Synopsis
A Calcutta college teacher and former revolutionary
of the late 1960s generation, Mandar (pradip
Mukherjee) marries a young woman, Anjali
(Mamata Shankar). When he learns that his
wife is pregnant, he leaves her. Anjali
however, refuses to reveal the name of the
father because she feels she is equally
responsible for the pregnancy. After he
leaves her, Mandar refuses to give shelter
to a Naxalite on the run. The lonely teacher
forms a relationship with Nandini, a steno-typist
who lives with her insane mother. But the
relationship keeps him as restive as ever
and finally, winding up his relationship
with Nandini, he goes to Anjali, hoping
to re-build the relationship within freshly
defined parameters of friendship and understanding.
In the meanwhile, Anjali has taken up a
teaching job and is bringing up the child
single-handedly. He is a bit surprised to
discover that Anjali bears no ill feeling
towards him for having divorced her and
is mature enough to accept him as a friend
while Mandar learns to shed his earlier
prejudices that made him reject her soon
after they were married.
The Film
 Dooratwa,
Grihajuddha (1982) and Andhi
Gali (1984) form a loose trilogy because
the common thread that links the three films
is the notion of disillusionment with idealism
and political commitment and the spilling
over of this discontent and restiveness
into the personal lives of the subjects
concerned. Each film has an independent
story sourced from an original literary
piece, re-scripted to suit the needs and
interpretations of the director and his
medium of cinema. Each film has its own
statement and its own plot and theme. Each
film is complete unto itself. Yet, they
are placed in a time-space setting that
has the same political history of extreme
Leftist politics in West Bengal. The male
protagonist in each of these films has a
background of Leftist commitment in his
past. The present finds him trying to distance
himself and run away from this past. This
‘running away’ somewhere along
the way, turns into a running away from
Life itself, and from the responsibilities
and relationships that form the core of
life. Contrary to common expectations, the
three films did not follow sequentially.
Buddhadeb
Dasgupta broke the ‘continuity’
after his first full-length feature Dooratwa
with Neem Annapoorna in 1979, a
film that is in a different realm altogether.
He then made Grihajuddha and Andhi
Gali one after another.
Based on a short story by noted Bengali
littérateur Sirsendu Mukhopadhyay,
Dooratwa was completed in just
16 shooting days on an incredibly low budget,
exposing just 20,000 feet of film in totality.
On the surface, Dooratwa is a simple
story but Dasgupta made a few changes in
the original short story to draw it closer
to his own interpretation for a different
medium that a different language –
cinema, demands. The elaborate introduction
of the cast and characters makes it clear
that Dooratwa is intended to be
as much a cinematic exercise as an investigation
into middle-class morality in a contemporary
urban setting. It is a mature portrait of
a middle class dilemma, subtle in its understanding
and sensitive in treatment.
Though Mandar, is the protagonist of the
film, Anjali, slightly marginalized within
the cinematographic space by Mandar, comes
across as the stronger of the two. She is
much more in control of her life than he
is. She is firm in her decision of keeping
the baby, of not asking Mandar stay on,
of bringing up the child all by herself,
of refusing to abort the baby when the man
responsible asks her to. Then why does she
stoop to deceive Mandar into a marriage
of cheap, political convenience? Because
basically, she is as conventional as the
girl next door and is aware of the support
she needs from a man to bring up the child.
She is no sexually permissive woman who
believes in being promiscuous. The pregnancy
happened through circumstantial pressure,
and instead of turning her back on it, she
takes it on as her sole responsibility.
Yet, she is no dumb woman to accept her
victimization of being a single mother readily.
Nor is she ready to wallow in the frustration
of the divorce thrust on her. Anjali knows
exactly what she must do with her life,
though her pregnancy is a sort of sacrifice
of values and morals for her family. Instead
of using her pregnancy as a means of emotional
blackmail of the ones responsible - the
family benefactor and the family itself,
she accepts the change and the responsibilities
that come along with it. Her manipulation
of Mandar stems from a sense of ‘belonging.’
Yet, when it backfires, she takes the rejection
in her stride and carries on with life as
if nothing has happened. She moves on, and
when Mandar comes back and knocks on her
door, she welcomes him with the dignified
distance that defines her persona.
Mamata Shankar essays the character with
the restraint it needs and in this, she
gets able support from Pradip Mukherjee
who portrays the perennially confused and
insecure Mandar. Though he speaks of women’s
liberation in the classroom, at the personal
level, Mandar is unable to accept that his
wife is expecting someone else’s child
and has married him by deceit. He is completely
disillusioned with the Leftist movement
he was once so involved in. Yet he lacks
focus in life – be it political, personal,
emotional, or any other. Dooratwa,
which means ‘distances’ suggests
a constant widening of spaces between and
among people engineered, almost unconsciously,
by the protagonist, Mandar. He tries to
bridge this ‘gap’ but we do
not know if his attempt to ‘correct’
his past behaviour will bear fruit in the
future.
Dooratwa does not offer any ready
answers to the questions it raises. It slightly
brushes the surface of ideological confusion
by letting Mandar overcome at least a part
of his moral conflict that just right to
make him take the rather unconventional
step – for him – to visit his
ex-wife with hopes of a possible friendship.
The clash between life and ideology is presented
as a human problem in the original story.
The straightforward, mood-lit cinematography
and appropriate editing that keeps the footage
limited to 96 minutes sustains the intensity
of this multi-layered celluloid statement
on the impact of disillusion in political
beliefs on the Indian urban family. Dasgupta
gives it a political perspective without
making it look like a strident political
message or a plea for social change. He
tries to present people and things as they
are, and the social responsibility they
must face if being what they are and how
they behave entails risks that might topple
moral and social concerns within urban lives,
creating distances in emotional and social
space between and among people and in their
interactions with one another.
Dooratwa bagged the Silver Lotus
at the National Awards and a Special Critic’s
Award at the 1979 Locarno International
Film Festival.
Shoma A Chatterji is a freelance
journalist who specialises in cinema and
gender. She has won the National Award for
Best Writing on Cinema twice.
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