carefully and beautifully built up over the film suddenly turns to prose with this anti-climax.

Rekha and Naseeruddin Shah in the song Katra katra milti hai, shot in the hills of Kudremukh in Karnataka

“Life is a waiting room,” says Mahendar to Sudha once and that sums up both the films—the inspiration and the inspired. Izaazat has the glamour and the chutzpah of colour and the beautiful setting of a hill station, a beautiful, antique-filled apartment where Maya lives and works. Jatugriha has neither. Maya is the creation of Gulzar’s creative imagination as she does not exist either in the original story or in Tapan Sinha’s film. In Jatugriha, Shatadal, the hero, does not have another person in his life. Nor does his wife Madhuri. Then, why the schism in the marriage? For that, we need to probe into Tapan Sinha’s classic film.

Sometimes, films, both from the mainstream and outside, have handled the theme of schisms in marriage with aesthetic sensitivity, technical finesse and, most importantly, strong social relevance. Jatugriha was made at a time when divorce was far less common and hardly spoken about in the public domain or in social circles, much less in films. Tapan Sinha handled the story with great restraint while his lead stars, Uttam Kumar and Arundhati Devi, made the film an excellent one for the ages. It looks contemporary, relevant and universal even after sixty years.

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