NOSTALGIA: Umbartha (1982)

Smita Patil’s closest friend Jhelum Paranjape recalls how when the actress immersed herself in a role, she often ‘became’ the character. Given Smita’s affinity towards women’s issues and concern for their disadvantaged status in contemporary society, the part of Sulabha Mahajan in Jabbar Patel’s Umbartha (The Threshold) was especially close to her heart. More so, because the character of the intense and fiery social worker adapted to screen by noted playwright Vijay Tendulkar from Shanta Nisal’s Marathi novel Beghar (Homeless), seemed so much like her mother, Vidya Patil, a dedicated social worker. While playing Sulabha, Smita married her mother’s poise (evident in her precise body language), with her own passion and vulnerability. It may not have fetched her the National Awards Bhumika and Chakra did, but won enough acclaim to warrant a special retrospective of her films in France and earned her recognition as a feminist icon.

Sulabha had two distinct phases in the film. The first is in her domestic environment with her lawyer husband Subhash (Girish Karnad), little daughter Rani and the joint family they live in which includes a social worker mother-in-law who doesn’t approve of Sulabha’s non-conformist attitude. Here, the protagonist seems tentative, unsure of her place and uneasy about the role she’s expected to play. Smita brings out this sense of unease through protracted silences and a flicker of uncertainty in her eyes as she observes the goings-on in the family with a sense of detachment. But when she argues with Subhash about her need to go and work as superintendent of a facility for destitute women far away from home, flashes of anger and determination surface.

It is, however, once she takes over her new job that we get a different sense of Sulabha’s (and indeed Smita’s own) personality. She’s quick to put dissenting inmates in place, instill order and discipline in the institution and instinctively empathise with these women’s suffering, treating them with the kind of affection they’ve never received. There’s a charge in her step, as she finally seems to have found a sense of purpose; we see her breaking into a spontaneous smile when she finds her work bearing fruit. But the real world isn’t far away and intervenes in the form of the institution’s apathetic management committee that won’t allow Sulabha to infuse her progressive ideals and take bold decisions. Often Sulabha wards off the snide sarcasm of chairperson Sheela Samson, with dignified silence.

As she oscillates between being sincere and assured about her work while struggling to stave off the intervention of the brutal, corrupt world outside, Smita articulates this element of duality in her person by showing the same woman going from steely resolve one moment to abject vulnerability the next. In these moments of crisis and confrontation, the director always frames her in close-up, thrusting her discomfort and determination in the audience’s face. There’s an edge of desperation to her voice when she tries to call her family on a terrible connection only to find that her husband and daughter are not at home, and repressed rage, when she has to answer a lewd midnight call from the drunk local MLA demanding that she send some young girls over to his bungalow.

We see things slipping out of Sulabha’s grasp when Subhash’s visit to the ashram turns sour with the death of an inmate during childbirth. He leaves in a huff, disappointed with his wife’s inability to give him precedence over her work. A lesbian relationship between two of the inmates turns into a scandal that’s lapped up by the press and discussed in the legislative assembly. Finally, when two inmates commit suicide in the institution’s lock-up, Sulabha is put in the dock and a one-man enquiry commission is appointed to evaluate the charges against her.

Sulabha’s soliloquy at the enquiry is Smita’s moment of triumph. She firmly defends her decision to move away from the comfort of her ‘respectable’ family to take this job, fervently asserts her empathy for the social outcasts who live in the institution, spits venom at the management and expresses her helplessness about circumstances way beyond her control. Finally, she states that irrespective of the outcome, she won’t bow down.

In a way, her inflexibility leaves her unfulfilled both in her professional and personal life, for when Subhash informs her about the mistress he’s taken in her absence, and she sees her daughter steadfastly attached to her aunt, Sulabha realises there’s no place for her in her home either. She packs her bags yet again to set off on an uncertain journey.

In the film’s final shot, as she’s staring out of the train window there’s an air of carefree confidence on Sulabha’s face. She’s no longer obliged to follow the rules of conventional society, for she’s willfully walked away from it all.

A sentiment the maverick actress Smita Patil would have understood better than anyone else.