The Japanese Wife
Author: Kunal Basu
Director: Aparna Sen
My boyfriend went all out this weekend to make up for the time I don’t get to spend with him in the week. And, he made the ultimate sacrifice: offered to take me to watch The Japanese Wife – a genre of movies he dislikes. But, he too grinned at intricate moments in the movies and that my friends, is a BIG achievement!
Aparna Sen has put in tactile powers to remain faithful to Kunal Basu’s plot and most of the dialogues are from the book itself. A good thing, as this allows the story to retain its poignant poetry.
Pen friends write to each other, fall in love, meet and marry. This is a common plot. But the Japanese Wife reflects the intensity of simple love. Pen friends – Snehamoy from a village on the banks of the Matla River in the Sundarbans and Miyage from Yohkohama - write to each other for three years, fall in love, do not have the money to visit each other, but accept each other has man and wife. She sends him a silver ring and he sends her a Bengali saree and conch shell bangles – a symbol of a married Bengali woman.
They celebrate their first, second, fifth and fifteenth anniversary through letters. They share their lives in these letters that is like a blotting ink paper on to which they pour their hearts out. She sends him kites on their first anniversary, which later lead to a kite flying competitions – the Japani kite versus the desi Indian kites.
Sandhya, his mashi’s recently widowed God daughter, and son Paltu come to stay at Snehamoy Chatterjee’s house and she plays the silent wife, who keeps the ghoonghat and never shows her face to Snehamoy; sprints away like a rabbit the moment she realises his proximity.
It is Paltu who accompanies Snehamoy when he is pitted against the villagers to save his Japani kites. They fly the humongous dragon kites as the village kite seller encourages them to bring down the Japani kite.
Years go by and it is the letters alone that binds this couple to together. Snehamoy’s Japani wife is famous in the entire village on the banks of the Matla.
Ill-heath strikes Miyage, which is later revealed to be cancer. As a true husband, Snehamoy takes a six-month leave from the school, where is taught arithmetic and runs from door to post sending Yunani, Ayurvedic, Naadi Shastra, homeopathy and Allopathy medicines to his dearest wife. She willingly takes it; hoping it will spring her back to life.
The day he visits an oncologist in Kolkatta with reports that Miyage has sent him as according to her, “You are my husband and you have the right to know of my reports,” the storm is in full gusto and Snehamoy falls ill with Pneumonia, which he eventually succumbs to.
And, the climax, the most beautiful and breathtakingly poignant part: She arrives… Miyage… and asks for Snehamoy Chatterjee – the arithmetic teacher. And, Sandhya beacons her in as if she knew they would meet. She takes her suitcase to Snehamoy’s room where she had stayed up night after night, applying wet wipes on his forehead to fight the fever – like an Indian wife would.
Miyage enters the room…sees the gifts she sent him with love put to use, runs her hand on the desk from where he had once written to her... “You won’t be able to adjust in my village,” he had told her, when he replied to her proposal. “You have to squat in the lavatory.” If only… I thought they would have spent their lives together – not just through letters.
The end left a vague emptiness in my heart which was not happy, not sad – it was the thought of what could have been. And yes, I cried. Sometimes, life seems full even when your hands are empty… Sometimes.
