A LETTERED SOUL: REFLECTIONS ON LITERATURE, CINEMA AND CULTURE .

TREASURE TROVE OF CINEMA

UMBARTHA /SUBAH (1982 )

This film is about duty, the ones we fulfill towards ourselves, to then contribute constructively to society. However, most of us have to answer to our immediate order's beck and call and that sense of responsibility gets clouded by dog eared expectations. Dilemmas of making a change come visiting upon the protagonist in UMBARTHA (THRESHOLD, 1982) as she decides to heed to the call of her conscience and come out of the conformist, upper middle class values of her marital home. Crossing the threshold is one big task for women after marriage and motherhood. When it involves working far away from the family and child, a battle is pitched on lines of gender.

The great Smita Patil, in a role that was almost a heartfelt tribute to her own socialist mother's contributions to society that stood for actions and not just lofty words, holds her ground, exhibiting a rare humane strength and simultaneous vulnerability. She arrives at an institution for women who have been discarded from society's center owing to multiple reasons and is firmly enmeshed within their world. Actually, she is trying to carve out a path differently from her familial ethos that is ruled by a matriarch, where her daughter is showered with unconditional love by her sister and brother and law and where her own understanding husband remarks that she is wasting herself sitting at home . Yet she realizes that seeking work too is dictated by limits set by her immediate members. If she sought that for one of the several organisations headed by her cold and indifferent mother in law, it was permissible. That she is an adult and has to seek everybody's approval for the otherwise noble task of overseeing a social institution as head warden tells us how women are still far from exercising their franchise. It is doubly relevant for our times where misogyny has made an edged comeback into the mainstream. As exhibited in a crucial scene where the other members of her family denounce a woman's plea for redressal after she has suffered an assault, using it as a launchpad for casual humour, we see and feel her inner unraveling. It's a reality so many women have to face. Her zeal to have an identity of her own gets strengthened. Her introverted sense of detachment and eventual distance is etched beautifully by the writing.

Ms. Patil's looks hold the thrall of discovery, anxious foregroundings, pangs and the ultimate loneliness of a pioneering mind. Her eyes and facial mobility do the needful, conveying every quiver and sustained note perfectly. Even the songs in UMBARTHA, evoked in the background, capture her multifaceted aura as she leaves confines of home and transforms her worldview as a social worker overlooking a women's institute. There is nothing high and mighty about it and Jabbar Patel's deft direction attests to that nerve of realistic value system ingrained here.

**

Privy to the life stories of the women, corruptions, complex social mores and the sheer apathy of higher authorities, the final stretch in UMBARTHA is heartbreaking. The open ended resolution betrays none of its realism or the lady's sense of unfortunate displacement in this world. She has nothing to lose and though half of the female folk wouldn't opt for such a fate, she does. Her determination to have a meaning in life is incremental to her self respect.