The precise meaning of the Marathi language film “Sthal” translates as “position” which stands for finding the right ‘match’ for a marriageable daughter or son by the respective parents of both a son and a daughter. But in the patriarchal society we live in, this applies more to a marriageable girl’s parents than to a son’s parents as the entire ‘marriage market’ is tilted clearly in favour of boys than in favour of girls.
The director and producers however, have named the film The Match in its English translation.
Sthal, a debut film by Jayant Digambar Somalkar, had its international premiere at the 48th Toronto International Film Festival last year. It was also screened at the same festival in the Discovery Programme which showcases the first and second features of emerging filmmakers from across the world. Sthal was the only Indian film selected for screening in this section last year.
The film won the NETPAC Award at the festival. At the recently held NAFA two-day festival of award-winning Marathi films in San Jose, California, Shtal happened to be honoured to be the opening film among the Indian films in Marathi and received a grand applause from the audience, mostly NRI Maharashtrians in the US.
The film also won the Best Marathi Film award at the Pune International Film Festival – a partner festival to the NAFA Film Festival – earlier this year.
Jayant Digambar Somalkar, the young debutant director of this film, focusses entirely on how the parents of a 20+ girl named Savita, keep breaking their heads searching for the right “match’ for their daughter who is short and also dark-skinned, which brings her down the ladder of the marriage “market” by some steps while this pushes up the material demands placed by the boy’s side on the girl’s parents.
“This film is very special to me because I filmed it in my birth village of Dongargaon, in the very home that I grew up in,” said Somalkar. He also shared that none of the actors in the film are professional actors, but are the actual residents of Dongargaon, a village in Vidarbha district within Maharashtra.
Somallkar builds his screenplay on a continuous series of “girl-seeing” sessions in the home of Savita. But Savita, though brought up in the remote village of Dongargaon in Maharashtra, is completely against getting married early as her sights are focused on appearing for the civil service exams when she graduates from the local college. Her compromised upbringing stops her from rebelling against these girl-seeing sessions which she finds quite humiliating not only for herself but also for her parents.
The camera is structured to pan across the exterior compound of the girl’s home passing through a fresh new towel hanging just outside the door to the entrance of the girl’s home, the labels still stuck to the towel, shifting its gaze to several pairs of slippers indicating the number of men who have come to “see” the girl for a potential “match” for their boy.
The girl is escorted from an inner room, dressed up in a colourful sari, some simple make-up, and made to sit on a chair parked right opposite the group seated across on ordinary sofas with her old grandfather watching the proceedings seated beside her.
The questions the girl is asked are hilarious in their stupid simplicity. “What is your date of birth”? Asks one. Or, “what is your height?” and when she corrects her own answer, one of the elders sitting in front asks her if she has measured her height or not. She says “Yes” she has.
But sadly for her parents, none of these proceed after the first ‘seeing’ as the boy’s party does not like her ordinary looks, her dusky complexion and her height. Or, not particularly impressed by her home ambience, understands that her father cannot afford a solid dowry so none of the girl-seeing sessions succeed.
This is repeated right through a major part of the film bringing the audience closer to the boredom of the situation and the utter humiliation of the girl who has to sit like a dressed up, live mannequin doctored to answer boring questions again and again and again. Actually, this is a façade to firstly, to find out whether the girl is fair, slim and beautiful and secondly, looking at the ambience of her home, how much dowry her father can afford.
In the meantime, Savita keeps preparing for her civil service entrance exams on her own while her cotton-farming father Daultarao (Taranath Khiratkar), plans to sell off his land in order to fund the dowry for Savita’s marriage. When Savita learns of this, she is deeply hurt but can do little to dissuade her parents from keeping on looking for “matches” for their 20+ daughter. Her best friend gets married meanwhile and though Savita misses her a lot, she takes it in her stride.
On her part however, she is determined to take the entrance exams though she has no clue how to go about it given that every other day, some people keep coming to find a “match” for their “suitable” boy. Scenes of cold drinks being brought along with eats for the several men who have arrived enhances the monotony to drive the message home.
Somalkar has handled the script as if the screenplay was made of glass and might crack under the minutest of pressures. So, the sarcasm, the irony, the tiny hints of romance, the girl’s mother’s quiet grumbling, the grandfather’s complete silence are so low key that you must keep your senses alert to take in the smallest detail.
And yet, each frame, each scene, spells out a thousand thoughts, feelings and sequential movements. Nandini Chikte who plays Savita, is excellent though she is a local girl who has never faced a movie camera before and this applies to the entire cast of the film.
The fleshing out of the characters is low-key. There is no negative slant given to any character including the men who walk in to “see” the girl, adding some humour while focusing on the number of footwear lined outside the entrance door, the fresh towel and water brought in for the guests to wash their feet and then wipe them with the towel are beautiful to say the least. This adds to the beautiful quality of the editing.
The production design of the sitting room where the “viewing” and “interview” take place makes it very clear about the modest means of a farmer’s home which signals the father’s capacity to shell out a handsome dowry. So, rejections are natural after every such “seeing” function.
This “girl-seeing” practice among Indians has been going on perhaps for a long, long time. Rich literature in all regional languages has come out inspired by this manner of finding the right “match” for a marriageable girl, the age, wish, choice of the girl being of no consequence at all. It is still practiced on a regular basis in many Indian families, urban, rural and semi-urban to this day.
One must remember, however, that the dowry depends on the weightage of the looks of the prospective bride plus her family’s financial background.
The matrimonial advertisements in newspapers still insist on “fair, slim and beautiful” girls to match the would-be groom but for the boy on the other side, the emphasis is on his job, salary, future prospects and so on and never focused on his looks.
Some of them even lay emphasis on “efficient in housework” but rarely mention the girl’s qualifications, experience and professional status. This is common in urban metros so in semi-rural, rural and small towns this is already implied without mentioning it.
The manner in which this is embedded within a girl is shown in Sthal through Savita’s close friend who gets very happily married and cannot understand Savita’s ambition of joining the civil service and is indifferent to marriage right now. There are subtle hints on a possible romantic relationship between Savita and a local boy which, we can understand, might never be a happily-ever-after story.
Scenes focused on the friend’s wedding with Savita dressed up for the occasion, smiling and laughing away adds some lighter moments to the film and also shows Savita as a normal young girl who enjoys weddings and dressing up on occasion.
The beauty of the film lies in the young director’s very simple and straightforward story-telling without the slightest recourse to sentimentalizing the situation, dramatizing the characters or using melodrama in a single scene. Sthal was chosen as the opening film at the two-day Marathi film festival in the US. The film won the top award at the Pune International Film Festival some time ago.