GAYA: 'An Unknown Guest', the directorial venture of writer producer Durba Sahay was screened at the prestigious Cannes film festival on Thursday. The film, according to Sahay, was selected in the short film category of the Cannes film festival.
Dealing with the problems and agonies of the elderly, the film delivers a shock therapy warranting a second look at the inter-personal family relations and respect and honour for the feelings and sentiments of the elders even if they are not in sync with the contemporary thought process.
There are situations in which such neglected elders can take resort to questionable conduct including virtual beggary to get their due within the family including quality food. Moreover, like the younger generation, the elders, too, love outing once in a while and their virtual imprisonment within the four walls of the house with nobody to talk to affects the behaviour of the elderly in a subtle manner.
'An Unknown Guest', according to Sahay, depicts one such elderly woman __ a victim of neglect within the family __ who invents a novel technique to get out of the confines of the house and also have some quality food. This neglected elderly woman goes through the obituary column of newspapers to locate places where shraddh and other rites including community feeding are held, each morning. Then, the protagonist, otherwise deprived of good food at home, not only takes the food to her heart's content but also stuffs some of the food items in the large bag that she invariably carries during such ventures.
The elderly woman, earlier enacted by well known Bengali actor Madhabi Mukherjee, not only eats the stolen food items at leisure back home, but also shares them with other elders facing the same situation. Madhabi Mukherjee, it may be recalled, played the title role of Charu in Satyajit Ray's masterpiece 'Charulata'.
'An Unknown Guest' is the Durba Sahay's second directorial venture. Earlier, she directed 'The Pen', a semi-autobiographical short film. Wife of Sanjay Sahay, the founder of 'Renaissance', Durba was the co-producer of the National Award winning film, 'Patang' with Om Puri, Shabana Azmi and Shatrughan Sinha in the main cast. 'Raftar', the collection of short stories penned by her, has been acclaimed in literary circles. Interestingly, Durba, a Bengali by birth and culture, has been writing Hindi fiction.
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