NOVEMBER 2007 E-Magazine - Pravasi Today

LIFESTYLE
Laaga Chunari mein Daag
“Y
ou risk flogging a dead horse
in saying that feudalism is
stupid and wrong. But you also feel
for the characters in those films.
They're pathetic, like dinosaurs
who don't realize why they're being
wiped out. There's a quality of
pathos in that which interests me”
said Satyajit Ray once while
justifying the crisis and pathos
depiction in his cinema.
Similarly, Pradeep Sarkar has
outshined in depicting the plight of
the Vyaas family but fails to express
the conflicts and the duality of
emotions. They look very juvenile
and predictable.
Infidelity to immorality is what
defines deviance of director's camera
from Parineeta to Laaga chunri me
daaag. His fascination of women
protagonist trying to ' move out of the
62
Pravasi Today ✦ November 2007
❒ Mallika
sytem ' gives a strong sniff of Satyajit
ray's Charulata where she struggled
to resolve the problem of infidelity.
Charulata probably felt sympathetic
and was attempting to patch up the
situation. The husband realized too
late that he himself was responsible
for what had happened. Similiarly in
laaga chunri me daag she gets her due
acceptance and credit for her
sacrifices with no complexities and
no climaxes.
From a progressive cinema like
Chak de India to a regressive cinema
like laaga chunri daag, what a
compensating journey for Yash Raj
Films.
The film follows the fortunes of
Badki (Rani Mukherjee) and Chutki
(Konkona Sen Sharma), sisters from a
genteel Benares family with money
problems and predatory relatives.
When Badki leaves to find work in
Bombay (as everyone in the film still
calls the sin city currently known as
Mumbai), “Laaga” really takes off.
There, Badki with no diploma and no
skills becomes Natasha: a highpriced
prostitute. The movie isn't coy
about this. “I've fallen from grace,”
she says. “I can never come back.”
Chutki's story is lighter. M.B.A. in
hand, she joins her sister in the city,
where she gets a job in advertising.
Her first task is to sell Lux soap to the
modern Indian woman. And who is
that creature? As her boss (and future
husband) discovers, Chutki herself
bright, spunky, self-assured fits the
bill.
Fallen women are a Bollywood
staple. But Chutki won't allow her
sister to be shunned. Instead of
keeping the stain a dark secret, Chutki