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A woman's worth: purity, marriage, and motherhood in Pinjar.

Article Excerpt
"Tu janam mein hi mar gayee hoti" (if only you had died at birth). In the film Pinjar, the heroine Puro's mother greets her with these harsh words when Puro escapes from her kidnapper and returns home. Instead of rejoicing in Puro's return or comforting her after her ordeal, her parents suggest that her life is simply not worth living anymore and actually kick her out of the house. While we may find this bewildering, it is sadly not surprising given the prevailing notions about a woman's sexual purity and purpose in life.

Pinjar is set in pre-partition India in 1946. It opens with scenes of happy domesticity, as Puro's family prepares for her marriage to Ramchand. It is immediately clear that marriage is the only possible course for the heroine's life, and Puro does not seem to expect anything more. We soon get the sense, however, that all will not go well with Puro: her fiance Ramchand, referring to her as his Janaki (another name for Sita), jokingly says that there will be exile in her life, just as there is for Ram and his wife Sita in the epic Ramayana. We even get a hint of Puro's abduction and the resulting doubts about her sexual purity when Ramchand sings a song about the "agnipariksha" (trial by fire) that proves Sita's chastity after her abduction by Ravan. Sure enough, Puro is kidnapped and held captive by a man named Rashid. Her...

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