Jaya Bachchan’s Piya Ka Ghar puts focus on female desire when the sasural won’t let the newlyweds be

Jaya Bachchan and Anil Dhawan starrer Piya Ka Ghar, directed by Basu Chatterjee, has the newly weds struggling for some alone time until the woman puts her foot down and decides to move on.

Jaya Bachchan and Anil Dhawan in Basu Chatterjee's Piya Ka Ghar. (Photo: Express Archives)

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Regular middle-class joint families don’t always have the luxury of space so when there is a newlywed couple in the house, the family members usually try their best to give them as much space as possible but this isn’t the case in Basu Chatterjee’s Piya Ka Ghar. Here, the family is simply inconsiderate as they throw the newlyweds in the kitchen, which is supposed to be there bedroom at night, and can’t stop eavesdropping as the shy couple, who are practically strangers, try to talk to each other in whispers.

The 1972 film has Jaya Bachchan playing Malti with Anil Dhawan playing her husband Ram. We see their union being arranged in a traditional fashion but as soon as Jaya lands in her sasural, she is hit by the the lack of space that Mumbai has been famously known for since forever. Even Sanjeev Kumar-Rehana Sultan’s 1970 film Dastak was all about the lack of space in a city that never sleeps, and here, Malti can’t manage to get a peaceful night of sleep with her husband next to her. One night, when Ram accidentally hits a utensil while arranging their makeshift bed, the family members start giggling audibly and Malti finds this entire episode extremely awkward, and rightly so. Their relatively small home houses seven people and as days and weeks pass, this cramped up living situation starts getting to Malti and she ultimately asks her husband to sleep in the gallery outside. The poor woman hasn’t even had a full conversation with her husband with no one listening in and by this point, she has no one to rely on, yet the film plays it like a slice-of-life drama where you are just nod and move along and ignore Malti’s troubles.

Jaya Bachchan’s Malti cannot find room to breathe in a one-room house where seven people live together. (Photo: Express Archives)

The family members can also see their growing frustration in not getting to consummate their marriage and come up with schemes where they can leave the newlyweds alone for a few hours. On one such occasion, they get the house to themselves but just as they are getting down to business, a distant relative drops by unannounced leaving Malti and Ram even more annoyed. It’s tragically funny when Kishore Kumar’s ‘Yeh Jeevan Hai’ plays over all of this, but it is evident that this isn’t played for laughs but rather as a philosophical message telling viewers ‘this is how it is’.

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After many failed attempts, Malti puts her foot down and decides to go back to her village and it is at this point, that the family realises the extent of the problem that has probably been Malti’s sole concern in her new home. Her problems seem magnified because all her life, she has lived in a house where even her dolls had a separate playroom. So to live in a house where anyone could knock at her supposed bedroom in the middle of the night to get some water has Malti worrying if this is even a home.

The concept of exploring female desire and sexuality has always been a taboo subject in Indian movies. Even in the last few years, when a filmmaker puts forth a female character who is sure about what she wants and isn’t afraid to ask for it, she is labeled as ‘bold’. So what Chatterjee did in 1972 with Jaya Bachchan (then Bhaduri) in the lead role, with Rajshri Films as the producers, is quite noteworthy. Though they remain quite subtle about it, and don’t speak of female desire like it was done in Astitva, Lust Stories, Lipstick Under My Burkha, Dev D, and many other relatively newer films, it is conveyed that sexual desire can’t be brushed under the carpet, as society would expect from its women.

With India being the most populous country in the world, we know that no one here is afraid of sex, but women here are conditioned to believe that they aren’t supposed to enjoy it, or even show that they are interested in it. This, primarily, is one of the reasons why this decades old movie stands out because the protagonist here makes it known that she is extremely dissatisfied with the lack of intimacy in her life. And even though she can see that this is how the world works, and how there is absolutely no space in this house, she refuses to accept the cards she is dealt in the name of ‘Bambai mein sab milta, par rehne ko ghar nahi milta‘, as her husband says at one point.

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But all her strength and resolve is thrown out of the window in the film’s closing minutes as Chatterjee takes a sharp turn and has Malti behaving like a docile yes-woman who has now accepted her ‘piya ka ghar’ as her only home. It is absolutely uncharacteristic of Malti to give up on her entire arc with a smile on her face. It almost appears like Chatterjee was told to have a traditional happy ending, even if it did not fit with the tale he told for almost two hours. It is with this ending that Piya Ka Ghar leaves a sour taste in your mouth.

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But despite this strange ending, Piya Ka Ghar makes you root for the woman at the centre of this mess, which is simply translated as ‘just another chapter of life’ by its director.