Cinema: India for Everybody

Two Daughters. The magic of India's Satyajit Ray, who directed the Apu trilogy and Devi, lies in his ability to translate the life around him into such universal terms that Western audiences see his India not as a gold-embroidered slum peopled with mystics and mendicants but as an identifiable place where ordinary humans go about their ordinary lives. Two Daughters, a two-part film based on short stories by Rabindranath Tagore, is so filled with the basic stuff of humanity that with minor changes of script it could have been made in rural Louisiana.

The Postmaster is a curtain-raiser. It tells about a young civil servant who comes to an isolated village to run the post office and finds, as a legacy from lis predecessor, a wistful ten-year-old girl who is to be his servant. He teaches her to read and write; when he falls ill with malaria, she nurses him through his fever. He asks for a transfer back to the city and she hides, sobbing, when his replacement arrives. The departing postmaster walks slowly away from the village, calling to the girl to say goodbye. She appears, carrying a heavy pail of water, and looks silently at the ground, tears streaking her face. The last thing he hears as he passes out of sight of the village is the voice of the child calling: "Master, I have brought you the water." But it is her new master that she is calling.

The longer piece is a poignant comedy called The Conclusion. Amulya (Soumitra Chatterjee), a young student decked out in all the trappings of intellectual dandyism—city shirt and coat, Argyle socks, polished shoes—comes home from college and marries trouble wrapped in a sari: an underprivileged tomboy, nicknamed Puglee, with a laughing face and eyes like a temple deity. Amulya's mother is horrified, and Puglee, still a child, is rebellious.

On the wedding night Puglee (Aparna das Gupta) escapes from Amulya's flower-decked bedroom to play with her pet squirrel; then she throws all of Amulya's precious books on the floor. In disgust he sends her back home saying: "If you write to me as a wife to her husband, I'll be truly happy." But Puglee cannot write. At first she sulks, then she pines, finally she fasts. But while she is fasting, she learns to write. One night Amulya comes to his room and finds a note on his bed. It reads: "Please come back. Your wife." Before he can go to fetch her, Puglee herself appears—chastened, subdued and glowing with love. But the tomboy is still alive. When Amulya asks how she got into his room, Puglee replies with her Mowgli smile: "I climbed up the tree."

Ray wrote the screenplays, composed the music, directed the actors, and produced the film, which is almost totally free from the stigma of the studio. His settings are real houses, forests, and—a Ray trademark—marshy riverbanks; and his people are as real as their surroundings.