The unspoken conversation in Asha Jaoar Majhe (Labour of love):
The opening shot of Asha Jaoar Majhe is the hustling back of an unnamed middle-class woman, in her articulately plaited hair and safety-pinned sari, hurrying, evidently through narrow lanes with grey, dull walls on either side that lead on to the eventual light of a bustling street. As her heels slap on the cemented ground and her pace quickens, one is made plentifully aware, in the serenades of morning prayer and the rising bickering of Kolkata, the susceptible surrender of a worker’s faculties for the larger causes of livelihood. At the core, there are two basic conversations at play in the film. One between the state and it’s rising unemployed, earmarked by chants of revolutionary slogans from the pickets of an unshown part of the city, while the other between a young, married couple.
A little in and we are eased into the idea of a dialogue-less film, as she waits for her tram, contenting herself to the routine bites of breakfast by the moving window of the ambling transport. A similar modest packet of breakfast is unwrapped by our only other character in the film, supposedly the husband, after he spends the early hours of morning sipping tea by their long verandah, almost giving the impression that it was his recreation of her travel that we had previously been a part of, and that by having his ready-made meal, he is partaking with her the responsibilities of yet another working day. He is soon to unpark his silver bicycle, to encash a cheque left on the table by his wife, counting the amount twice at the bank, and then immediately leaving to fetch fresh fish from the market- all in certainty and a rhythm that at its very inception is known to us.
Despite working entirely opposite shifts, the woman in the day and the man in the night, without encountering one another, the two characters are quite with each other. From making unpicked calls to wake the other from sleep to spreading the shared bathroom towel on rails, there is an innate gentleness to their bond, one engineered with the mechanics of running a household, without interruptions, doubts, or the mere luxuries of thought. Yet, there is also an unsaid longing for the other, the loneliness that prods at their starched clothes from the square releases of bedside windows, in the form of sunlight and clambers. They do not seem to speak much, as if their fast of silence would only break for the other’s indulging. They heed only to the essentials, and in principle, to each other’s messages.
That he leaves the remaining money from the daytime expenses in a steel box in their cupboard, and the woman recounts them in the night, is not out of malice, but as an established concern for each other, running melodically with him having hung his torn pair of trousers visibly for her to notice and stitch back for him. Here, the film traverses into the familiar gender demarcation of chores, where while the woman cooks the food and stitches back torn linens from the day, the man is pleased with leaving even his cup of tea unwashed, for he believes to have done his part of buying utilities and filling buckets with water. However, that also happens to be the essence of their conversation- one of understanding and routine, not too afar from social constructs yet not as harsh as to be necessarily discriminatory. No matter one’s discerning in this matter, they seem to be quietly prancing in romance with their simple acts of surviving, each day, making one question for long if they ever even meet.
We travel with her, as the ticket tucked between her watch strap moves with the bumpy road. We too fall faintly in sleep watching him find time for an afternoon nap. We are to watch their hands at labour, flattening rotis (bread) at home at one instance and washing printing press at work at another; their feet leaving behind footprints on the house floor and eagerly peddling the bicycle ride back home. Their labour is not merely of love, but for the utterly pined moment to love.
Writer: Kevin Kuriakose
