The teaser of Indraadip Dasgupta’s upcoming film Grihapravesh abounds in nature imagery, more specifically in metaphors of the cloud. This is not an odd choice to make, given how romanticism has always been rooted in elements of nature. And while the film does not exactly romanticise its plot, it does hold up the dilemma of its protagonist in a way that is bound to leave you teary-eyed. Poetry takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility, and perhaps the pure poetry innate to the core of Grihapravesh is the kind that tugs at the heartstrings of the best of us.
The story revolves around the character played by Subhashree Ganguly, abandoned after marriage by a husband who seems to have vanished off the face of the earth. She is left behind in a palatial house with her elderly parents-in-law, who are equally bewildered by their son’s disappearance. Ganguly’s character stays suspended in time, stuck in an eternal limbo between the past and the present. While part of her has accepted her fate — looking after her in-laws with tender dedication and running the household — another part of her knows that she has been forgotten in a way that she herself has never been able to forget, throughout her life.
Some scenes from the teaser are quite heart-wrenching: Ganguly holding a up a vermillion string of thread to the parting of her hair, her saying that she has made peace with the house and its inhabitants over the years even though the only inhabitant she had ever wanted to make peace with had left her the day after they were wedded, and the fact that perhaps this was the pattern of her life: being destined to live out all her days in the act of waiting while the people she eternally waited for inevitably vanished. The teaser ends on a note that is as haunting as it is open-ended: the possibility of love entering her life again is touched upon, but we do not entirely know how that story ends.
The teaser truly leaves goosebumps on your skin and a tear or two in your eye, but what really catches you off-guard is the beautiful way in which the colour palette of the shots perfectly matches the emotional tone and sombreness of the story. There is a heavy gravitas to the blue and greyness of it all, perfectly in tandem with the theme of the plot, no matter how hopeful the ending of the teaser might be. Ultimately, what we know of Grihapravesh leaves us with this one thought: that sometimes, the quietest of stories are the ones that echo the loudest in our hearts, drifting through us like clouds in the sky — heavy with unshed rain, and bringing respite wherever they pour. Grihapravesh releases in theatres on June 13.
Subhalakshmi Dey
