I was not aware that Belasheshe was a thing back in Bengal when I watched it recently. It served as a great reminder of what the traditional definition of love in marriage meant where I come from. It is not about any of the things that a modernist, western view of love deems important. You each fulfill your role in the family with the greatest dedication and along the way there are tiny points of intersection where the couple builds their marriage, one tiny bit at a time. It takes a life time of effort and devotion to the cause that is greater than the two people in the marriage.
The pay-out as seen in the movie is being loved, respected and surrounded by children and grand-children. The person and individuality takes a secondary role to the institution. Love is not hyper-personalized either. It is a very different way of viewing the value of one's own life - measured in ways that have little to do with personal goals and aspirations. The matriarch in the movie is the ideal Bengali wife of a time that no longer exists home or abroad.
I am going to guess the movie did as well as it did because the the old couple who anchor the movie, represent nostalgia for a way of life where the rules of engagement made marriage far less complex than it is today. And after fifty years of building steady habits, the couple would find themselves helpless and incomplete without each other.
Achieving that state was considered the nirvana of marriage, It did not matter that touch was limited if any, that birthdays were never remembered, that a spouse's need for attention was overlooked to care for an elderly relative. The expressions of love were terribly mundane and indeed that was the hallmark of their authenticity. To tell your spouse that you love them would be considered insincere and a sign of great affectation. Depending on one's definition of what a marriage "working" is, this could be an ideal to aspire.
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