Synopsis
In post-independent India a teacher, Violet
Stoneham (Jennifer Kendal), lives a quiet,
lonely and uneventful life at 36 Chowringhee
Lane in Kolkata. She teaches Shakespeare
despite the lack of interest from her students.
When a former student, Nandita pays a visit
with her author-boyfriend Samaresh, Violet
is delighted, particularly when Samaresh
decides that he would like to work on a
novel in her apartment. But really Nandita
and Samaresh need and use the place to make
love. Samaresh admires her gramophone player
and she gifts it to him. Samaresh and Nandita
get married and move into their own place
and no longer need the flat leaving Violet
all alone. At Christmas she goes to their
house having baked a cake for them where
she sees they are having a party and have
not bothered to invite her...
The film
36 Chowringhee Lane is one of
a handful of Indian films portraying the
life and culture of a fast-dwindling minority
community, the Anglo-Indians, in India.
The text is an engrossing study of the cultural
'outsider' – a theme that has received
artistic attention all over the world. The
faint, distant values of a Western civilization,
part of the legacy of colonialism are today
wrapped up in one significant tradition
– the tradition of the English language.
Indian cinema has rarely dealt with people
burdened by a dual racial identity. In this
sense, 36 Chowringhee Lane is a
path breaking film.
Released in 1981, 36 Chowringhee Lane,
based on Sen’s own story and script,
unfolds the story of an ageing and lonely
school teacher, Violet Stoneham (Jennifer
Kapoor.) She lives alone in an apartment
whose postal address defines the title of
the film. Her only 'live' company is Sir
Toby Belch, her black cat. In school, she
shares a somewhat warm friendship with Wendy
McGowen (Dina Ardeshir), and Rosemary (Soni
Razdan), her niece, who later migrates to
Australia. Stoneham is an Anglo-Indian,
a sub-colonial class the British left behind
in India. Much of the film has to do with
Stoneham being an Anglo-Indian per se, as
much as it has to do with her sense of marginalization
in a soil she has grown up to love as her
own. It also has to do with her school teaching
vocation, where she finds herself isolated
and alienated from the mainstream teaching
staff, where Anglo-Indian teachers are being
replaced by Indian substitutes. The subject
that she taught to higher classes –
literature – that included Shakespeare
– is taken away from her and she is
relegated to teaching Grammar to lower classes.
The loneliness and the isolation of her
single life, dotted by the occasional nightmare,
takes an about turn one day. And Stoneham’s
life changes forever.
Christmas-to-Christmas is the time frame
of the film. It is also a leitmotif. It
forms the opening and near-closure of the
film’s narrative space. Though the
actual time-span of the film covers one
year, the narrative is telescopic, moving
back and forth into the past, back to the
present and into the past again. At times,
past and present fuse together. In the closing
shots, the visuals are in the present while
the soundtrack – letters written by
Stoneham to Rosemary in Australia, are in
the past. There are forays into a more remote
past in the nightmare scene where Stoneham
is a young girl betrothed to another Anglo-Indian,
James MacKenzie.
Traditions emerge from linguistic foundations.
In 36 Chowringhee Lane, one can
distinguish a duality: the English language
as a fake tradition, and the Bengali (or
Indian) language, within which lies the
actual psychological compulsions of a people.
The 'outsider' and the 'insider' are thus
conjoined within the native land and belong
to the Indian culture-framework. This is
a new, urban India that cannot shake off
an outsider-oriented façade. The
tragedy of Miss Stoneham is actually a tragedy
of modern Indian society.
 In
terms of speech patterns and language, Stoneham,
Rosemary and Mrs.McGowen are 'outsiders.'
They speak solely in English, using broken
and heavy, English-accented Hindi (lobster
kitnaa karrke? – Stoneham at
the fish market) when they have to. They
speak the language of the ‘minority’
– the singsong throw of words is strongly
underlined. It is also a 'colonial' language
that the majority of 'insiders' do not much
care for, except for the likes of Nandita
and Samaresh. A major slice of 'insiders'
(Hindu Bengalis of Calcutta) do not like
to speak in English because (a) many of
them (Stoneham’s contemporaries) have
not learnt to speak it well, (b) it is a
bitter reminder of Independent India’s
colonial past. Stoneham has never learnt
to speak the language of the 'insider' because,
though she has lived and worked in Calcutta
for a major portion of her life, she does
not speak Bengali.
Miss Stoneham’s collection of gramophone
records of old English songs is an example
of her failure to identify with the Indian-Bengali
'insider.' The 'period' records –
Lipstick on Your Collar, House
of Bamboo and Yellow Polka Dot
Bikini thrill Samaresh too, underscoring
the fact that he takes as much snobbish
pride in knowing all about these once-hit
numbers as he is of the fact that he writes
poetry in English – again –
the language of the 'outsider.'
Though she does not speak of it, she is
desperate for company. She was not aware
of this desperation, until Samaresh and
Nandita stepped into her monotonous day-to-day
routine. When she discovers Nandita and
Samaresh kissing, she realizes the true
motive of their regular rendezvous, and
acknowledges it without comment. There is
a touching shot of Miss Stoneham returning
from school and fumbling in her purse for
the flat key. After a few seconds, she remembers
that she has given her key to Samaresh.
A lovely smile lights up her face as she
rings the doorbell of her own flat. Her
way of dressing is strictly Victorian, long,
loose, frocks that hide her frame more cleverly
than a sari would have. Her terror as she
suddenly reads her own future in the smiling,
ghostly face of the very old woman at the
old age home, are subtle understatements
that speak of a hundred little things about
the Stoneham woman. She feels guilty when
she forgets her Thursday visit to Eddie.
Yet, accepts the news of his death when
it comes through a telephone call while
she is at school, with quiet calm.
Deep ambers, rusts and browns dominate
the environment of Miss Stoneham - her apartment,
the home for the aged, to infuse the scenes
with signs of a fading present and a nostalgic
past, suggesting old age and loneliness.
The dim-lit corners of Miss Stoneham’s
flat are juxtaposed against the brightly
lit luxury of Nandita’s plush bungalow.
Ashok Mehta’s brilliant and evocative
camerawork gives the lines on Miss Stoneham’s
face the right dose of light and shade to
add a whole range of expressions and dimension
to it - when she is sad, when she wakes
up in cold sweat from the nightmare, when
she is laughing away at the hypocrisy of
Nandita’s marriage rituals ("Oh
Dear! After all this time" she
says to herself), etc. The carefully orchestrated
nightmare sequence appears like a watercolour
painting whose colours have gone away. Take
the example of Sen’s minute observation
of Stoneham’s bathroom in a night
scene.
There is a scene showing Stoneham visiting
her brother in the old people’s home.
Stoneham is frightened by the sight of an
old lady climbing up the stairs towards
her, as she is about to climb down. The
old lady is perfectly harmless but Stoneham
is now terrified of anyone who reminds her
of old age, disability and death. As the
old lady comes closer, her face begins to
appear distorted and macabre to Stoneham.
With a stifled cry, she rushes past the
old lady and disappears around the last
bend. One wonders if any other actress,
irrespective of talent and commitment, would
have been able to 'live' the character of
Violet Stoneham the way Jennifer Kendall
did.
Sen’s attention to minute details
of sound, silence, light, darkness and atmosphere
enriches the tapestry of the film and reveals
facets of the Stoneham character more eloquently
than words could have done. Miss Stoneham’s
disciplined, missionary upbringing is shown
through her use of a letter-opener to open
letters. Fading snapshots of Eddie and Rosemary
adorn the side table, suggesting memories
of another day. Stoneham’s Victorian
morals come across when she coyly hides
her underwear so Samaresh shouldn’t
see them. Her bargaining with the fishmonger
in the market to come away with the cheaper
variety is an indication of her meagre financial
resources. Her obsession with Shakespeare
is evident from the name of her pet cat
– Sir Toby Belch. Sen reveals her
growing emotional involvement with the young
lovers through a collage of suggestions
– she forgets to visit Eddie on a
Thursday because she is busy gallivanting
around with Nandita and Samaresh. Rosemary’s
letter, once pored over with affection,
now flies away in the breeze. A dollop of
ice cream falls on one of her students’
exercise books wiping out the name of the
girl – Binapani Sarkar - on the label.
The interior of Miss Stoneham’s flat
spells out the story of its tenant –
the upholstery is threadbare, the blackened
cooking pans in her tiny kitchenette, that
hidden bottle of wine she brings out to
celebrate Samaresh’s brand new job,
and the gramophone with the old records
and the brass horn.
Sen’s first film as director is clearly,
a cinema of the cut; she seeks to truncate
a particular shot before it yields a definite
interpretation in order to create the non-significant
image that transforms itself on contact
with other images, creating a rhythm where
the image or form acts as a substitute for
rather than the vehicle of thought. The
phonograph serves as a reminder of an age
gone by – an age, which, in its sentimental
self-articulation, was one of caring, and
of respect among the old and the infirm
and one in which the young had a greater
sense of propriety. It suggests a nostalgic
yearning for the past. It’s changed
positioning in the two settings –
Miss Stoneham’s home and Nandita’s
new bungalow – offers a perception
of a changing reality in which the old and
the new have become irreconcilable. The
presence of photographs in Stoneham’s
life shows her fondness for memories.
The highlight of 36 Chowringhee Lane
lies in Sen’s consistent refusal to
co-opt the 'minority culture' of Violet
Stoneham’s Anglo-Indian identity within
the fold of the ‘majority’ and
thereby project it as part of mainstream
national culture. The identity crisis of
Miss Violet Stoneham is resolved within
a social context where the rhetoric of humanism,
of feelings of brotherhood, of being rooted
to the place you were born in, are of prime
importance.
The film has won several awards like the
Best Feature Film at the Cinemanila International
Film Festival, Philippines, Best Actress
for Jennifer Kendall at the Evening Standard
British Film Awards and National Awards
for Best Director and Cinematographer among
others.
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.
|
