It’s hard not to love Apu. The reader, as the viewer, grows up with him through Pather Panchali; leaves the nest as he does in Aparajito, braving death and the jungle of an unknown world, falls in love as he does in Apur Sansar, and finally goes on an eternal search for the self, culminating, as TS Eliot would have said, at the place where it all began – in childhood.
Childhood, however, is far from the only theme explored in the course of this trilogy (speaking of the book too, would need another article. So now, we shall confine ourselves to the iconic films) that first placed Indian cinema on the map. Apu’s women, who hedge his life and steer its course – in life as in death – are striking, and Ray takes the full opportunity to explore them in his films. Their deaths are rites of passage for Apu, as he grows, in Durga’s death, from the child to the sensitivem observant, boy; in his mother’s, from the ambitious adolescent to the unvanquished adult; in Aparna’s death in childbirth from the dreamer to a man in search of himself.
Ray also brilliantly uses the image of the train in Apu’s relationships with these women. Durga opens Apu’s mind and heart to an eternal wonderment and sensitivity by taking him across the field of Kash flowers for them to experience the noisy wonder of the passing train together. The train takes Apu and his mother back to rural West Bengal, thus bringing them closer, as they each has no one else. Apu rides three hours on the same metal of wonderment, to go to college in Kolkata and thus the distance – more mental than physical – between him and his mother grows. Apu falls in love in this far off city and fails to come every time his mother would want him to. The train brings no loving son to Sarabajaya and she dies a lonely death. Apu is devastated, but must live on – he is Aparajito: “The unvanquished”. The train brings Apu, by chance, to his child-bride, and they spend an idyllic year together. When Aparna gets on the train to return to her hometown, Khulna, to give birth, the separation is eternal. The young widower is beyond consolation – having lost his all – and attempts to end his life under the wheels of the train. He desists.
The women, themselves, are beautifully sketched characters – believable to the finest detail.
Durga, with whom the series begins, is, in character, more like her toothless octogenarian Pishima (aunt) than like her pragmatic mother. She is a thief even at five years of age, not seeing why she should not be allowed to pick a couple of guavas from the Mukherjees’ orchard to satisfy her own and Pishi’s hunger. Her spirit is that of the wilderness she roams. She is a child, but she is not infantilized. She understands poverty, and is perhaps the most hurt by the family’s penury and evident son-preference. Undernourished unlike her brother she is, from the first frames, a sickly albeit mischievous child. She reacts to this situation completely differently from her mother and fully explores the rural wilderness, almost like a jungle waif, taking the wide-eyed Apu long. She is his real preceptor.
Ray’s portrayal of Durga’s growing up, is touching. The camera pans, from Durga’s childhood playmate, who is now a bride, to the impecunious bridesmaid, in a thin cotton sari, sitting, almost impassively by the side.. The occasion is not only a marriage – in mind, Durga has come of age. She is, however, still a chilld. She runs, with Apu to a wide clearing, to receive on her upturned face, the first drops of monsoon. This portrayal is at its core, perfectly Indian. There is none of the artificial shyness that Bollywood that tends to lean towards; nor is there any of the Dworkin-esque fear that is today, fashionable to consider normal under circumstances such as Durga’s.
Apu’s Ma, Sarabajaya, is a complex character. She is the typical upper-caste wife, poor to starvation yet constrained to remain the housewife, lest her husband lose face by her working. Only after her husband’s death, does she work, and then saves enough to tide Apu by, during his first days at Kolkata. She loves both her children, but evidently indulges Apu a lot more. She has a streak of cruelty in her (again, never directed towards her irresponsible but loving husband, Horihor, or Apu). She drags Durga by the hair and throws her out of the house, in anger. Sarabajaya never says a kind word to her old sister-in-law, who lives with them, even when the old lady hobbles down to help her as she falls down in a coughing fit. She throws her out of their home several times and Pishi ultimately dies homeless and it is Durga who brings her back this time, as always.
Sarabajaya’s stony reserve, however, seems brought on completely by dire poverty. She breaks down for the first time at the end of Pather Panchali, as Horihor, who doesn’t know Durga has died, hands her a sari he has bought for his daughter. Here it is Ravi Shankar’s music, rather than any screams that tell us of Sarabajaya’s pain, as she collapses in tears. In Aparajito, she chooses to leave the job that gives her some economic freedom, as she watches Apu doing the work of a manservant, and instead moves back to her ancestral village. Here, she watches, as her son grows up, beyond her understanding. He works as a priest part time and puts himself through school. When he announces that he has won a scholarship to go to college in Kolkata, she senses the loneliness that is coming, and even slaps him, in her desperation. Apu, however, goes, chasing his ambition. When he returns, the mental distance between the two of them is great – he falls asleep as she is talking to him about her illness and loneliness. She fishes for compliments from her now taciturn son. He, however, has other interests now and she is reluctant to call for him, even in her sickness. When he finally arrives, she has already died, having waited and waited, under her tree, imagining that every approaching train would bring him.
Aparna enters Apu’s life suddenly – almost by design of fate. He replaces her rich but insane bridegroom, to keep astrological requirements and finds himself unemployed but married. Apur Sansar has been described by film critics as the most tender romance to be portrayed on screen, and it probably well is. Aparna is a spunky fourteen-year-old, who chooses to live with Apu right after they are married, even though this is not required, as he is yet unsettled in life. For a moment, as she enters his room, and sees the tattered curtains, torn mattress and messy furniture, she is moved to tears. However, the sight of a homeless woman and her child – the view from Apu’s window – suddenly tells her that she is not so badly off, after all.
Ray’s Aparna is anything but infantilized. In the beautifully essayed scene where she wakes up for her first morning as Apu’s wife, the fourteen-year-old is seen awaking from bed, and cheerfully starting to cook. The loving Apu wakes after her, and at first tries to entertain her with his flute, however, as she recoils at the sight of a cockroach, he is struck by a fit of guilt and runs out, announcing that a maid would be needed. Aparna at this point says, “Stop being such a child. Come back” (he is at least 6 years her senior), and then explains to her pouting husband, that they would have to save money on such luxuries.
Apu’s women are not the strongest or most intricate characters that Satyajit Ray ever portrayed. However, they are among the most palpable characters in the history of Indian cinema. They are – a poor child, a housewife and a girl in love but defy the stereotypes built for these roles and come out into their own, as complex, textured characters.

Pic Source: Outlook, India.

The Author
 Sneha Krishnan is an economics-obsessed, pasta-loving history student bound for Oxford this fall. She is usually found curled up in sofas with her ever-present macbook perched on some surface in the vicinity. Sneha first started thinking about doing Sa when she and Shweta realized that they were ranting about the day's news/ happenings practically everyday and everything they said had something to do with their feminist convictions. So they wondered how it would be to write about these things and more... and KaBoom... seven months and laborious code-learning (trial and error, the only method for us) sessions later, Sa came to be. Sneha’s favourite pastimes, besides feminism and Sa, are reading the New York Times, playing Scrabble and watching every movie that looks remotely interesting.

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