Chapter X PARASURAMER KUTHAR 1989 Background An emotional response to a film (or other artwork) can be rational, permitting p ositive

e claims about the viewer: that she is active not passive, cognizing - not simply reacting, and potentially critical, not simply absorbing ideological eff ects. But then, this is sometimes determined by and dependent on the film that s he is seeing. The film should invite the viewer not only to see the film, but also to imbibe something within it, into the viewers system. It is essential for some k ind of chemistry to work between a film and its critic. In a majority of cases how ever, this chemistry fails to function. For some films, the chemistry gets trigger ed off on second or third viewing of the same film. In a few cases, such as with filmmakers like Satyajit Ray or Ritwik Ghatak or Mr inal Sen, this chemistry is structured within the films very design its script, its narrative, the mise-en-scene and its unfolding one cannot but react. Their film s fail to leave you cold, ever. Not a single contemporary filmmaker in India can lay claim to this inevitable chemistry in every film they make. Some filmmakers d o triumph in opening up clear lines of communication between the film they have created and the audience they have created it for. But this is true only of a fr action of their total output not all. Some names that crop up in this short list are Shyam Benegal, Govind Nihalani, Gulzar, Mani Ratnam, Buddhadev Dasgupta, Ga utam Ghose, Aparna Sen and Nabyendu Chatterjee. In his brief oeuvre of around a dozen films, Chatterjee has proved one thing that his narratives have drawn gene rously from the rich literary heritage of Bengal. Transmutation of a literary te xt onto the audiovisual language of cinema which is Chatterjees own language, giv es his films a fourth dimension that of reaching out to that section of viewersh ip not familiar with the literary original the film is based on or adapted from. Nabyendu Chatterjee Nabyendu Chatterjee (born 1937), started out as an actor. But the attempt failed and he shifted focus to direction. He assisted noted filmmaker Arabindu Mukherj ee between 1962 and 1965 after which he stepped into directing his first indepen dent venture, Naya Rasta (1967) in Hindi. His second feature was Adwitiya (1968) in Bengali. The film was a thumping success mainly for its music and the songs are big hits at cultural programmes till this day. In 1972, he made two films, C hithi and Ranur Pratham Bhag, the latter being the story of a small girl and her relationship with an uncle of sorts she is close to. His Aaj Kaal Porshur Galpo (1981) is something he is proud of till this day. But in retrospect, this film that explores the desperate nature of rural poverty seemed to be a sort of amate urish carbon collage put together from better films on similar themes. In 1985, Chatterjee directed Chopper, exploring the issue of large-scale unemplo yment among urban youth and how this demoralizes the young hero so much that it sucks him even of his rightful anger where he is impelled to chop a pumpkin inst ead of chopping the person he bears anger against! This drama is about a family struggling to survive among the poor of Calcutta. The story paints a realistic b ut still quite dismal picture of urban death throes. Rajat has inherited his bro ther s mantle as keeper of the family after his brother is killed in a union dem onstration. Unlike his deceased sibling, Rajat is a dreamer whose ideals run cou nter to financial success, or even having a normal love relationship. Because of his ethics, he refuses a job that might compromise his standards; because of hi s morals, he refuses to bed his devoted girlfriend. Naturally, the family member s are a little dubious about his ability to lead them into survival mode, let al one prosperity Sarisreep, (1987) was based on a shocking story by Manik Bandopadhyay. This film is perhaps Chatterjees first strong statement on the vulnerable social and econo

mic position of women in urban and rural Bengal. Chatterjee used the audio-visua l medium of cinema to shock his audience to almost a point of no return. The fil m offered no relief from shocks including the sudden death of a woman who dresse s herself up as Kali to feed her small children. She partakes of some poisoned p rasad from the temple where she goes to beg everyday. Sarisreep throws up woman in her many-hued forms of desperation where, if pushed to extremes, is capable o f killing her own. This was followed by Parasuramer Kuthar (1989) which took sca thing potshots at the so-called Independence Day celebrations in a neighbourhood w here a poor woman is forced to sell her body to the very men she once breastfed. Atmaja is a satire on the mother-child relationship where the naturally born so n is not bothered about the upkeep of the one who gave him birth while people no t related to her by blood are more caring. Nabyendu Chatterjee s oeuvre of films has raised critical controversies in sever al ways. Yet, they have won awards left, right and centre. The criticism therefo re, has left him unmoved. Rather, it has egged him on to more films, and over ti me, as his films revealed, better ones, qualitatively speaking. One critic, afte r having seen his Chopper, (screened in the Indian Panorama in 1986 at the Hyder abad Filmotsav), accused Chatterjee of lifting frames from films of other Indi an masters. When he made Sarisreep, based on a novel by Manik Bandopadhyay, unfo lding the decaying of moral principles in the face of survival needs, critics pa nned him severely for using shock tactics to woo his audience. But Nabyendu to ok it all in with his characteristic smile. Slowly, with Parasuramer Kuthar, Nab yendu started coming into his own. This was followed by Atmaja, the story of a m other disowned by her own son, only to be adopted by another, who is no bloodties with her. Then came Shilpi, a film about a weaver Madan Taanti, who struggl ed to sustain his craft. Shilpi consolidated the position of Nabyendu Chatterjee as a filmmaker with an identity of his own who puts his signature on his films. Whatever critics may have said, Nabyendus work reveals certain aesthetic qualitie s that lie hidden under a thin veneer of somewhat coarsely textured craftsmanshi p. His choice of literary stories to be translated in film scripts by himself, i s classic in its uniqueness. The struggle of the individual to survive and trium ph over the dregs of life he/she belongs to/is reduced to, forms the central ide a of every film of his, without exception. It is also about the loneliness of th e individual, whose dedication to a cause, no matter how apparently insignifican t is so total that it mentally isolates him/her from his immediate surroundings. Interestingly so, since they have all been penned by different Bengali littrateu rs. Then comes his courage in giving breaks to absolute newcomers. Or, alternate ly, in bringing out an otherwise underutilised actor s latent talent in his film . One sterling example is the break he gave to singing actress Sreelekha Mukherj ee, who bagged the National Award for Best Actress for her performance as the br eastfeeding surrogate in Parasuramer Kuthar. Anjan Dutt s portrayal in the title role in Shilpi is another illustration in point. Atmaja had a power-packed role of a mother caught between the divergent ideologi es of her two sons, enacted with conviction by Gauri Ghosh. His Sauda reveals ne gative shades of some women characters. In this film made in the 90s, the direct or, possibly the first in Indian cinema, portrayed how the wife and the daughter s of an accident victim, now in the operation theatre of a hospital, crave for h is death instead of his recovery, because the family has been promised a huge su m of money by an industrialist as compensation, whose car was involved in an acc ident with the victim. The film highlights the decay of human values in an age o f consumerism His last film, Mansur Mian-r Ghoda however, took his critics by pleasant surpris e. This is his best film to date. It is based on a little-known short story by A marendra Sanyal. Mansur Mian-r Ghoda unfolds the emotional impact of the shift in values on Mansur Mian, a poor old Bengali Muslim who still draws his landau,

the horse-drawn carriage on the crowded streets of a Calcutta where means of tra nsport too, have steadily changed from the feeton and the buggy and the tonga to the car, the bus and the tramcar. After making this film, Nabyendu said: I gave up relying on a straightforward narrative long ago. I think that the clear depa rture came with my last film Shilpi. dealing with the ideological conflict of an impoverished weaver who refuses to give up even when his traditional artistry i s threatened with decay. The use of surrealism appealed to me. For five years si nce I directed Shilpi, all the while, the thought of making a film on Amarendra Sanyals story, Mansur Mian-r Ghoda, kept haunting me. Subodh Ghosh (1909-1980) Subodh Ghosh who wrote the original story Parasuramer Kuthar, was born in 1909, Bikrampur, Dhaka, now in Bangladesh. He had the following occupations: Performan ce on the horizontal bar of a circus; district board health inspector on the Haj Pilgrimage Service; sanitary inspector; bus conductor on the Ranchi-Gaya Motor Bus Service; confectioner; hotel-keeper; mica-mining prospector; vaccinator; pou ltry farmer; butter merchant; sannyasi, gypsy, union volunteer, political worker . In 1941, Subodh Ghose took to writing; his first few stories won him immediate recognition. While he worked, rising to a senior level, on the editorial staff of the Bengali newspaper Ananda Bazar Patrika, he continued to write fiction and was also prominent for his editorials in the press. Subodh Ghoses stories are marked by a strong vigorous narrative style and a livel y universe of people and places drawn from the writers formidable range of life e xperiences. It is no surprise that several of his stories were made into classic Bengali and Hindi films, and that the awards he received came from both the lit erary and film worlds. Ghosh however, though considered to be slightly lower down in the hierarchy and in years than Tarasankar, remains popular to this day as a favourite of filmmake rs in Hindi and Bengali. Among the most popular films based on Subodh Ghosh stor ies are Bimal Roys Sujata, Ritwik Ghataks Ajantrik, Mrinal Sens Ek Adhuri Kahani, B asu Chatterjis Chit Chor, Nabyendu Chatterjee s Parasuramer Kuthar, Tapan Sinhas J otugriha, Gulzars Izaazat, (an improvised and individualised version of Jotugriha ) Prabhat Roys Shedin Choitromash and Suraj Kumar Barjatiyas Main Prem Ki Diwani H oon, which incidentally, is an updated and much more sophisticated and glamorise d version of Chit Chor. Winner of the Sahitya Akademi Award, Subodh Ghosh also w on the Filmfare award as the best storywriter twice: in 1959 for Sujata, and pos thumously for Izzazat (based on "Jatugriha") in 1988. Synopsis Lokhhi is a very poor, unlettered and socially handicapped woman whose husband f ell off a roof when she was expecting her first baby. The fall left her husband crippled for life, perhaps, because the couple had neither the means nor the kno wledge of how he could be cured and whether he could be cured at all. She lost her baby from the shock, and as a meagre compensation, was offered work as a wet -nurse in middle-class families where presumably women are more interested in ke eping their figures in shape than in breastfeeding their new-borns and allow the ir figures to get out of shape. Her poverty and her vulnerability due to her pos ition stopped Lokkhi from resisting the advances of so-called gentlemen who expl oited her physically whenever they could. Since being a wet-nurse was the only way she could feed her husband and herself, she needed to keep the breast-milk f lowing so she got pregnant again but no kids which helped her in a way to keep b ody and soul together. But this way of income was short-lived. Suddenly, one fine day as part of the st reet-cleaning programme in the neighbourhood she served as wet nurse, she was as ked to leave the locality as part of the street-cleaning. This was in preparation for some National Day celebrations. The police order her out labelling her a pros titute who cannot live close to the mainstream. She tries to meet the men who paw ed her once and sometimes paid her in cash or in kind for help. But they all tur ned her down because the police had labelled her a prostitute in public and they

could not have anything her first customer is a this her revenge against y wanted to and took her spell out the tragedy of enjoyed?

to do with her. She becomes a prostitute in the end and young man she had wet-nursed when he was an infant. Is the society that had labelled her a prostitute when the wet-nursing services when they needed to? Or does this her condition where the breast-mother becomes a body to be

Lokkhi is a good woman. But in a world that cares little for goodness, she is ex ploited, oppressed, wronged and defamed. A frantic search to find a place under the sun and an honest living for herself and for her crippled husband fetches he r nothing but abject humiliation. Finally, on a day of festivities, when the nei ghbourhood is busy celebrating the 40th anniversary of the countrys Independence, Lokkhi is thrown out, branded a whore. Her presence in a day of celebration wou ld be an embarrassment for the neighbourhood where Lokkhi has functioned as wetnurse for the wives of the very men who want to throw her out. Lokkhis revenge is as shocking in its incredibility as it is brutal in its social indictment. As t he local bigwigs are busy celebrating the Independence Day function, Lakshmi qui etly takes in the young boy she once breast-fed as an infant, into her bed for a night of sexual fulfillment. The Working Woman as a Wet Nurse Not many Indian storytellers have ventured into the fragile area of breast-feedi ng by a surrogate, commonly known as wet-nursing. One of the first legendary sto ries along these lines is inherent in our own mythology where Krishna was delive red of Devaki but brought up by Yashoda. Dhatri Panna, who wet-nursed Rana Uday Singh, spins another This was probably due to the fear of some authors in castin g aspersions, or raising questions on the sanctity of the biological mother. One writer who departs from the majority is Mahasweta Devi. In one of her stories, Breast-Giver, a woman who becomes a professional wet-nurse to support her family , dies of painful breast cancer, betrayed alike by the breasts that for years ha d been her chief identity, and the dozens of sons she suckled. Lakhsmis fate is more tragic than Gangors because while Gangor is destined to die of breast cance r a medical disaster she can do nothing about, Lakshmi is forced to give away th e same body to the one she suckled as a child. She is not a medical victim like Gangor. She is a victim of the same society she has once served in her precious capacity of wet-nurse for dry women. Lokkhis name is a misnomer. She is named after the Goddess of Wealth in the Hindu pantheon. But she has no worldly affluence she can speak of and is so poor that her only means of survival is through her body and its natural juices. In a man ner perhaps, within this tragic reality lies the truth of her name she may not b e wealthy in the material sense. But she is wealthy in the sense of her biologic al ability to generate milk for children conceived, borne and delivered by other women. She is wealthy in her richness as a human being. She is wealthy in her d ignified exit from a society that no longer needs her she departs quietly. But s he is wealthiest in her revenge. The body she once used to mother and suckle child ren she never bore, is now turned into an invisible weapon of revenge that can nei ther be seen, nor heard, nor touched and therefore, invincible in its power and in its force. Her anger is not directed at the boy she once suckled. It is directed co llectively rather, at the social structure that created this boy and created the situation where he comes to seek the loss of his virginity at the door of the w oman who once suckled him at her breast. This blurs the clear lines of division between the mother and the whore something classicists would still balk at but s omething Chatterjee decided to immortalize on film. Parasuramer Kuthar is layered with different meanings that lend to its interpret ation in Marxist terms, in feministic terms and also, in terms of pure human and humane values so significant in the light of the moral decay that has set into our lives and in our inter-personal relationships today.

The Mythological Analogy Parasurame-r Kuthar is a title borrowed from the mythical tale of Parasuram and his axe considered to be a male weapon. Parasuram, as the mythological story goes, was the son of sage Jamadagni and his consort, Renuka. Renuka was so pure a wom an that she could carry water in a freshly moulded earthen pot. She moulded a po t everyday on the banks of a river where she went to fetch water. On one of her trips to the river, she saw a Gandharva couple bathing in the river. The reflect ion of the male partner in the water bewitched her. She was struck by his handso meness though she saw just the reflection. But as a result, the pot broke and Ja madagni construed this as a sign of her having sinned by coveting a man who was no t her husband. He was so angry that he at once ordered his 12-year-old son Paras uram to behead his own mother. Parasuram did as he was told. Happy with his sons blind loyalty to him, Jamadagni asked Parasuram to pray for a boon. The clever son at once asked his father to bring his mother back to life. The sage saw a matangi (low-caste) woman passing by. He beheaded this woman and attached her head to Renukas body. Renuka was resurrected but she no longer rega ined her original form. Her head belonged to a low-caste woman while her body wa s that of a high-caste woman. When Renuka was thus resurrected, her husband bles sed her saying that unmarried girls who would worship her as a goddess, would be dedicated to her for the rest of their lives, by marrying her for the physical fu lfillment of her son Parasuram, through her. This created the tragic generation of devadasis in Maharashtra, in Karnataka, in Orissa and in other parts of India. The word devadasi is derived from two words , deva, meaning God, implying Parasuram, and dasi, meaning slave woman. For every devadasi, a man is a human representation of Lord Parasuram and as his slave; she is bound to fulfil his sexual desires without expecting anything in return. If s he is dedicated to Yellamma, or Renuka on the full moon night in the month of Ma agh, she is forever condemned to satiate every single man who comes at her door even if he is a leper. This practice of dedicating young girls to Yellamma conti nues to this day. Once married, these girls can never lead normal lives again and are forced to turn to prostitution for a livelihood though according to mytholog y, they are supposed to keep body and soul together by walking the streets for a lms every Tuesday and Friday. A Marxist Reading of the Text The film Parasurame-r Kuthar uses the incestuous suggestions implicit in the myt hological story and carries it forward to complete an argument. It is the argume nt of the versatile manifestations of power inherent in a woman who can manipula te her own body for varied uses, sometimes, for the same man. This is something a man cannot equal on any terms. Lokkhi while she functions as wet-nurse as a yo ung woman, also supports her crippled husband financially. This offers the film a Marxist reading where Lokkhi creates labour, sustains labour and supports unpr oductive human labour represented by her crippled husband who is economically no n-productive. She sustains labour for the future by breast-feeding infants their o wn mothers will not or cannot suckle. She does this for a price, which she uses to feed and clothe herself and her husband with. Yet, she breaks every rule in t he book that defines the femme fatale. She is a dark, plain-looking, unkempt and unlettered woman who is meek, submissive and timid by virtue of her poverty and her handicapped social status. Her persona is completely bereft of feminine wil es. Chatterjee, by designed intent, makes no attempt to use his narrative or the character of Lokkhi to titillate his audience. Yet, in the final analysis, Laks hmi turns out to be the strongest character in the entire film, emasculating the men with her political strategy of revenge. Sreelekha Mukherjee gives one of the most subtle and low-key performances ever, of a marginal Indian woman in the history of Indian cinema. And to think she mad e her debut with the film and went on the win the National Award! Lakshmi in thi s sense is both Parasurams mother as well as his renowned axe. She bears Parasuram

within her, and also entertains him with the axe her body turns to when he arrives at her door as customer. Was this the interpretation the mythological story offer ed? Or, placed against a contemporary setting and ambience, is it the anticipati on of the mythical tale? One does not know and one does not care because, in cas e of Lokkhi, the lines of difference between interpretation and anticipation are rat her blurred. Conclusion Alternatives to psychoanalytic feminist film theory raise new questions about th e representation of women in films because of their different accounts of the se lf, agency, identity, and the cultural surroundings of the subject. In Parasuram e-r Kuthar, Lokkhi acts as an agent of contemporary society in her own way. Yet, s he keeps offering different accounts of her self as woman, as wet-nurse, as workin g woman, as wife, as whore all of which go to complete the circle of womanhood. Her evolving identity from wet-nurse to whore, is shaped by the cultural surroun dings she lives and works in. And in this sense, the film turns out to be a powe rful feminist indictment on patriarchy and on bourgeoisie capitalism. The film r eflects a more textured and nuanced view about the self s complexity and emphasi ses the viewers potential to construct critical readings. In so doing, it offers more scope for feminist social change than a view, which maintains that we are, in effect, the products of the texts around us. *****************************