~ 1946: A terrified teenage girl returns back to her parents escaping her abductor. Her parents though tearful cannot accept her back, as the abductor was of another religion and they had other daughters to think of. She is asked to go back to her abductor or wherever she wishes to.
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(~ 2003: Parents of a girl I know are refusing to take her back home in Jallandhar, Punjab after her divorce in Bombay, asking her to put up at a relatives place in Bombay till her two younger sisters get married, and never to mention her divorce or come back to Jallandhar till such time. Exactly what has changed over the years? I guess nothing.)
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~ A mad woman whom no one bothered to tend to in a village gets raped and dies during childbirth. The child is looked after in a household, which raises the hackles of a few leaders of an opposite faith, who now want to claim the child, as the mad woman belonged to their religion.
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~ The spiteful girl despises her abductor, now her loving husband. On learning of her pregnancy she says, “It’s been four months since I’m carrying your sin in me.” Spitting those words at him. The abductor is stung and hurt beyond belief.
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~ The girl’s father orders, pleads and then begs his son to give up the search for the girl. What disturbs the most is that his argument is almost convincing, given the circumstances.
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~ The abducted girl though knowing that she cannot marry her erstwhile fiancé, her heart keeps yearning for the unattainable and struggles to at least have a look at him whenever she can.(Chhoot gaye yaar, na chhooti yaari maula-Gulzar’s apt lyrics)
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~ The girl is forced to change her surroundings, her desires, her faith and even her identity from Puro to Hamida, much to her abhorrence. The name Hamida then comes to her rescue during a tense moment.
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Pinjar is jampacked with such forceful moments that make you to sit up and take notice of the fact that this is one movie where the story is King.
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At last someone has the good judgment to make a movie, after delving into the vast number of available stories from regional Indian literature, instead of making some more triangular wedding dramas, or silly slasher flicks.
Before going into the numerous plusses about the movie it must be forewarned that Pinjar is slow and weepy. Yet its story and narration is so strong that this can be ignored. The plethora of tears falls in line with the story content and don’t seem forced intentionally.
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For a change, the story is the hero, and not an extra, or an afterthought
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Pinjar was a Punjabi novel by Amrita Pritam, a household name in Punjabi families. Its story is an engrossing and compelling tale, well worth a cinematic narration. It depicts the crumbling structure of society, evaporation of values and principals due to mistrust between two communities. Pinjar’s backdrop is the upheavals faced by two families during the partition of India, the exchange of refugees, and associated human atrocities, a horror for those who underwent it.
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Its Literature, so its bound to have a touch of class
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Though the setting of Pinjar and Gadar is similar, one cant help contrasting the two movies, their genres and execution. Pinjar does not resort to bombastic rabble rousing, and Pakistan bashing like that seen in Gadar and its many spin offs. Gadar was pedestrian while, Pinjar is literature, and hence does not portray hatred, sloganeering or any such kind of cheap provocations.
Director, Dr. Chandraprakash Dwivedi’s approach to this sensitive topic is realistic and human. The positive end and the struggles of its individual characters before it reaches its climax shows that whatever be the magnitude of tragedy, the survivors are those dauntless ones who never lose faith and go on with life.
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Authentic and Engrossing
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Pinjar successfully recreates the architecture, props, vehicles, costumes particular to its time and milieu, through the faultless art direction and costume design of Muneesh Sappel. Uttam Singh’s music is suitably heavily Punjabi flavoured, making use of Gulzar’s Amrita Pritam’s and other traditional sufi https://lyrics.
Pinjar pinpoints the fact that it is not the actors that are limited in Bollywood, it is the stories and direction. It’s a movie in which even Sandali Sinha, Priyanshu Chatterji and Sanjay Suri come up with sterling performances doing much more than what can be ever expected of them. A brilliant performance by the often under-rated Kulbhushan Kharbanda is also worth noticing. It is only obvious that Pinjar is Urmila’s and Manoj Bajpai’s show through and through. As the abducted girl and her abductor both are easily in their career bests, portraying helplessness and repentance respectively.
(Unfortunately, some people I saw the movie with tended to read too much between the lines to conclude that Pinjar depicts one community as the aggressor and the other as the victim. While being audiences to such quality films one could try and rise above this pettiness and view Pinjar as a well-told story without making unnecessary, uncalled for judgments on which side it tilts towards.
In a tragedy like the partition to sit and evaluate which side had more deaths, had more rapes and then does a particular movie, or a novel do justice to individual side’s sufferings seems like a terrible joke in real bad taste.)
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Requires patience, but not to be missed!
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