Grihapravesh: Subhashree’s watershed moment
To see a world in a grain of sand/And a heaven in a wildflower/Hold infinity in the palm of your hand/And eternity in an hour…” Is William Blake’s ‘Auguries of Innocence’ only an existential postulation of the finite and the infinite? It’s certainly beyond those hypothetical bounds and unfurls in every creative quest and conquest. Even in acting, myriad motions of life melt into hues of manifold emotions. Subhashree Ganguly, perhaps, internalises each word of Blake and creates an auteur’s palette of love and longing, refrain and restrain, intimacy and independence, belonging and betrayal and abandoning and absence in ‘Grihapravesh’. She weaves a Red Naomi in her tapestry of roses with a performance that redraws contours and redefines boundaries.
Subhashree’s Titli marries into a Bonedi Bari burdened with its ageing heft of customs and bound by colossal columns of traditions. But the attic has a secret neglected and dumped underneath a pile of denials. Titli is tersely abandoned by her overseas-working husband seven days later. Her ‘why’ is firewalled by blurry answers. Her urge is deserted in solitary corridors. She is left with herself and her reality of sunset despairs and rainbow hopes. That is precisely where Subhashree, with her rich montage of nuances, lends credence and conviction. Those eyes have it all, where every shred, every thread wells up. Those eyes which can be read aloud and be read in silence. Those eyes which can encroach and endear.
Titli demands Subhashree to be oblivious to her innate splendour. Perhaps, a conscious refusal of her resplendent presence. It’s a deconstruction deftly done. The fleeting moment where Titli meets Jeetu Kamal’s Meghdoot for the first time is when her canned desires flutter after years, rebelling against her consciousness of a failed marriage. The contrasting emotions wrestle in her eyes, trying to overpower each other. A frame unforgettable as winds of hope waft by her cascade.
Subhashree exudes an insolent grace every time she meets Jeetu. The kite-flying scene, where Titli leans into Meghdoot’s arms and senses the rushes of a man’s embrace, is so disobediently dignified. The oxymoron of human urge and societal conscience cohabit as she triumphs every bit of it through eyes that hold unfathomable depths. The subtle shades of delight and disdain mount contesting passions rendered with delicacy.
Titli’s evolution into the de facto grande dame helming homestay service and caring for in-laws is also an uphill pathway traversed with quiet confidence. The assertions against her father-in-law’s reluctant disapproval of her thriving fondness for Meghdoot or unwarranted intrusions of relatives and househelps are stamps of the natural progression of a character transcending dunes of thorny realities. As an actor, she is fearless and endlessly empathetic, willing to be vulnerable and virtuous. Her emergence as one to be reckoned with is in the rich diversity as an artiste, quite similar to the traits of Chekhovian women.
Director Indraadip Dasgupta, fully aware of Subhashree’s strengths, creates two sequences that have a profound impact on storytelling. The unwrapping moment, when she whispers to the umbrellas she crafts, underlines her pining for the elusive petrichor in conjugal life. That world unto herself is so refreshingly novel, that metaphorical romanticism so intrinsic. The wrapping moment when the truth confronts her is when everything devolves into the quicksand of nothingness. She professes her love to Meghdoot only to be countered with its betrayal. A contravention that could have saved three lives and a family. The scene wrings out the nucleus in her, inviting all potent energies to live and quarrel inside. All elements within her conspire to bring forth a visceral force as an actor. Maybe a process of reductionism to simplify the complex proposition of life in its authenticity.
‘Grihapravesh’ has turned on her full wattage both as an artist and an artiste. She flings on her canvas strokes of cadmium yellow; smudges Valentine’s red and ultramarine blue and drops orange rolls and blobs of deep green to create an art of her own. An artist’s palette of quiet harmony and disquieting disharmony. Subhashree has that raw pigment of possibility that has sailed its ship from the shores with this film. An actor whose oeuvre will be of envy as time rolls on.
(The writer is a communication professional)
