Death of an Actress

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When the curtains finally rang down on Aideu Handique’s life last week, Assamese cinema’s first heroine had spent the major part of her 82 years in penury and solitude. The timing could not have been more ironic: Assam is celebrating the birth centenaries of two pioneer filmmakers, P C Barua (of Devdas) fame and Jyotiprasad Agarwala, this year with the respect and appreciation it never showed the breakthrough artiste.

It was in Agarwala’s film Joymati, Assam’s first talkie, that Handique played the heroine. She and her family were immediately ostracised, so much so that Handique spent 65 years in a thatched hut in the grounds of her family home; she was allowed to return to the house only when she fell seriously ill.

The contrast has not escaped Assam’s film fraternity, reviving the debate on the portrayal of women on the Assamese screen. ‘‘It’s a fact that a good number of woman-centric films have been made in Assam, but I strongly feel her cause has not been espoused as it should have been,’’ says Santwana Bordoloi, 50, director of the National Award-winning Adajya.

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‘‘There have been films about sexual and economic exploitation of women, but there have been many more that show them as highly regarded and respected, which is not the real picture at all,’’ says Bordoloi, also a reputed actress. ‘‘Show me one film where she has been shown a solution to her woes, or she has been depicted as a role model.’’

Bordoloi finds unexpected support in, among others, Prastuti Parashar, the hottest commercial actress in Assam today. ‘‘I myself have not felt very happy about the various characters I depict. Rarely have women called me up to say ‘you have depicted my story’, or ‘you have answered questions that have been disturbing me all my life’,’’ says the 20-something Parashar. ‘‘I may be the actress most in demand, but all offers relate to boy-meets-girl stories. Except for a few filmmakers like Bhabendra Nath Saikia, Jahnu Barua, Sanjiv Hazarika and Santwana-baideu (elder sister), others seem to be insensitive to issues concerning women.’’

Saikia, who has eight films to his credit in a 25-year-long film career, in fact, stirred up a major storm in the early ’80s with Agnisnan, which showed the wife of a wealthy villager having a baby by a village thief after her husband brought home another wife. While Saikia won the best screenplay award, Moloya Goswami brought Assam its only national best actress award with her Barua-directed portrayal of a courageous young widow who sets up a school in a village despite stiff resistance.

These characters, however, are very much the exception. ‘‘Popular Assamese cinema continues to show women as happy-go-lucky village belles, rescued by the hero from the villain at the climax,’’ says Nayan Prasad, a senior critic.

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And how far is that character from reality? Ask Sabita Lahkar, a leading journalist with a special interest in women’s issues, and she says, ‘‘There is both a dark and a bright side to her story. More women, especially middle-class women, are increasingly participating in the decision-making process.

“Simultaneously, more and more women are falling victim to rape, marital discord and harassment. But hardly any recent film has presented both these women. Hundreds of women have been widowed by insurgency, but that is one area that has escaped focus completely.’’

Somewhere, there is a parallel to Handique’s life.