The Jewellery Box: Colors of Woman's Desire

Goynar Baksho (The Jewellery Box, 2013) is a very recent film by Aparna Sen. She made the film based on story of Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay. The film was carried out by three women of three consecutive generations. Aparna connected them with a jewellery box. In a different circumstances of society and political situation we saw three main characters played different role.

Pishi or aunty (Moushumi Chatterjee) widowed  at her age of eleven, that was before partition of India. She missed her conjugal life and also sexual life a lot. We saw the desperateness of her to meet up her desire. But accidentally she could not make her desire fulfilled so she became unhappy consciousness. Later we saw after death she turned into ghost. Her daughter in law (Konkona Sen Sharma) also suffered from unhappy consciousness symptom. Actually aunty made her to think polygamy. If a husband had had their extra marital affairs why not for the wives, ghost aunty gave lesson to her. So she felt in love with a poet, came from East Bengal. when her husband was in abroad for business purpose. That was a bit of platonic love unlike to aunty. With these two women Aparna disclosed the desire of a woman which is closely attached with the drives.  Moreover we saw a desire for wealth and prosperity within the later women, daughter in law.

But during the liberation war of Bangladesh we saw the appearance of grand daughter (Srabanti Chatterjee) of ghost. She was a politically oriented young girl. She was aware of class difference, remember she compared ghost aunty's thinking with the bourgeoisie. She even gave up her family treasure, the jewellery box that was kept very preciously by her mother and grandmother, for the sake of liberation, for the sake of a new nation Bangladesh.

By the journey of three women Aparna tried to depict three kind of desires: sexual desire, desire for wealth and desire for freedom. Aparna's three women associated with those three desires. Aparna wanted to exhibit the colors of woman's desire. In this perspective she succeeded but in the final part when third women appeared in the scene the pace was slow down and a little bit boring. Whatever, the play with the woman's desire was a good lot.