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tina_chakraborty
Reviews
Chokher Bali (2003)
realistic portrayal of a bengali widow
it is a really great novel and a well done movie capturing the different emotions tugging the characters in opposing directions... the mother's jealousy for her new daughter in law that her son selected to marry himself, rejecting the proposals she had brought to him. The closing of the door representing the shrinking "control" that the mother has on her child. In this setting it makes sense that she introduces a counterpoint of a beautiful ally in her household, to later live to regret it. I love that things in the story do not have an expected story arc. Having researched the bengali tradition of treatment of widows (of which there were many as the Kulin Bramhin tradition forced young girls into polygamous marriages to "high caste" old codgers), I can see why a young widow would want to experience life (ownership, materialism, sexual congress and the associate powers) for herself.