Revisiting wounded souls in Pinjar
Film Review – Pinjar
(The Skeleton) – 2003
Director: Chandra Prakash Dwivedi
Director: Chandra Prakash Dwivedi
Cast: Urmila Matondkar (Puro/Hamida), Manoj Bajpai
(Rashid), Sanjay Suri (Ramchand), Kulbhushan Kharbanda (Mohanlal), Lillete
Dubey (Mrs. Mohanlal), Sandali Sinha (Lajjo), Isha Koppikar (Rajjo), Priyanshu
Chatterjee (Trilok)
Based
on Amrita Pritam’s Punjabi novel “PINJAR”
Violent
bloodbath, massacres of scores of human beings and refugee exodus were the most
powerful symbols of the partition of the Indian sub-continent. Chandra
Prakash Dwivedi’s film Pinjar
represents the pain of the partition which engulfed three communities of India
– the Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs. The film is also the story of a family,
essentially the journey of the daughter of the family – Puro (Urmila Matondkar
in a major role) and her transformation to Hamida, her loss of identity and her
agony. Pinjar is set in 1946 which
marked the pre-partition era. Even before the country was divided into two
parts, communal rage had spread all over and violence was taking place in the
name of religion. Pinjar tells the
tale of a woman caught between two lands and coping with a dual identity. It is
an effective portrayal of the suffering that women of the sub-continent had to
undergo because of the decision to divide the country on the basis of religion.
The partition was a painful experience for women and this is what the film
tries to depict. The partition was a time when the state was immensely powerful
to alter the lives of individuals because the decision of partition was taken
by those who were at the helm of state affairs and the individual became
absolutely powerless in the circumstance of displacement and identity loss
because he/she had no control over their own lives.
Puro’s family
(father Kulbhushan
Kharbanda , mother Lillete
Dubey and sister Isha Koppikar )
move to Chattowani from Amritsar to search for a
perfect match for Puro. The major
part of the film’s first half is dominated by the scenes of a happy family who
dote on both their daughters. Here, Puro
is an obedient and ideal daughter, the darling of her parents. She
unquestioningly accepts what her parents decide for her marriage and is shown
busy dreaming about the future that she is going to spend with Ramchand, her prospective suitor. Puro’s
parents are extremely worried about the marriage of their daughters. All they
seem concerned with is finding a good match so that they can get rid of the
‘burden’ of daughters. This is a telling statement on the status of women
during that era. The pain and agony experienced by a mother is deftly conveyed
in the song “Charkha Chalati Maa
…”. Daughters were liabilities for parents especially during the partition
where abductions and rape of women of both communities had become common
occurrences. Puro’s father associates
the idea of family honour with women of the family. The honour which young
women like Puro carried on their
shoulders turned out to be a burden for them.
The
partition as an important event in history shaped the ideas of honour and
thereby the destinies of thousands of women both from India and Pakistan . Pinjar is told from Puro’s perspective.
It is Puro’s voice that lingers in
the narrative throughout the film. Partition changes her from a docile young
lady to a strong individual as a result of the displacement and abandonment
that she experiences.
The
turning point in the first half arrives when Puro is kidnapped by Rashid (Manoj
Bajpai) who is seeking revenge from Puro’s
family owing to settle a family score that goes back two generations. On
managing to escape from Rashid’s
house, when Puro goes back to her
family, they refuse to accept and take her back home because she has lived with
a stranger for many days which is detrimental to family ‘izzat’ and prospects for her sister’s marriage. Even when her brother
Trilok tries to go against the
father’s wishes and search for Puro,
he is reprimanded and instructed to forget Puro’s
existence and halt efforts for her search. Puro
on the other hand is devastated and returns to Rashid to lead a life which is
akin to that of a Skeleton (Pinjar).
Puro’s
identity undergoes a drastic change. Rashid
forces marriage on her and from Puro
she is now Hamida. She now has a new
identity which she resists as she longs for her family and marriage to Ramchand. She tries hard to erase this
new identity but cannot and thus resigns to fate. Meanwhile, after committing
the crime of abducting Puro, Rashid is repentant and seeks
redemption. He tries to care and provide for her, but Puro is unrelenting as the wounds inflicted by Rashid are
unforgivable. These events take place at a time when the country is on the boil
but Partition has yet not taken place. Even before the partition, relations
between Hindus and Muslims have soured as each community tries to gain brownie
points over the other. Through many scenes, the film exemplifies the division
between the two communities even before the partition took place. For eg: when Puro (now Hamida) raises an abandoned Hindu infant, the Panchayat warns Rashid to return the child or face dire consequences.
The fight is thus not over the child but over supremacy of religion. As a
result, Puro loses the child and laments, “Ek Ek karke mera sab chin gaya … mera parivar, mera desh, mera
bachcha!” Thus, the film is also about loss … not only the loss of one’s
homeland and near and dear ones, the irreparable loss of identity.
Pinjar is
a story based on Amrita Pritam’s novel of the same name. The scene is set in Punjab which consisted of a significant Hindu and Muslim
population. Since, the novel has been written by a female writer, it brings the
women’s perspective to partition. Puro’s
ultimate fate is decided by the act of partition which is a male dominated
which is a male dominant decision in which the stakes of women are
insignificant. As Puro, there were
millions of women both from India
and Pakistan
who suffered the same sorry fate. The worst consequences of partition were
faced by women. They became powerless in front of the authority of the state to
draw artificial borders and divide people on religious grounds. Puro’s dilemma is repeated in the film
when Lajjo (Puro’s sister-in-law) is abducted by Muslims and kept in capture in
her own house. When Puro learns of Lajjo’s fate, she along with Rashid decides
to help her reach safely to her family in India . She depicts immense strength
in the hour of crisis to help Lajjo
escape from the clutches of her abductors.
The
first half hour of the film is not very convincing because all you watch is a
happy family singing and dancing together, rejoicing on the prospects of a
daughter’s marriage. The film picks pace only as Rashid enters the scene and Puro’s
world turns upside down. We see a reflection of Punjabi culture in the scenes
and songs of the film. For eg: the desire for a son in the family, parents deciding
their daughter’s fate, male dominance in the family and silence of female
characters. The character of Rashid
enters the story as a villain but ends up gaining both Puro’s and the audience’s sympathy. This has not been explained
well. Why does Rashid undergo a
change of heart? Why does he not take the initiative to send Puro back to her family? Manoj Bajpai ’s
excellent portrayal of Rashid is
exemplified in his Muslim mannerisms, style and acting. He emotes very well
especially when he is ridden with guilt and tries to woo Puro. In the climax, it is Rashid
who helps Puro in the plan to bring Lajjo back. Whether or not he achieves
redemption is left to the audience’s imagination.
Pinjar
is also about revenge … a revenge that a man seeks because of a family feud, a
brother who seeks revenge for his missing sister … revenge that two communities
seek on each other thereby destroying the secular fabric of the nation. The
question of gender roles and identities has been successfully evoked in the
film. Questions of social relevance like the marriage of girls, their
education, their submerged desires are all seen in the light of the gendered
views of contemporary society. There are many scenes and dialogues in the film
which talk about women’s position in society.
Eg:
Is yug mein ladki ka janm lena hi paap
hai
[It is a sin for a girl
to be born in this age]
Song:
Beton ko deti hai mehal atariya, beti ko
deti pardesari
[To
the boy, the mother gives all comforts, and to the girl … a stranger’s house]
It
is not only the partition and the nation’s division that is the central focus
of the film. The questions and complexities of gender have also been explored
by the director. Puro is the narrator
and the main protagonist of the story. The story is thus a reflection of her
views not only on the partition but also on gender roles and gender
socialization (Bharat, 2008).
The songs of the film exhibit the pain of partition (Watna Ve O meraya Watna Ve )
as also the pain of women who were being displaced from their homeland. In the
climax, when Puro and Rashid are able to reunite Lajjo with her husband, Puro’s brother wants her to return to India .
Here, she decides to stay back with Rashid
because she does not want to be uprooted once again. Even though she faces a
dilemma between her dreams of marrying Ramchand and the reality that she is now
Rashid’s wife … Puro chooses to reconcile with the fact that the country has been
divided and she is now on the other side of the border leaving all her near and
dear ones far away. The film has been criticised for its climax in which Puro chooses to be with Rashid without
offering any substantial explanation. My contention is that this aspect of the
film should not be viewed from a gender lens but
from a human lens. Her decision is important not as a woman but as a human
being who chooses not be experience displacement again and in this sense, Puro’s decision is justified. This is
also the only point in the film where she has been given a choice to take a
decision and she does that. By the end, she emerges as a strong character who
accepts her fate willingly and decides to carry on with life.
There
are still so many ‘Puros’ in Pakistan as well as India … having to deal daily with
grief and trauma of leaving their land forcefully. The film is a wonderful tale
weaved with many characters who portray the experiences of a part of the
population which was neglected during the partition – women. In the same way as
many Hindu women were forcefully made to leave India
and live in Pakistan ,
the same fate was met by Muslim women. The woman’s body continues to be the
object of male gaze and the custodian of family honour both at the same time
and this is indeed ironical. We cannot label the film as a feminist film
because the director has tried to examine many other issues even though women
remain central to the film with partition as the backdrop. The larger question
that the director is trying to ask is where women stand when it comes to the
partition in cinema. Many films have been crafted on the sensitive issue of the
partition but only few have addressed the fate of women in the event. Reflections
on the partition have been examined through the male perspective of the state,
of war and conflict, of power and not from the views of women who went through
it.
Whether
it was Puro or Hamida, women became the ‘other’ during the partition. That ‘other’
whose lives did not matter, whose voices were silenced, whose identities were
subjugated and who remained at the periphery of power struggle and power equations
and who still continue to be marginalized and displaced at the cost of the
‘self’, the ‘state’ and the ‘man’. Pinjar
thus gives a voice to this ‘other’ and their concerns of displacement,
marginalization, dual identity and powerlessness in the face of state power.
Bibliography
Bharat, M.
(2008). Partition Literature and Films: Pinjar and Earth. In N. Kumar , & M. Bharat ,
Filming the Line of Control: The Indo-Pak relationship through the cinematic
lens (pp. 63-67). New Delhi :
Routledge.
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