Adieu to stereotypes

Show me the person, I will tell you the rule, is the yardstick followed by Bollywood film makers in the projection of extra- marital dalliances on the silver screen. ZIYA US SALAM writes....

ONE OF the more pertinent comments on Mahesh Manjrekar's recently released, critically-acclaimed venture, `Astitva', came from a cinegoer last week.

The lady remarked: ``Dealing with the issue of a woman's extra- marital affair, ''Astitva`` has been released with an `Adults Only' certificate and is regarded as a `serious- semi-art' kind of film by the media. However, how can films like `Gharwali Baharwali' and `Sajan Chale Sasural' which deal with issues of a man's extra-marital affair and second marriage be passed with a `Universal' or `Universal-Adult' certificate and hailed as family entertainers? Why are different yardsticks used to gauge the same problem?'' Why, yes, indeed why?

Like the issue of extra-marital affairs and bigamy, there are no easy answers to this question either. But then Bollywood will be Bollywood where age-old stereotypes not only survive but also thrive! Nearly two decades ago Mahesh Bhatt ruffled a few feathers with `Arth', which came to be regarded as a benchmark for films dealing with the complex question of human relationships in a serious manner. The critics raved about the Shabana Azmi-Smita Patil-Kulbhushan Kharbanda starrer which had the heroine walking out of a marriage because of her husband's dalliances. However, much before she takes the drastic step, she weeps, whimpers, whines. Hoping against hope to have her man back, extra-marital fling and all that.

At about the same time, Shekhar Kapur came up with a sensitive film, `Masoom', which dealt with the issue of an illegitimately sired child by the protagonist. The film, with lilting music and competent performance by the lead cast, including Shabana Azmi and Naseeruddin Shah, was hailed by cinegoers and critics alike for ``realistic treatment'' and a ``credible human angle''. The film did reasonably well at the box-office.

In some ways, it ran parallel to the Manjrekar film. `Astitva' portrays the heroine - Tabu in probably the best role of her chequered career so far - having a one-night fling with her music teacher. Not for love. Not out of compulsion. But purely to satisfy her lust. The son born out of this chance union is not accepted as his own by her husband, played competently by Sachin Khedekar, even though the biological father is conveniently dead and out of the way. What is more, he is unable to continue his responsibilities as husband after learning of the carnal encounter. This is in contrast to what Kapur's film had projected in the early 1980s. In `Masoom', the wife not only accepts her husband's child as her own - after much heart-burning though - but also comes to terms with her husband's affair. All is well as it ends well. Not so in `Astitva' where a woman is virtually forced out of an apparently secure marriage because the man is not able to forgive and forget, and move on.

Incidentally, in the mid 1980s Shabana Azmi had done a role which was perilously close to the one so memorably etched out by Tabu. In ``Ek Pal'', the heroine sleeps with another man, not because of any intense dislike for her man. Nor because she liked the other man too much either. She just needed a child. Not just to satisfy her maternal instincts but to make sure that the world does not call her ``barren''. The echoes could be heard in Manjrekar's film towards the end when the apparently cornered wife decides to reveal it all. ``If I had not had a child - illegitimate one - the world would have called me barren. Nobody would have called you impotent despite the fact that all along I knew and hid this fact.''

Then in the 1980s and early 90s, Saawan Kumar Tak made a couple of films which were too close to being retrograde to merit an astute analysis. While `Souten', dealing with, as the name suggests, the problem of the `other woman', ``Souten ki Beti'' was even worse. Potentially it could have been a landmark film about the fate of children born out of wedlock but slipped into most obnoxious realms. The film shows the hero siring a child with a woman he does not marry. And pray, what does his wife do when she discovers that she is neither the first nor his only love in life? Commit suicide by consuming poison, singing a song all along!

More recently, director David Dhawan and actors like Anil Kapoor and Govinda have made a mockery of men's infidelity. Seeing more than one woman at a time can be fun in Bollywood with no risk of embarrasment or disastrous consequences. In ``Sajan Chale Sasural'' which incidentally had the much raved about Tabu in a central role, the man openly indulges in bigamy, bouncing from one woman to another with the ease of an Olympic gymnast. There are guffaws aplenty as he plays hide-and-seek with his women. The problem is resolved with - you guessed it - the trio accepting the inevitable and living happily ever after. You see, women in Bollywood can run around trees, observe Karva Chauth fasts and rear kids but cannot walk out on a man who has been less than loyal to them. A particularly retrogressive film was the Jeetendra-Rekha starrer of the late 80s, `Mera Pati Sirf Mera Hai'. The film literally had the heroines fighting with each other to keep the man who was not solely theirs!

In ``Gharwali Baharwali'', which seems to have become the favourite of a satellite channel in recent months, it is again the hero who indulges in bigamy. On a business trip to Nepal, he falls in love with a local beauty, hides the fact from his otherwise loving wife before things finally come to a head. Again, wife dear has to surrender. You know wives can live like sisters in Bollywood bonanzas! But men will not be men if they so much as accept a one-night dalliance of their wife. It may all be in a hoary past with waters of time having washed aside all possible emotional imprints. But then a man is a man and a woman a woman, as Sachin Khedekar so casually remarks in ``Astitva''. Then, is a woman's destiny in Bollywood films, a man? Always. Even if he is bigamous?

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